NextAxiom, the creator of technology enabling digitalization of all work performed within an organization, announced the launch of its Dynamic Workflows product line which is the latest addition to its Digital Work Execution Platform (DWEP). The DWEP is a key digital technology for business transformation that supports improved operational performance and decreased costs, making nuclear power safer, more sustainable, and ultimately expanding the industry’s ability to increase carbon-free energy contributions.
Through its DWEP, NextAxiom is the first company to make Digitalized Work a reality. The DWEP product suite, which now includes Dynamic Workflows in addition to Dynamic Forms and Instructions product-lines, allows nuclear operators to decrease cost and improve operations in the following areas:
– Compliance: DWEP slashes the cost of compliance verification and reporting through the automatic digital capture of performance data at the most granular levels of regulated work performance.
– Operations & Maintenance: while providing step-level, computer-guidance to employees during the performance of now digitalized business processes and tasks, DWEP significantly improves the efficiency of work by streamlining work activities and enforces compliance to increase safety.
– Refueling Outages: work execution integrated at a step-level into enterprise applications such as work scheduling and asset management during refueling outages streamlines work and enables nuclear operators to reduce refueling outage time which can cost upwards of a million of dollars per day in lost revenue during an outage
DWEP replaces manual processes, instructions and procedures used during work – historically contained in PDFs and recorded on static forms – with computer-guided and dynamic means of work execution automatically capturing performance data. DWEP enables employees to make better decisions by arming them with relevant information at the most granular levels of work execution. Additionally, the deep insight gained from the analysis of the performance data generated during computer-guidance of work can be used in process improvement and re-engineering efforts to further increase the efficiency of operations and reduce costs wherever work is performed.
“Harnessing nuclear power currently requires hundreds of employees per plant to execute complex, highly regulated processes and procedures guided by documents often hundreds of pages long. As a result, the costs associated with achieving regulatory compliance can account for about 50% of non-fuel plant expenses and significantly contribute to why nuclear is one of the most expensive types of energy to produce,” said Ash Massoudi, CEO and co-founder of NextAxiom.
Nuclear power currently provides more than half of the United States’ 100% clean electricity, and the Biden-Harris Administration has identified it as a vital resource to achieve net-zero emissions economy-wide by 2050. Yet over the past decade, a dozen commercial reactors – more than 10% of the country’s nuclear infrastructure – were shut down due to shifting energy markets and other economic factors.