Mona Lisa Smile: IBM Helps The Louvre Become Europe’s First “Smarter” Museum

At Pulse 2012 here in Las Vegas, IBM announced today that it is working with the Louvre Museum in Paris to preserve and protect its facilities and artwork, which covers more than 650,000 square feet, making it one of the largest museums in the world.

Through its intelligent management system, the Louvre Museum can protect and maintain artwork while keeping galleries open to the millions of customers who visit yearly.

Established in the 18th century, the Louvre is home to thousands of objects and artifacts ranging from prehistory to 1848, including the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa. To preserve and protect its facilities and world-famous artwork, the museum staff handles more than 65,000 repairs and maintenance visits per year. Through the use of IBM Maximo Asset Management software the museum’s staff has been able to streamline their maintenance processes to improve customer service as well as the efficiency and real-time operation and management of the museum.

As Europe’s most visited museum, with a record breaking 8.8 million visitors in 2011, one of the Louvre’s goals is to keep the majority of its galleries open daily. To meet that goal while managing over 65,000 repairs and maintenance visits, the museum needed to make its corrective and preventative maintenance more streamlined and efficient.

Prior to working with IBM, the staff managed its facility-related repairs and maintenance work by paper, involving hundreds of vendors. In order to keep the majority of its galleries open daily, the museum recognized that it needed a computerized maintenance management tool to make its corrective and preventative maintenance more streamlined and efficient.

The museum engaged IBM Business Partner SQLI to upgrade IBM Maximo software in order to create a single information database and shared repository for the museum staff. The software solution’s integrated database helps the museum visualize processes including the initial planning, cleaning, maintenance and disposal of the rooms and facilities systems such as the air-conditioning system, heating system, elevators, lights for each room or gallery, and the locking system for more than 2,500 doors,

“Managing thousands of repairs, cleaning and maintenance visits per year to preserve the facilities and artwork while keeping the galleries available and accessible to visitors is a daunting undertaking,” said Metin Pelit, department manager of computerized maintenance management system, The Louvre Museum. “Thanks to IBM software, we’re able to visualize our entire infrastructure and make better, more informed decisions about when and how to respond to problems — and about when to proactively address a potential problem that we otherwise wouldn’t have seen coming.”

Better Managing The Louvre, Making The Mona Lisa Smile

The Louvre’s management system can now aggregate data from individual systems within the museum, providing the museum staff and its vendors coherent and real-time information on each asset. Additionally, the software provides a predictive view into the performance and reliability of the facility equipment and systems, allowing museum staff to better determine which assets need to be repaired or replaced.

“Buildings are massive systems of systems, and these systems need to talk to each other for a building to become smarter,”added Pelit. “In the Louvre’s case, there’s the added challenge of being home to thousands of irreplaceable pieces of art which must be carefully preserved while trying to accommodate millions of visitors annually. By using Maximo software to monitor the condition of assets across the museum’s facilities in one single database, these systems begin to talk to one another, allowing staff to preserve artwork and facilities with more ease and efficiency. As a result the Louvre is now able to keep the majority of their galleries open to customers on a daily basis while simultaneously reducing costs and energy consumption.”

The IBM software enables the museum to gain better insight on what assets they have: how many assets they own, their location and the maintenance history log. The software helps the Louvre Museum staff to manage both planned and unplanned maintenance activities, from initial work request and work order generation through completion and recording of the actual work performed.

The software matched job tasks to available contractors, estimated and obtained approval of costs, established priorities and initiated maintenance activities throughout the museum and its individual galleries.  It enables the museum to better follow-up on the maintenance staff – especially contractors, who also work with Maximo. Based on this knowledge, the museum can tailor its tender offer, and consequently contractors can better align their offer to the customer needs.

About IBM Smarter Buildings 

IBM delivers technology that manages buildings from museums to office buildings, warehouses, factories, power plants, laboratories, campuses, apartments, resorts and more, to save costs, better manage systems, and reduce carbon emissions. IBM software, hardware and services help create, manage and maintain the world’s most intelligent and interconnected infrastructures from smarter buildings, cities, utilities, offices, transportation systems and operations in every industry.

Since launching its Smarter Buildings initiative in February 2010, IBM has created a portfolio of smarter buildings solutions that integrate with building automation software from across the industry. IBM’s real-time monitoring and analysis, facilities and space management capabilities, and advanced dynamic dashboards helps property owners and managers reduce facilities operations and energy expense, and improve asset management and reliability.

You can learn more about IBM Smarter Buildings here.