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SPOTLIGHT: FACILITY OPERATIONS
Top 5 Tips to Improve Visibility and
Production Around Facility Operations
Yaniv Vardi to system-level benchmarking. That is, the more data we
CEO gather about each building’s lighting systems, for example,
Panoramic Power the better we can compare the lighting systems in all of the
buildings. Historical energy data and benchmarking can also
A facility’s ecosystem is comprised of many devices, mul- be helpful in predicting future energy consumption and
tiple systems, and often several buildings. Though each allows a company to:
aspect of the complex ecosystem is certainly affected • Identify inefficiencies
by energy, it is only the visibility into the entire ecosystem and • Track efforts to save energy and money per site and per
its energy that enables Facility Managers to identify potential device
operational opportunities, discover issues and anomalies before • Position your property to attain maximum value from
they happen, and identify recommended improvements. This buyers, tenants and lenders
fundamental ability to uncover and understand how energy use
affects building and system performance helps improve opera- 3. Calculate production costs per equipment
tion processes and addresses financial constraints. Production costs can be calculated on many bases: per unit,
To improve facility operations through energy consumption per material supplier, per unit of time, etc. To a Facilities
visibility, follow these five expert tips: Manager, however, cost per unit is less significant than the
calculation of production costs per equipment or produc-
1. Monitor devices to understand systems and continuously tion line. Often, calculations based on data in this realm
improve operations uncover certain equipment or lines that are less profitable
than others.
Continuously improving operations certainly comes from With the visibility to uncover the cost per equipment,
full-ecosystem visibility; but visibility into the entire ecosys- decisions can be made about retrofitting, maintenance, or
tem can only be attained by monitoring and analyzing each equipment replacement.
of its components. Without such data-backed analysis, recommendations
can only be made based on assumptions. Management is
By utilizing the latest in wireless sensor technology, Facility much more likely to respond affirmatively to recommenda-
Managers can easily install wireless CTs to monitor and track tions based on the statistics and facts gathered by intelligent
energy consumption per device. When coupled with an an- systems.
alytics platform, this device-level energy data is aggregated
and analyzed to create actionable insights about potential 4. Optimize maintenance to ensure equipment optimization
improvements. and effectiveness
For example, by installing sensors on HVAC devices, Perhaps one of the most significant operational changes for
Facility Managers have been alerted to unnecessary af- Facilities Managers who install device-level energy manage-
ter-hours consumption. Easily resolved, this discovery leads ment solutions is the ability to save costs through preventa-
to immediate reduction in consumption. Furthermore, the tive maintenance.
device-level data can lead to uncovering information that
divulges that cooling and heating systems are working Preventing problems before they occur is an essential
concurrently. Again, though easily rectified, without the element of system level monitoring. Facility Managers are
equipment-level monitoring, such a drain on resources can able to anticipate future breakdowns thanks to the real-time
easily go unnoticed. energy data that will alert them to an anomaly such as over
consumption, idling, or under consumption. Systems will
By live tracking and remote monitoring of our devices wear out over time and issues occur at different times on
at the most granular level, we gather the data necessary to each device. Real-time energy data at the device level will
understand our how systems are performing in real-time, help:
and how they interact with each other. This understanding
leads to the ability to plan and act to continuously improve • Increase equipment life and eliminate failures
operations based on actual data.
2. Benchmark systems to compare processes and enhance
facility operations
Over time, device-level data-gathering and analyses lead
54 Realcomm
