Many industries are experiencing a labor shortage that is impacting businesses in several ways. Fields from manufacturing to oil & gas require substantial manpower for inspections and other services that optimize performance, ensure compliance, and maximize safety, but operating consistently has become increasingly difficult.
With insufficient staffing, process plants, refineries, and other facilities are struggling to meet customer demand. However, there are ways to get around labor shortage issues beyond recruiting new employees to fill the gaps. One of the most important steps for businesses is implementing digitalized solutions that streamline their operations.
How the Labor Shortage Is Hurting Operations
The labor shortage resulting from the ongoing pandemic has gradually affected the workforce and corporate entities. Businesses across a wide range of industries need employees to complete a variety of tasks to maintain efficient operation—and without the right amount of employees, manufacturers and many others need to find effective solutions to compensate. These solutions need to make operations more efficient while assisting with inspection services, mechanical integrity management, compliance, and more.
Thankfully, businesses can compensate for the lack of available staff with more optimized processes using the latest technology and digital solutions. With the help of the right digital platforms, operations can maintain their pace.
The Benefits of Using Digitalized Solutions
Reliable digitalized solutions can help optimize the performance of teams. The right tools enable the effective management of day-to-day operations with consistent efficiency, which helps ensure your organization meets customer and market demands. The following are some specific advantages of integrating the ideal digitalized solution for teams.
Meet All Compliance Requirements
Various industry and federal regulations can present a challenge for companies, particularly those with more complex operations. A digital field execution platform will allow teams the ability to see all relevant compliance and inspection requirements, along with mechanical integrity data metrics. In the process, you can prioritize and more effectively plan your inspection schedules based on the assets that are nearing their inspection compliance due dates.
Minimize Re-Work
Another challenge refinery inspection managers often face when short on staff is having to dedicate resources to re-work, in the event that certain issues were overlooked while completing inspection services. A digital platform can minimize re-work by helping inspection managers proactively identify inspection data anomalies, enabling them to prompt technicians to conduct re-checks and non-destructive testing (NDT) before leaving the asset in question.
Improved Plant Safety
Employees need to be safe from potential harm. To help make sure operations are regularly safe, a digitalized field execution tool can help verify that teams have the necessary permits, certifications, and approvals before performing inspections. This will help guarantee that inspections are thorough and properly conducted to identify and address any possible issues that could put staff at risk.
Reduce the Need for Manual Data Entry
When employees need to enter data into your system manually, this increases the risk of error and duplication. Manual data entry is also often time-consuming, especially when staff must enter large amounts of information. An automated system can help send all inspection data directly from the field to your company's inspection data management system (IDMS). This essentially eliminates the need for otherwise inefficient and potentially inaccurate data entry processes. In turn, you'll experience more peace of mind knowing that the data logged is consistently accurate and up-to-date.
Increased Transparency
Businesses also require complete insight into their operations to ensure they run smoothly. Digitalized solutions can help with this by offering increased visibility and transparency for users at all levels of the organization. They achieve this by providing you with regular status updates for all trade support and inspection activities.
Remote Operations
Facility managers aren't always able to be on-site, but they must still have insight into their operations to ensure efficiency. A platform that offers remote access will allow you to track teams' progress and oversee operations at any time and from any location. You'll never be in the dark regarding your operations using smartphones, tablets, or computers.
How MISTRAS Digital® Helps Enhance Inspection Process Efficiency
MISTRAS Digital can help maximize operational efficiency for inspection, maintenance, and reliability groups with a solution that was made for inspectors, by inspectors.
Some of the core benefits of MISTRAS Digital include:
- Electronic reporting of all inspection data
- Real-time alerts along with key performance indicator (KPI) visibility
- Repair request initiation
- Data uploading and review
- Task assignment and tracking of activities
- Weather condition updates
MISTRAS Digital also allows for seamless implementation across your operations. The platform is compatible with existing configurations for quick deployment. We also offer personalized training to further help with adoption.
MISTRAS Scheduling
As a supplemental solution, we also offer MISTRAS Scheduling, an optional value-added service that accompanies the MISTRAS Digital platform. This tool can increase efficiency even more through semi-automated scheduling to boost productivity, safety, and compliance. Through MISTRAS Scheduling, you'll be able to ensure that inspections meet strict deadlines. This solution alerts in-house scheduling personnel when assets approach compliance deadlines, reduces the risk of human error when scheduling inspection services, and enables plant staff to focus on more important and urgent tasks.
Integrate the Right Digitalized Solutions for Your Business
As labor shortages are always a risk for which businesses should prepare, the help of a comprehensive and dependable digital platform can help companies to overcome shortages and other challenges as they arise.
Want to learn more about how the right solution can help you optimize your company's operations at every level? Download this infographic to discover the efficiencies that digitalized inspection and reporting can drive.