02 Asset Management Decision Making

Continuous processing or manufacturing facilities will occasionally require planned outages to primarily address reliability or maintenance issues. Due to the high cost of these outages (opportunity and real), careful planning and scheduling practices are used to come up with detailed execution plans to reduce the planned duration as much as possible. While outage duration is typically determined using the critical path methodology, large quantities of smaller but similar in nature jobs can lead to unexpected schedule extension. A planning team recently applied this lesson-learned by calculating the schedule impact of such critical mass work. During inspections and maintenance outages, labor cost is usually a significant expense. In order to meet the required cost and duration goals, worker efficiency is critical. As part of the job plans and schedule creation, a planning team was able to model one crucial feature of labor efficiency – worker density, that is the maximum number of workers that can be allocated to a specific work area over a given time span with minimum productivity losses. As a result, small changes were made to the scheduling of individual tasks. This case study will illustrate how both constraints were considered when planning & scheduling a major maintenance outage.

MainTrain 2021 Panel DiscussionModerator: Susan LubellAuthor of "Root Cause Analysis Made Simple", Susan specializes in asset management and reliability strategy, cost effective lean maintenance programs and operational excellence. She brings over 25 years of practical experience to drive asset management, maintenance and operational business improvement opportunities. Susan currently serves as National President for PEMAC Asset Management Association of Canada, Chair of the World Partners in Asset Management (WPiAM), and teaches for both the Maintenance Management Professional (MMP) and Certified Asset Management Professional (CAMP) programs. Panelists:John Hardwick, Executive Director, Sydney, Roads and Martime Services NSWRepresenting: AMC - Asset Management Council, AustraliaWith extensive Executive Management and Board experience and a background over the past 30 years in asset management within the electricity and transport industries. A passionate leader of organisational improvement in asset and operational risk management, and has implemented world class asset management strategies implementing effective asset management strategies and systems to manage risk and provide value for customers and communities.John is co-author of Living Asset Management.John has a desire to make a difference and explore new ways of solving wicked problems. John is the past Chair of multiple not for profit organisations the World Partners in Asset Management, Global Forum on Maintenance and Asset Management and the Asset Management Council.João Lafraia, President, Fábrica Carioca de Catalisadores S.A.Representing:  ABRAMAN - Associação Brasileira de Manutenção e Gestão de Ativos, BrazilOÃO RICARDO B. LAFRAIA is MSc by the Cranfi eld Institute of Techonology, in England. MBA by the Pontificia Catholic University/State of Paraná. He taught in the graduation and post graduation about Quality Assurance, Reliability and Organization in the Federal University of Paraná and FGV Rio. He is author and co-author of the books of Reliability Handbook, Mantenability and Availability and Strategic Management and Reliability, Creating the Habit of the Excellence. Author of several articles and lectures about Excellence in Management of Reliability and Health, Environment and Security.Lafraia has acted as General-Manager in 5 Refineries around Brazil. He also headed the Operational Excellence Department for all refineries at Petrobras Headquarters in Rio de Janeiro. Executive Director for the FCCSA Chemical Company. He served as board member for 4 chemical companies. At present moment, he has the position of General-Manager in the Exploration and Production Santos Basin Business Unit and Chairman of the Deliberative Council of ABRAMAN.Johannes Coetzee, Managing Director, Machine Assessment & Reliability Technology (Martech)Representing:  SAAMA - The Southern African Asset Management Association, South AfricaJohannes Coetzee is the MD of Martec and Chairman of the Global Forum on Maintenance and Asset Management (GFMAM), the umbrella body for professional associations in the field of maintenance and assets management across the world. He is the past-president of the Southern African Asset Management Association (SAAMA) and also serves on the Advisory Board of the Industrial Engineering Department at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Johannes is an Industrial Engineer, holds an MBA and has been in the field of asset management for more than two decades. Naoki Takesue, Mitsubishi Research Institute Inc.Representing:  JAAM - Japan Association of Asset Management, JapanMr. Naoki Takesue is a Professional Engineer and has more than 30 years experience in the field of construction management and asset management for public and private sectors.  In MRI, he is engaged in research and consulting works for developing government policies of infrastructure management.  Also, as a director of JAAM, he is  actively involved in the introduction of ISO55000s into Japan.  

Ian Flood, Asset Manager at Northwest Territories Power Corporation, is a recent graduate from PEMAC's Asset Management Professional program. His AMP Course 6 Capstone Project was nominated by his instructor, and selected as this year's AMP Capstone Award winning project. The AMP Capstone Award encourages and recognizes excellence in the Asset Management Professional (AMP) program final project, the Capstone. During this presentation, Ian will share more insights into himself, his organization, his award winning AMP capstone presentation and how his learnings in the AMP program have impacted his organization.

Asset management is about good decision making in a structural, systematic and strategic way. It helps you make logical, rational, evidence-based decisions that target your limited resources and prioritize your infrastructure investments. It is the planning tool that helps you organize the future you want for your community. It makes good business sense, and no reasonable person would disagree. This is so obvious that it is boring. This begs the questions: • What could possibly get in the way of evidence-based decision making? • Why do we ignore the things we should not ignore? • Why do we not attend to the things we should attend to? This session will illuminate the condition assessments of a different kind and explore the antidote to asset management apathy.

At the recent MRO/DE Expo, first MRO stream session was on Effective Asset Management Starts with Good Assets by Leonard Middleton, Consultant, Asset Management Solutions.“There seems to be a vast difference in perspective between those who approve projects, those who execute projects, and those who need to operate and maintain those assets that projects deliver. The presentation was delivered by someone who has worked in each of those areas, and has direct knowledge of the linkage and implications of decisions made,” said Middleton.“The presentation intended to provide a pragmatic high-level overview that provided insights on the issues and what changes can be made to improve the situation for the benefit of the organization and the individual groups,” said Middleton. “Virtual conferences are the new normal. There is no longer the immediate feedback from the body-language and attention of the audience indicating whether they are engaged and following the presentation, and that takes some adjustment.”

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic gripped the world, the foundations of business operations shifted instantly. With ripple effects continuing today, organizations continue to strive to adapt to the changing landscape. In these times, the principles and practices of asset management are more critical than ever and can be a framework for embedding resiliency. This presentation will delve into the relationship between asset management principles and three focus areas impacted by COVID, while sharing real life examples from water and wastewater operations. First, we will explore how facility lockdowns and supply chain disruptions impacted equipment repair parts availability. We will dive into how facilities with strong critical spare parts management techniques weathered these disruptions with less panic and time spent chasing parts. And, how techniques such as predictive maintenance programs and planning scheduling better accommodated longer lead times before equipment intervention was required. Second, we will discuss what happens when only a few individuals own the asset management program and they are suddenly absent for health or family support obligations for an extended period. We will interconnect how building a strong ownership of asset management across disciplines and embedding processes and procedures ensures a lasting culture of asset management. Finally, lockdowns and travel bans forced our team to explore new methods for deploying technical support without onsite visits. Innovative approaches from virtually facilitated risk review workshops to augmented reality condition assessments have been developed and implemented over the past year. With advancements in technology, as the accumulation of data grows there has been a concentrated effort to leverage this data toward making data-justified decisions. Over the past year there has also been an increasing emphasis to leverage these analyses to bring decision teams to agreement as managers and client interact virtually. With an interdependent global economy it is only a matter of time until the next disruption hits, and implementing the core principles of asset management can enhance the resiliency of your organization.

Do those that manage the performance, understand the measures?

As maintenance and reliability professionals we often get caught in the detail of appropriate reliability techniques and can sometimes lose sight of the bigger picture and organizational goals.  This presentation will provide an indication of the place of reliability engineering in asset management and business planning.  We will also touch on some of the tools in the toolbox of reliability engineers and maintenance professionals such as asset modelling (deterioration and failure modelling), risk assessment, prioritization and inspection.  The presentation will indicate how these tools relate to business planning and when is appropriate to use during an asset lifecycle.  The presentation will show examples of application through case studies in treatment plants, infrastructure, and building facilities and highlight what we have found to be some of the key issues and challenges and how they can be overcome.  To conclude we will highlight some of the key lessons learned from application of these tools and approaches.

When a defect occurs in a physical asset, it’s often not immediately detectable by operators. In fact, in some cases the defects are not visible to the naked eye. However, from the moment a defect occurs until it is found, there is a risk that the defect will grow in severity, and possibly transition into a failure, resulting in reduced or halted production. At a municipal transit company, the Nondestructive Testing (NDT) team uses specialized equipment to inspect the train tracks and identify the location and severity of any defects. Due to the limited hours during which the team can perform their work, the whole subway system can only be tested once per year. Using their data on train tracks and found defects, we investigate efficient ways to use the NDT team’s fixed resources in order to improve the reliability of the train track system.

This paper describes strategic Asset Management at an Industry level. The illustrative case study reviews the Ontario Nuclear fleet of stations', life cycle planning and then applying simple risk analysis. The situation is illustrative, not to be taken as accurate in any aspect (eg costs, schedule etc). The purpose of this paper is to illustrate a practical example of how Asset Management can be applied at a strategic level, to support strategic planning over a multi-billion dollar, multi-decade program. The situation described is very loosely based on the OPG nuclear refurbishment program, but cannot be directly connected to it since all the information is proprietary and the numbers used are hugely different. The paper outline is expected to follow: • Background • Fleet Asset planning • Project Estimate process • Risk estimate process and review . • Conclusions The above is at a "bird's eye" view, but with enough details to understand the case study and how it pertains to a broader scope of applications. Learning: 1. Asset Management is a strong strategic tool when applied at Facility level. 2. Estimates, though rough at an early stage, can provide managerial information that is adequate for decision making. 3. Risk Management can be simple, but provides huge returns for management decision making.