Maintenance as easy as 1-2-3

Choose Vaisala Network Maintenance software for peace of mind

The Vaisala Network Maintenance software is designed for maintenance personnel. It supports activities related to the maintenance of weather observation networks. These include the planning, organizing, and performing of maintenance tasks.

The Vaisala Network Maintenance software supports these tasks by allowing the maintenance personnel to define when and what maintenance tasks should be performed at each individual site to each individual device.

Vast experience in meteorological data acquisition
Based on vast experience in meteorological data acquisition, Vaisala designed a commercial off-the-shelf software tool for managing the maintenance of weather observation networks.
Vaisala Network Maintenance software helps in planning field trips, making work lists, keeping track of devices, and making reports of completed maintenance tasks. The software ensures reliable and continuous operation of the network over its entire lifecycle.

The software can include one or several weather observation networks consisting of automatic or manual observation sites. The sites can have various user-definable properties and devices, thus making the software tool suitable for many kinds of application areas for both small- and large-scale weather observation networks.

Preventive and corrective maintenance
Maintenance is divided into two categories - preventive and corrective maintenance:
- Preventive maintenance is performed at regular, scheduled intervals and it aims to keep the observation sites up and running, providing good and reliable measurements.
- Corrective maintenance is performed only when necessary, usually when there is an unexpected problem at a site.

Vaisala Network Maintenance software gives users the possibility to keep track of upcoming maintenance needs, performed preventive or corrective maintenance activities, or instrument locations in the network. Each performed maintenance action is recorded to the system. In addition to containing all the relevant data needed to successfully maintain the network, the software also acts as a database for site-related and network-related metadata, including textual content and images, configuration files, and technical documents.

It tracks performed maintenance
The performed maintenance activities can be easily tracked; they can be viewed per site or per device. The maintenance activities can even be searched by the serial number of a device. All the maintenance related information is recorded for each maintenance procedure - including all the calibration parameters. In addition, the installation location of each device is recorded. This instantly reveals how devices have circulated in a network.

It plans ahead
All maintenance staff are able to see all the upcoming maintenance requirements that need to be fulfilled. In case more detailed service instructions are required than those provided in the maintenance need description, these can be checked from the manuals stored within the software tool. The planning and organizing of upcoming work is supported as each performed maintenance task is recorded to the system.

All in one package
The Vaisala Network Maintenance software can be effortlessly installed on the customer’s own server. The database application is easily accessible over the intranet or Internet with a common web browser, for example, Microsoft® Internet Explorer®. The Vaisala Network Maintenance software supports several concurrent users, enabling the maintenance of even countrywide national weather networks. Secured https protocol is used to protect the data, and the users are identified with unique passwords. A variety of access rights can be determined to support the different roles of maintenance personnel. A user with minimum rights can use Network Maintenance only for viewing. Maintenance engineers and supervisors on the other hand can change the system status and add maintenance needs.

Although the software includes a large number of product and service documentation of Vaisala weather observation equipment, users are also able to include new images, texts, configuration files, product descriptions, and a variety of different maintenance related documentation in the system. Customers are able to customize the tool according to local requirements to maintain their network in the most efficient manner. Moreover, translation of the user interface to a local language is fully supported. The user interface of the Vaisala Network Maintenance software is very easy to use and provides several possibilities to monitor weather observation networks.

Authors: Sami Lehikoinen and Olli Ojanperä, Vaisala, Helsinki, Finland