Driving towards operational and business excellence in the tower industry

Towercos and their partners are becoming increasingly sophisticated in the way that they manage sites, implementing robust processes which are driving new efficiencies, minimising mistakes and reducing downtime. TowerXchange share learnings from a cross-section of tower industry professionals on how to make site visits and O&M more effective.

When it comes to managing site operations and maintenance, the sheer volume of sites under management and their highly dispersed nature presents a unique set of challenges to towercos and their partners; it can be easy for inefficiencies to creep in if robust processes are not put in place. Such inefficiencies can be extremely costly to businesses whose margins continue to be squeezed.

Recruiting staff who come from process-driven industries brings valuable skill sets and mindsets to the towerco sector; balancing the entrepreneurial or business development aspects of negotiating tower acquisitions or securing co-locations with strong operational capabilities that enable towercos to deliver on the promises made. Implementing standardisation to control and streamline operations can become a company’s strategic differentiator.

In drawing comparisons with other sectors, the car manufacturing industry has been raised in discussions; if one were to go into any Toyota manufacturing plant anywhere in the world, you would see the same processes in place. This same mentality should be applied to managing telecom towers across different offices, regions and countries. One contributor with a background was in the power sector installing temporary power plants explained how their processes and speed to market were what differentiated them from their competitors, delivering 50MW power plants in under four weeks.

Process excellence methodologies such as lean six sigma have been widely adopted in other sectors for a number of years, but are only just starting to be applied in the tower industry.  Helios Towers’ application of lean six sigma methodology to their business has delivered, and continues to deliver, marked improvements in uptime and opex (Read TowerXchange’s interview with Kash Pandya: “How Helios Towers Africa continues to raise the bar in operational excellence”), with a critical part of this being the training of staff (and contractors) to be green belts and black belts in different levels of the organisation. Individuals need to be developed with the skills to be able to write processes and train others, embedding best practice through all layers of the organisation.

Using six sigma and data to find errors has led to dramatic improvements in uptime for the towercos who have adopted the process. One towerco explained how in one of their markets they were averaging 27 seconds of downtime per tower per week in 2015; two years later this figure is now 2 seconds.

Whilst every organisation has unmotivated individuals, and theft can present a particular challenge in the African market, individuals warned against writing processes designed around the minority that are not there to do a good job. Processes should be written for the 95% of employees who do want to work hard and achieve good results; the other 5% should be weeded out of the business. Training should also be holistic, equipping staff and partners with the skills to manage active, passive and energy operations and maintenance.

Such processes also need to be deeply embedded into the supply chain, working with maintenance partners like they are true partners rather than suppliers. Examples were shared of towercos sharing offices with their maintenance partners, whereby the teams worked so closely it was indistinguishable whether they worked for the towerco or the O&M provider.

Contributors also advocated working with fewer partners, thus allowing you to give each company a more substantial volume of work which in turn increases their focus and brings in efficiencies. One towerco explained how they gave their maintenance partners enough volume in one area so that their partners could offer exclusivity to them, avoiding having their attention diverted by other clients. Additionally, working with fewer partners cuts down on the number of relationships that need to maintained, allowing towercos to carry out more focussed and in depth support and training.

Towercos explained how they had learned lessons in the best way to structure teams within their opcos, with one towerco explaining that their head office structure was replicated at each opco. Various towercos have also worked to minimise the number of expats within opcos, putting better control on overhead costs and ensuring that local knowledge is embedded in the organisation.

Whilst processes may often originate in head office, it is of paramount importance that those designing the processes get out into the field and look at them in action. In order to truly understand how operations are running, you need to observe them first hand, understand the problem areas and work with the field teams to build upon and improve processes. Individuals at all levels of the organisation mustn’t be against getting their hands dirty and companies should adopt a “boots not suits” policy.

One towerco explained that when visiting opcos or maintenance partners in the early days, they had been surprised by the lack of visual aids on walls reporting key metrics. Boards reporting sales or downtime ensure that the most important metrics are always front of mind, serving as motivation for all concerned and keeping everyone’s eye on the task in hand.

Some contributors explained how they had started to hold daily meetings with their maintenance contractors, examining problems that had arisen the previous day and running through objectives for the coming day. As part of these meetings, one of the most critical steps is assigning responsibility for tasks to individuals; holding staff or contractors accountable for their actions to ensure that they are executed correctly and timeously.

When they undertook a review of the data in their NOC, one towerco found that they were doing on average 5-7 visits per month to a site, filling up fuel, topping up the electricity meter, carrying out corrective and preventative maintenance as well as reacting to active callouts (even though it wasn’t their job). With such a high number of callouts most of the time was being spent behind the steering wheel. The towerco set the goal of getting down to one site visit per month, doing a full power audit to understand what needed fixing and doing all tasks at the same time. After a one month trial, the towerco had managed to get the average number of site visits per tower down to 1.5 per month. With a large portfolio of sites and further improvements, the towerco in question explained that they have got the number of site visits across their entire portfolio down to 9,000 per month (versus the 21,000 site visits that were being carried out previously). The result is that not only have service levels improved but also maintenance partners are incurring less opex, not least in the fuel savings from the reduced amount of driving.

One individual spoken to raised the question of what is stopping towercos and their maintenance partners getting down to one site visit per quarter. With robust processes in place, a towerco explained that the trust was there with their maintenance partner to get down to one site visit per quarter but that the limitation was in the robustness and autonomy of equipment on site. Towercos may think of themselves as being in the telecom business but in reality they are in the power business, with the vast majority of site problems attributed to power issues. Selecting the right generator and battery, and paying careful attention to their integration especially when using multi-vendor solutions is of critical importance.

Reducing the number of suppliers that you work with and requesting value added services and improved warranties can help address some of the technological limitations. Meanwhile, one towerco advocated simplification of the purchasing process itself, having reduced the number of steps in their procurement processes from 39 down to 12.

Fuel theft is a commonly spoken about issue; with diesel generators using the same fuel as vehicles it is a major target for criminals. Whilst contributors explained that it can be difficult to get good data on the level of theft, they shared the view that fuel management is a management issue, not a technical issue; the workflow must have a fixed rule to manage fuel.

In the tower industry your field teams are some of your most important assets and they must compliment the technologies in place as well as each other. With such large and distributed portfolios, processes are essential to both manage and support the field teams in carrying out their jobs effectively. As the tower industry continues to mature it must look towards other, more process driven sectors, adapting their way of thinking and working to ensure continuous improvement in their operational capabilities.