Thanks to IBM, the Louvre received a major upgrade that will help the museum protect and preserve the countless pieces of art currently in its care. The Louvre, which is the Parisian home to some of the most famous art our world has ever produced, covers more than 650,000 square feet, making it one of the largest museums in the world.

Understandably, turning the Louvre into a Europe’s first “smarter museum” was a hefty overhaul for IBM to undertake. 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 more than 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.

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, real-time operation and management of the museum.

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.”

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.”