Punjab Agriculture Department, Government of Punjab has the mandate to provide services for land and water resources development in the province. For land resource development, bulldozers are provided to the farming community for development of cultivable waste land and improvement of existing cultivated fields on custom hiring basis. Similarly, power drilling rigs, hand boring plants and allied machinery are provided for ground water exploitation and exploration.
To provide the above services to the farmers, the department has a fleet of 342 operational bulldozers, 182 hand boring plants, 20 power drilling rigs, 10 electrical resistivity meters, 38 power winches and 10 air compressors. The machinery is allocated keeping in view the demand of the respective districts and is available in all the districts of Punjab. To keep this machinery in working condition and conduct proper repair & maintenance services, a network of 24 workshops has been established at divisional/district headquarters in the province. The main stores of spare parts are also maintained at divisional workshops and are headed by Assistant Agricultural Engineers (Stores).
IT Initiative
Punjab Information Technology Board has implemented centralized Maintenance Management System focusing on inventory of spare parts for bulldozers and keeping track of preventive/breakdown maintenance. Coordinated effort to keep an eye on maintenance activities of high value assets such as bulldozers enables Punjab Agriculture Department to improve on service delivery of designated fleet. The system aids department to make informed decisions when procuring new spare parts for its equipment, resulting in reduced down time and avoidance of duplicate procurement.
Project Highlights
MIS for maintenance of Agri-Machinery possess following features:
- Tracks inventory (Availability of parts including their location, price, date of manufacture, name of manufacturer and any other relevant information) across multiple locations in real-time.
- Handles time-based and condition-based preventive maintenance activities.
- Creates automated alerts such as reorder quantity levels etc.
- Tracks life cycle of the spare parts from the time they enter the inventory, of any store or workshop, until they are fitted into a vehicle/equipment.
- Maintains detailed history of each vehicle/equipment (preventive or breakdown related).
- Generates automated alerts about preventive maintenance schedule of equipment.
- Creates comprehensive reports to assist in efficient management and decision-making.
- Generates detailed maintenance history of equipment
- Generates detailed reports about preventive maintenance of equipment
- Generates reports about any security breaches/ hacking attempts
A Coordinated Approach to Manage Preventive & Breakdown Maintenance:
Current Standing
The system is operational since October 2011 and since then, more than 8,000 spare parts have been listed in the system. Data from field is reported on daily basis which becomes available to all stake holders via online interface.