Equipment Management System (EqMS)

Mohd Fadhlul Wafi Mahadi, Ruhaila Maskat Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences

Universiti Teknologi MARA

Malaysia

fadhlulwafi@ymail.com, ruhaila@tmsk.uitm.edu.my Emma Nuraihan Mior Ibrahim, Wan Nor Amalina

Wan Hariri

Faculty of Computer and Mathematical Sciences

Universiti Teknologi MARA

Malaysia

emma@tmsk.uitm.edu.my, amalina@tmsk.uitm.edu.my

Abstract—Equipment Management System (EqMS) is a system that focuses on managing equipments as per demanded by events taking place on a local wetland eco-tourism park. The park covers approximately 3100 hectare of land. This 3100 hectare land is divided into 3 main regions; recreation, education and research. Equipments at the park range from tents, water pumps, yachts, lawn machines and many more. Management at the park face difficulty in monitoring the movement of the equipments which are used at different parts of the regions and at different time. Manual monitoring of the equipments’ movements involves recording on paper files. This method hampers the making of decisions about possible future equipment usage when new events are to take place. Due to the vastness of the park, problem of locating the equipment upon end of event poses yet another challenge to the park management. Both of the problems could be easily overcame if the park personnel remembers the event that took place, the equipment that was used and the location that was chosen. The goal of this study is to develop an information system based on the principles of information visualization. Spatial data is used to store location-wise data. Future work of EqMS involves real-time linking with Google Map.

Keywords- Information Visualization; Geographical Information; Equipment Management System.

I.I NTRODUCTION

The widespread and fundamental impact of visualization has led to new insights and more efficient decision making in an effort to understand the large volume of data and information presentation. In addition, it has long been known that users respond differently to visualization systems than to text-based IR systems [1]. Furthermore, researchers have investigated whether and how visualization features can improve the effectiveness and user perception of information systems and have tested the usability and the user interaction behavior of several information visualization [6, 7, 8].

II.R ESEARCH M OTIVATION

First, The eco-tourism park studied covers approximately 3100 hectare of land. This 3100 hectare land is divided into 3 main regions, which are recreation, education and research. The recreation area is open for public from Monday to Sunday but education and research area are open for specific purpose such as school camps or university’s students who want to do research about plants, animals or birds.

The park requires the use of a variety of types of equipment such as tents, yachts, generator, water pump, lawn machines and many more that will be used in the different regions at different time for different events. For example, generators are commonly used in research region for one event for 3 days and other events will not have the opportunity to use these generators for those 3 days. All these equipments are placed in a designated store if not in use. Each equipment has its own serial number for identification. This serial number and other information for equipment are recorded in manual filing and Microsoft Excel file for keeping track.

Management of equipment usage is an essential activity to ensure optimal arrangement of equipments in many regions for the specific time to prevent the same equipment from being used in two or more events at the same time or in other words, avoiding overlapping use of the equipment. The current management of equipment usage used by the park is manual scheduling, that is, all the information about the use of equipments will be recorded on manual filing. Manual filing is the paper-based form, where all information are recorded manually on paper and not using any computer application such as Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel. Management must refer to the manual filing in order to monitor the movement of equipments at the park.

Management and staffs at Paya Indah Wetlands faced difficulties in monitoring the movement of the equipments which are shared by the different regions at different time. Currently, they do not have any computerized system to make the reservation on the equipments. They only use manual filling for the reservation. They just need to tick and leave signature at the form in front of the store door if they pick the equipment from that store. This form will be stored in manual filling. It is difficult for them to know if they can have the required equipments at the specific time or how many required equipments are available at that time. Since there is no store keeper allocated at their stores, the users need to go to the stores to check whether the equipments are available or not.

2010 International Conference on User Science Engineering (i-USEr)This is very tiring and time consuming. The problem such as misunderstanding between the equipment’s users will arise if the usage of the equipment overlapped. That means same equipment is needed at two or more events in the same time.

The information regarding to the equipments such as equipment’s name, equipment’s serial number, purchased date, purchased price, vendor’s name, vendor’s address and etc. are recorded in the Microsoft Excel file and manual filing. This is difficult to them and time consuming when to update, delete, and retrieve the information. Besides that, this Microsoft Excel file and manual filing will have possibility to have data redundancy such as same serial number shared by different equipment. Hence, a computer-based information system is needed to better manage the scattered information and further allows park authorities to have better monitoring of the movements of their physical equipment.

III.R ESEARCH S COPE

The scope of this research will be focusing on the reservation of the equipments for events to prevent the usage of the equipments from overlapping. Besides that, this system provide graphical user interface for the user to monitor the current movement of the equipments to check where the equipments being used and whether the usage of the equipments overlap or not at that time. The system will also provide the users the quantity of equipment that has not been used at that time or the number of available equipments. The system is capable to notify the place of the equipments group by their events on the map based on the event’s information given by the users such as place, start date, end date, start time and end time. Another feature of the system is it will store the information regarding the equipments such as serial number, equipment’s name and etc. The users can update and delete this information if necessary.

IV.I NFORMATION V ISUALIZATION

Information visualization combines aspects of scientific visualization, human–computer interfaces, data mining, imaging, and graphics [6, 7, 8]. To visualize a set of data is to produce an image from it, with the goal of elucidating the character of the data and deriving insight. In many domains, data in scientific visualization (which subsumes volume and flow visualization) also usually contains objects or structures that have a certain minimal size and that have certain features to look for. However, the challenge in visualization is to find a visual metaphor that the user can understand and perceive effectively, and that conveys the information the user is looking for – and to provide interaction methods that make it possible for the user to work with and probe the data as effectively and effortlessly as possible [8]. Hence, this research is intended to leverage on the use of graphical representation of information through information visualization in order to understand the information presented and the tasks it support. A.User Centered Interaction Design in Information

Visualization

Interaction in information visualization has many facets, but it generally serves one goal: the user is able to understand the information better and he or she can interact with it [7]. Tailoring visualization systems that will be seriously based on human capabilities of perception and information processing is a total challenge. We need to better understand how human beings interact with information, how they perceive it visually and non-visually, how the mind works when searching for both known and unknown information, and how it solves problems.

A good human-computer interaction is a must, but it is not enough. We also need to better use the information we have about how humans understand and interact with information and the perceptual system in designing visualization systems [8]. With this understanding in mind, the approach undertaken for this research is to create a flexible user interfaces, navigation tools and search methods that will be appropriate for the existing types of users, application and tasks for the development of web based GIS applications for Paya Indah Wetlands. We contend, through visualization method and the generation of images and visual presentation can become a powerful tool in representing information clearly, to perceive information easily through memories and experiences of the personnel involved especially in their daily operations.

V.V ISUALIZING S PATIAL T EMPORAL I NFORMATION

With the rapid development of geographic information system has increased the needs to capture, share and store the geospatial data [2] or known as geo-visualization [9]. Time-varying geospatial data presents some specific challenges for visualization. Although always utilized as tools for navigation, the use of maps in later years has expanded to a variety of other uses, for example, as an aid in the understanding of a complex chain of events not primarily of a geographical nature.

Nevertheless, the field of geo-visualization is not new tracking back an often-cited early example of the literature is when the English physician John Snow in 1850 as cited in [10] used a map to better understand the nature of a cholera epidemic in London. What he did was to mark on a map the homes of infected people. In viewing these marks, he realized that water pumps could be central to the spreading of the disease. Another famous use of map-based visualizations is, of course, Minard’s map of Napoleon’s Russian campaign in 1815 as cited in [11]. In this visualization, several different data dimensions are simultaneously shown such as time, number of troops, and temperature.

With the development of computer based applications, it has radically changed and as such, it needs to be represented in the map. The combined effect of spatial and temporal dimensions is especially important in command and control situations, for instance military decision making, fire fighting and air traffic control. However, the tasks for a decision maker in these kinds of command and control situations vary in situations.VI.GIS AND W EB

Rapid development of geographic information system has increased the needs to capture, share and store geospatial data [2][12]. Most project-oriented GIS applications treat GIS data as island of information and not shared by among the users. The data are independently captured, analyzed to serve individual project needs. It is not shared among the users because the applications are not large and not used by many users. Since the data are not shared among the users, resulting in the redundancy and inefficiency of data collection and store [2]. The research undertaken during the last decade in the areas of GIS and World Wide Web has lead to the development of web based GIS applications [3][12].

The use of the Internet has made the GIS activities simpler for users to acquire spatial data from data providers [12][14]. By using the World Wide Web (WWW) browser, the activities such as search, view and retrieve data becomes transparent to the users. “The Internet greatly improves the accessibility of GIS data” [2][12][13]. Additionally, the Internet caused a reshaping of functions commonly found in information systems such as gathering, storing, retrieving, analyzing and visualizing data [13]. Many GIS providers, including government agencies and private agencies are realizing the usefulness of Web to share and transferring the data through the Internet. Users can access the application from any locations. Web GIS has thus morphed from various Web maps and client-server architecture to a distributed architecture [13].

VII.E XISTING E QUIPMENT M ANAGEMENT S YSTEM (EMS) Equipment management systems or EMS are commonly identified by features such as record keeping, scheduling, basic reporting as well as management of assets and resources [15]. Ranging from not only manufacturing domain, EMS could also be found in Biomedical engineering and unmanned substations [15][16][17][18][4]. According to [4], EMS is usually developed based on 3 main parts that are drawing tool, monitoring and tracking system, and reporting system. The first part that is drawing tool is used to draw the physical layout of the systems such as the buildings, maps and equipments. The second part that is monitoring and tracking system is primarily designed to monitor states, restrictions and maintenance task schedules. The last part that is reporting system is used to produce current and previous reports of the equipments within the selected time interval.

A.Drawing tool

The specialty of EMS is it’s represented in the graphical form. The drawing tools are used to draw physical layout of the system such as building floors, park maps, equipments and etc. For example, in semiconductor industry, fab, backgrind, probe, assembly and packaging are the main production areas. Each production area has its own physical layout drawings [4].

The equipments can be represented by many shapes such as rectangle, circle or can use icons that is similar with the actually equipments. If using rectangle or circle to represent equipments, it should have an equipment name assigned for the shapes [4]. B.Monitoring and tracking system

EMS is very well accepted by user because of its user-friendly graphical user interface on the computer screen. The Figure 1 below show the example of user interface for factory’s EMS.

Figure 1. EMS factory manufacturing area

An equipment should has the entities such as equipment ID or serial number, equipment name, equipment type, equipment status such as idle or down, restriction if it is restricted of specific process or area, and task such as scheduled or active maintenance tasks.

EMS also will provide a logical layout together with the physical layout. The equipment can be grouped in a hierarchy of production area, location and equipment type listing [4]. Figure 3 displays an example of logical layout. The function of logical layout is to look at the equipment within their type or location. EMS views three dimensions for equipment:

a). Equipment Status

The first dimension that is equipment status has three major states that are ready to use, under schedule maintenance or under unscheduled maintenance. In every implementation, it is necessary to defined own equipment status [4].

Color can be used to represent status. The color of equipment icon shows its current status. If the equipment changes status, the icon color will change to shows the new status of the equipment. The use of different color for the equipment status will make user easy to track and monitor the equipment status [4].

Clicking on the equipment icon will pop-up the equipment information window as shown in Figure 2. The user can change the current status of the equipment from this window by selecting list of valid status that the equipment can go to. After the user selects the new status, the equipment will be updated with the color of the new status. This keeps EMS continuously updated [4].

The blinking behavior can be assigned to the equipment icon for certain states. This blinking behavior can catch the attention of the users.Figure 2. EMS equipment menu

b) Equipment restrictions

A color cannot be used to shows restrictions because the color is used to define equipment status. A pattern is suitable to shows the restricted equipment. The pattern is for restrictions and the color of pattern is for the current status [4]. The user can change status such as Turn On or Turn Off a restriction. This restriction is designed to prevent misused of the equipments [4].

c) Equipment maintenance schedule

A third dimension that can be tracked by EMS is the Maintenance Schedules. The white dot on the interface shows that the equipment has due task(s). Once the maintenance person sees the dot, he or she should start working on the task. This puts the equipment into the "Scheduled Maintenance Start" state. After the task is completed, the equipment status is changed to the "Maintenance Complete" State. A new task is scheduled using the task interval. The dot on the equipment is cleared if the equipment does not have any more tasks due at that time [4].

VIII.I NTERNET-BASED E QUIPMENT M ANAGEMENT S YSTEM

Internet has a big potential to improve the capabilities of the Internet-based Equipment Management System. This can be improving by using the GPS for acquiring location information and GIS for the management of data and data processing [5][14].

A.Component of Equipment Management System

There are two steps to develop the component of Equipment Management System. First, the information or attributes datasets such as equipment id, status and etc. should be created. Then, the second is the data acquisition. In this data acquisition step, program will develop using programming language which is independent to different platform.

There are two parts in the interface that are for entering attributes or information of equipments and to get current positioning information on equipments. First part which is for entering attributes, is about entering the equipment attributes such as equipment id, status and so on. Then, the second part is to get current positioning information from the navigation device equipped on the equipments [5]. The component is as

in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Equipment Management System component Figure 3 show the Equipment Management System component for entering the attributes and get the positioning information based on the attributes entered. The form is well-designed for the ease of use when entering attributes. The main page of the system has functions to control database data such as updating, inserting, retrieving and refreshing [5]. The user of the system can retrieve current and past record as long as raw data is stored in related database structure. Equipment

can be displayed in different colors based on their status.

Figure 4. Data management concept

Figure 4 shows the data management concept used in Internet-based Equipment Management System. The information about equipment will be displayed as at the right side of the figure when the user clicks on equipment’s icon.

IX.E QUIPMENT M ANAGEMENT S YSTEM (E Q MS) This section exhibits the completed EqMS screenshots.

Figure 5. Page showing events’ status and location.

Figure 6. View of the location where a piece of equipment is used at a

selected event.

Figure 7. Screen of equipment selection for a specific event.

Figure 8. Further information about an equipment to be selected for a

specific event.

Figure 9. List of equipment that has been selected for a specific event.

A CKNOWLEDGMENT

The authors wish to thank Dr Wan Adilah Wan Adnan, for

her constant support and constructive criticisms throughout the research.

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