As in different areas of a mission that includes the deployment of high-fiber-count cables, the duties of course of management, job allocation to techs/contractors, and progress monitoring can turn into unwieldy, cumbersome, and unmanageable when it comes to the effort and time required. Similar to the testing and certifying of the person fibers and managing the quantity of check outcomes, legacy strategies for mission administration don’t scale nicely for high-fiber-count initiatives.
Historically, you’d define the processes to be adopted, the check setup, the go/fail standards, outcomes format, progress reviews, the way you need data to be submitted again to a mission supervisor, and reporting intervals in a Strategies of Process (MOP) or some comparable doc. Then create a grasp spreadsheet with all of the fibers listed, full with ID quantity, date due, date examined, standing, date handed, and different mandatory data. Extracts from this may be taken and despatched to your tech managers/contractors to point the work they’re allotted, in all probability despatched through e mail, Dropbox, or another safe file switch and returned at common intervals so a mission supervisor can copy/paste the person updates into the grasp spreadsheet and thus monitor mission progress and generate reviews as required.
It’s a really guide course of and one that may devour an unreasonable period of time. It’s additionally a course of that may endure from delays or inaccuracies attributable to techs/contractors not updating spreadsheets in a well timed method, submission delays or human errors with guide knowledge entry, copy/paste and so forth.
This can be controllable or acceptable sufficient when you find yourself coping with 60, 80, and even 100 fibers although easy brute power of spending the time to handle the whole lot. However these points can and can worsen consistent with the scale of a mission and the variety of fibers concerned as this additionally drives the usage of extra contractor firms and sub-contractors. When you begin stepping into initiatives with hundreds of fibers, that method doesn’t work. Scaling up the time taken on these duties, chasing for updates, the chance of human errors, correcting points, and so forth turns into time/effort prohibitive (ineffective/inefficient). This will result in lack of mission visibility and points being missed because the reporting isn’t maintaining with deployment/testing progress leading to rework (website revisit, time, cash) and probably delays in signing off fibers or perhaps a entire mission.
Then there may be the difficulty of guaranteeing check/course of consistency to ensure hyperlinks are constructed to or adjust to specs. Or do you simply let people get on with it and hope they learn your MOP and truly observe it?
With out some sort of management over the check/job course of there will likely be challenges to ship the sort of high-quality asset that may require minimal upkeep, which can assist excessive velocity/worth providers, and ship a return on funding (if there are traders concerned, they’ll need proof that their cash shouldn’t be being wasted).
So, the query must be, in relation to excessive fiber rely deployments, how greatest to method mission administration in a greater and extra environment friendly means?
A centralized method remains to be key to decreasing the general effort and time of mission administration, however it’s important to undertake or make the most of higher mechanisms for outlining check standards and course of, allocating jobs, deployment to techs/contractors, retrieving outcomes, and mission monitoring/reporting.
To take care of check consistency, you could be capable of outline the check setup and go/fail limits you require as a template which might then be handed to all tech/contractors or moderately downloaded to their devices. The system/instrument/course of you employ must also permit you to scale and apply these templates to any variety of fibers with out extra effort or must create check duties for every particular person fiber or tech.
Pre-defined templates assist stop variations/deviations from the prescribed check setup, which may end in poorer high quality fiber hyperlinks passing when they need to be failed. A template deployed to devices method additionally scales very simply and effectively for a bigger variety of techs/contractors related to high-fiber-count deployments.
Centralized Job Template
Then to make sure construct high quality, the record of actions and exams for every fiber/job must be extracted out of your MOP and introduced as a guidelines of duties built-in throughout the check instrument and tied to any check outcomes. This can be sure that no steps, checks, or exams are missed (unintentionally or in any other case) and implement that your MOP is adopted.
The creation of check templates and allocation of jobs (or fibers to be examined) as a mission needs to be by means of a centralized system, and nowadays to be able to present easy accessibility from anyplace that is often a cloud-based resolution. To keep away from any of the problems talked about, deployment must be direct to the instrument and as most fashionable testers are cloud/web enabled that may be simple sufficient. Simply join an instrument to an area community through ethernet or WiFi and carry out a sync to your centralized system. For conditions and areas the place there aren’t any native networks, tethering an instrument to a smartphone and utilizing a cellular tech software can obtain the identical factor.
Cellular Tech App
Presenting the allotted testing assignments through a job supervisor on the instrument would take away the necessity to enter job data manually, decrease any threat of human error with any knowledge entry (fiber IDs and job numbers for instance), and eradicate the necessity for progress monitoring through a separate spreadsheet.
Instrument Job Supervisor
Common syncing of an instrument would retrieve the job checklists, check outcomes, and go/fail standing in order that data could be instantly included right into a dashboard to indicate real-time mission progress. Dashboards present the mission visibility required, not solely to indicate total progress however in addition they enable identification of potential bottlenecks like somebody not on time or highlighting points like a constantly failing check. With the ability to shortly look and see how shut are you to a due date for check or a section of sign-off/handover means you may take corrective motion earlier than issues turn into overdue or become future issues. Dashboards may give clearer perception into points akin to lacking outcomes or incomplete job duties (though utilizing a job supervisor on an instrument or cellular tech app ought to assist stop most of that within the first place). Plus, they may also help determine if there may be any teaching required by figuring out techs/contractors who’re constantly submitting failed exams. Since you might have the info that feeds the dashboard, you may carry out additional evaluation of any potential crimson flags to find out a root trigger, issues akin to contaminated end-faces, macro bends, and unhealthy splices from both poor development methods or poor workmanship/fiber dealing with at any level within the course of. Having this data not solely helps you to take rapid motion, but in addition gives perception into the place technicians might have additional coaching/training.
Fiber Development Dashboard – Deep Dive Evaluation
This central cloud system delivering to synchronized devices method does away with the necessity to e mail spreadsheets forwards and backwards, together with the guide work to consolidate data and generate reviews. Plus it will all be obtainable instantly for everybody on the staff, at any time when required, and accessible from anyplace. Reporting additionally turns into simpler when it’s all within the cloud: an individual in one other a part of the nation or world can simply log in and extract no matter data is required.
With the whole lot built-in collectively in a single place, time is saved, errors are prevented, and groups are aligned. Implementing an answer to handle each contractors and immediately employed techs with all the attributes talked about above will save vital effort and time in relation to mission administration and reporting. However, critically, attributable to these capabilities, it’ll give clear mission progress visibility and could be scaled effectively for bigger variety of techs/contractors related to high-volume fiber deployments for metro and entry construct/improve and darkish fiber builds.
Leveraging this sort of method equips staff members with the data and assets they should full jobs with real-time visibility from begin to end that in the end ends in fewer issues, better ROI, and happier clients.
At VIAVI we check with all of this as Take a look at Course of Automation (TPA). To study extra about our TPA resolution go to our TPA internet web page.
Dou
glas Clague is presently options advertising supervisor for fiber optic discipline options at VIAVI. Doug has over 20 years of expertise in check and measurement with a major give attention to fiber optics and cable applied sciences, supporting the telecommunications business. Previous to VIAVI, Doug held positions as manufacturing engineer, options engineer and enterprise improvement supervisor. Doug has participated on quite a few business panels round fiber and cable know-how developments. He attended Brunel College in London and graduated with an honors diploma in electrical and digital engineering.
