“Not only have we seen more sites subscribe to NaviTrack, but more organizations have mandated the tool’s use. This reflects the growing Industry commitment to NaviTrack.
Bethesda, Maryland (PRWEB) February 25, 2015
Asset Performance Networks (AP-Networks) has announced that it will make major updates to its popular NaviTrack online tool this year. 2014 was a year of record growth for the tool, with the number of subscribed NaviTrack users climbing by nearly 40 percent. The updates announced by AP-Networks reflect current Industry trends, and are intended to address the needs of the growing user base.
NaviTrack is an online work process tool designed to facilitate the development and effective use of interactive work processes for projects and turnarounds. Introduced in 2008 as part of AP-Networks’ Turnaround Network portal, (http://www.turnaround-network.com), NaviTrack has since expanded to provide processes for upstream turnarounds and capital projects. These versions are available on http://www.upstream-network.com and http://www.capitalproject-network.com respectively.
Standardization with NaviTrack
In addition to adding several new companies and sites as subscribers last year, NaviTrack’s usage grew within existing subscriber sites. Mimi Eshetu is the Implementation Specialist at AP-Networks. She oversees NaviTrack usage and implementation for the company, and is in charge of training users on how to get the most out of the tool. Ms. Eshetu attributes this increased NaviTrack activity largely to growing buy-in by Industry leadership to the tool’s role in achieving consistent and competitive outcomes.
“Not only have we seen more sites subscribe to NaviTrack,” said Ms. Eshetu, “but more organizations have mandated the tool’s use. This reflects the growing Industry commitment to NaviTrack, and the desire by many to make NaviTrack their standard work process deployment tool. Dyno Nobel, HollyFrontier, Koch Industries, P66, and Shell have all mandated NaviTrack’s usage throughout their global organizations.”
With this strong support from leadership, NaviTrack is becoming an integral part of how companies plan and execute projects and turnarounds. In response to this transition at the organizational level, AP-Networks has increased the number of quarterly training sessions available for NaviTrack users.
Updates
Mega Complexity Model
In 2015, AP-Networks will add a Mega Complexity turnaround model to NaviTrack, joining the existing Low, Medium, and High Complexity models. The company calculates turnaround complexity by looking at turnaround size, capital project scope, and time between turnarounds. These complexity levels and their corresponding NaviTrack models provide an overall structure to work process milestones and help to identify common risks. This update will address the trend in recent years towards ever-larger turnarounds with ever-increasing capital scope.
Accountable Owner for Key Deliverable Activities
Among the NaviTrack updates slated for 2015 is a feature that will allow an accountable steering team member to be assigned to each key deliverable activity. This new feature will send the assigned steering team member an email notification when the activity owner submits the deliverable as complete, allowing the steering team member to review and approve or reject the deliverable. This update will ensure that the quality of key deliverables is in accordance with the requirements of the organization.
Functional Group Mapping
The standard and customized NaviTrack work processes include a set of standard functional groups. However, not all sites utilize these same groups. To enhance NaviTrack’s customization features, Functional Group Mapping will be added in order to allow users to map the functional groups represented in the tool to their own organizational structures.
Activity Library
In a further nod to increased customization, AP-Networks will add an Activity Library to NaviTrack, making it possible for organizations to store site-created custom activities that are not part of the standard work process. Once stored, these activities can be easily added to the specific turnarounds for which they are needed.
Auto-Reports for Steering Teams
For years, AP-Networks has been promoting the importance of engaged steering teams to successful turnaround execution. Among the planned NaviTrack updates is a feature that will trigger the automatic sending of reports to the members of the steering team. This update will make it easier for the team to stay informed.
Internal Sub Metric Reports
Users will be able to link to their own, internally created (sub metric) reports from NaviTrack’s standard suite of Reports. With this feature, users will be able to access both NaviTrack generated and internally created reports in one package, keeping them together and in NaviTrack in order to enhance clarity.
The features detailed above represent highlights from AP-Networks’ 2015 NaviTrack update schedule, but do not include all of the updates that will be made throughout the year. Currently, there are over 500 turnarounds being tracked within NaviTrack.
About Asset Performance Networks
Asset Performance Networks is the trusted leader for improving asset and operational performance in petroleum, chemical, and energy companies worldwide. The company’s solutions are a powerful hybrid of Software as a Service (SaaS) and consulting expertise that generates measurable results. Since AP-Networks was founded, the company has focused on bringing predictability and competitiveness to high-risk events—namely, capital projects and turnarounds. Industry leaders not only recognize the AP-Networks brand, they insist on the company’s involvement in their most critical improvement initiatives. For more information on AP-Networks, please visit http://www.ap-networks.com/index.html.