One of our collaborators, who will remain nameless in this post for reasons that will become clear, has offered this rationale for the use of mid-mass drones.
She calls it the “three trip problem”; referring to the fact that in servicing corporate resources, in this case remote equipment often in locations where there is no wireless signal, a specialist engineer too often has to go to site three times.
- The first time is to diagnose the issue – usually a technical failure flagged up by telematic monitoring or a performance shortfall. This diagnosis leads to an equipment replacement requisition from central stores.
- The second visit is to take the new part onto site and fit it. Unfortunately, despite a lot of attention to thorough asset management recording, a lot of field systems have legacy parts that are non-standard. That then leads to a mis-specified part, or a need for specific adjusted couplings and connectors. A second updated parts requisition follows.
- The third trip takes the right part with the right specification to the right place.
Now, while this may seem clumsy (and it is), there is an acceptance among the maintenance teams that not a lot that can be done; or to put it another way, there is an acceptance that this is the way that “things are done” has become ingrained. Disrupting that acceptance is an important management task; over a year and several hundred sites, considerable savings could be made.
Sky Hopper could cut three trips to one, making servicing faster and a lot cheaper.
And more … in analysing the issues, we’ve also come up with an add on. While carrying parts, Sky Hopper can also carry special lighting and thermal as well as visual cameras. Our platform can scout local conditions, record local assets, and do other value-adding tasks in addition to servicing support. Together, the specialist engineer and Sky Hopper can harness topical data to improve productivity and performance all round. UAVs offer a new global industry in this way … figures from the USA suggest a market of $12 billion is being built over the next two years.
Why not invest in us ….