04 Asset Information

The U.K. railway network dates back to 1825 and is the oldest railway in the world. Several electrical assets on the network such as track power cables, switchgears, overhead line isolators, circuit breakers, and insulators are beyond their design life and the business must decide whether to renew or replace them—even though they're still operating at the optimum performance level. These assets are still being maintained at the original regimes; the challenge to the business is to understand the degradation models and change them to achieve different maintenance regimes for the aging assets. The work we're currently undertaking is intended to influence and change our asset policies—in particular, the assignment of asset regimes for assets that remain in service at the end of their design life and beyond. The philosophy behind the maintenance regimes is that they're based on degradation models, which are algorithms that consider various factors such as the environment, the loading, the utilization, the reliability, and the cost for interventions. The approach we pursued was to review the parameters of the degradation models for their “fit,” based on the knowledge asset managers have gained on the ground and through large volumes of asset data. The asset data was analyzed with data visualization software to gain further insight to influence the review of the degradation models. The findings of the work are summarized here: asset population is aging and future renewals bow wave are predicted; asset policy pushes all assets to maximum asset technical life and fix-on or run-to failure; safety-related works prioritized over asset performance/resilience; there's a need to modify some factors associated with the degradation models to cater for extension of technical asset life and maintain a more realistic/sustainable asset renewal profile; composite asset condition scores are required to manage bow wave of asset renewals and implement sustainable obsolescence management techniques (this is predominantly driven by organizational investment decisions where enhancements are the main driver of asset acquisition, making future renewals difficult due to the requirement to renew similar age assets at the same time); and determination of useful asset life required for assets that are being left in service longer than their originally predicted life.

Mobile devices for recording maintenance and ensuring the most up-to-date procedures and checklists is ideal, but what if there is no wifi where you're working? Until recently, mobile devices had to be connected to the Internet to enable all functionality. Offline Mobile Capability has recently been successfully developed for Nova Scotia Power (NSP) by Megamation. NSP has been using Megamation's DirectLine CMMS for 20 years, which delivers software as a service over the Internet in an all-inclusive, fully supported suite. DirectLine mobile provides a connection between the field and the office through an easy-to-use, full-feature application that works on any cellphone or tablet. Maintenance instructions, checklists, pictures, and the creation of new work orders—as well as other features—can be assessed and updated through the mobile app. Because NSP has numerous remote locations, it required offline mobile capability, so Megamation established a project to meet NSP's needs and successfully launched the new tools in early April 2019. This presentation will demonstrate the technology, share the lessons learned from the design stage through to field implementation, and look at where we're going next.

Metrics, best practices, more than 40 key elements to implement, challenges, and opportunities all combine to make a successful implementation difficult. Where do you start, and how do you know how to work on what matters? Once you understand how it’s all related, you can focus on the vital few to leverage the maximum ROI. This presentation will clarify the importance of culture and employee engagement, along with other key plant floor performance indicators that will be clarified with data. We'll look at the current state of R&M; what’s working and what's not; survival skills for the next decade; impacts of connected technologies (edge computing, big data, machine learning, AI, 3D printing, augmented reality); the importance of getting your data ready for what's coming next; and relationships between R&M and safety, people engagement, quality, throughput/uptime, and cost.

Many maintenance and reliability staff are so busy fixing problems that they never get the chance to prevent them. In a reactive work environment, there is simply no time to spare. Root cause analysis (RCA) gives us an easy-to-implement approach to preventing failures that integrate with our current troubleshooting efforts and drives bottom-line business improvement. We can make our workplaces safer by reducing the number of unexpected failures, which will then result in improving our business performance, increasing our facility’s throughput and reducing the money spent on repairs – straight to the bottom line.

Quelle est l’opportunité pour les gens de maintenance dans l’Industrie 4.0 ?- Constat de la maturité de la maintenance au Québec- Rappel de vieux concepts d’ingénierie de maintenance- Survol des concepts de l’Internet des objets et de l’Industrie 4.0- Analyse de l’opportunité 4.0

The structural configuration of an organizational design is the way work is divided and how it achieves co-ordination among its various work activities around the assets’ lifecycles. An organizational design structure resolves two basic tasks to get work done: dividing up the work into logical units, which enables performance management, and ensuring the work gets done by providing the co-ordination and control of work. In this webcast we’ll look at four models and discuss their advantages and disadvantages and present suitable information on typical roles and responsibilities that will be reflective of the selected model. The goal of asset management (AM) is to ensure that an organization’s staff is always working on the right activities at the right time, for the right reason, and for right cost. The AM governance model is intended to ensure there is effective collaboration and co-ordination to make this happen around all business processes. With the right AM governance model, overall AM program development can be expedited and new ways of working can be quickly integrated into the organization’s AM culture. We’ll provide the actual results from a number of case studies to demonstrate the value of designing and implementing the most appropriate AM governance model for your organization.

Reliability Centered Maintenance – Reengineered, provides an optimized approach to a well established and highly successful method used for determining failure management policies for physical assets. It makes the original method that was developed to enhance flight safety, far more useful in a broad range of industries where asset criticality ranges from high to low. RCM-R® is focused on the science of failures and what must be done to enable long term sustainably reliable operations. If used correctly, RCM-R® is the first step in delivering fewer breakdowns, more productive capacity, lower costs, safer operations and improved environmental performance. Maintenance has a huge impact on most businesses whether its presence is felt or not. RCM-R® ensures that the right work is done to guarantee there are as few nasty surprises as possible that can harm the business in any way. RCM-R® addresses the shortfalls of RCM that have inhibited its broad acceptance in industry. Little new work has been done in the field of RCM since the 1990’s, yet demand for such a method, better adapted to industrial applications is higher than ever and growing. Demographics and ever more complex systems are driving a need to be more efficient in our use of skilled maintenance resources while ensuring first time success – greater effectiveness is needed. RCM-R® was developed to leverage on RCM’s original success at delivering that effectiveness while addressing the concerns of the industrial market. RCM-R® addresses the RCM method and shortfalls in its application. It modifies the method to consider asset and even failure mode criticality so that rigor is applied only where it is truly needed. It removes (within reason) the sources of concern about RCM being overly rigorous and too labor intensive without compromising on its ability to deliver a tailored failure management program for physical assets sensitive to their operational context and application. RCM-R® also provides its practitioners with standard based guidance for determining meaningful failure modes and causes facilitating their analysis for optimum outcome. It places RCM into the Asset Management spectrum strengthening the original method by introducing International Standard based risk management methods for assessing failure risks formally. RCM-R® employs quantitative reliability methods tailoring evidence based decision making whenever historical failure data is available.

Most organisations have implemented processes and tools to collect data to facilitate informed decision-making. Often, they will seek out best practices and measures to assist in decisionmaking or rely on technology to guide the basis of decisions. However, in many cases these same organisations approach a gap in tactical deployment and the ability to draw a connection to the follow-up or pre-emptive actions required to derive value from assets. This presentation will review the processes for establishing a framework for alignment and priority setting, while looking at the techniques employed for resiliency and risk management using a technology agnostic approach. We will review potential data sources which can be leveraged for decision-making and which reflect the needs and current state of the business environment. Further, we will discuss the relationship and application to the decision-making process. An overview of the fundamental outcome of key performance indicators and visualized metrics will be demonstrated. Finally, we will investigate the influence on decision making and the level of data confidence.

R&M professionals are typically the main drivers and beneficiaries of an RCM or similar reliability study at a facility. However, when you invite operations and other key business personnel to participate, we’ve found it often opens their eyes to M&R improvement opportunities and helps paint the picture for future joint improvement efforts. Organizations are then able to operate with the most efficiency, driving toward a world-class reliability program with plant-wide buy-in for the reliability improvement journey. This presentation will discuss a case study of a joint client and partner consultant approach of choosing a machine or line performing below desired performance levels. Using an RCM approach to improve maintenance strategies, the organization experienced reduced downtime and less labour reallocation and idle time, and gained many instant wins like increased visibility in the maintenance budget and increased collaboration between facilities.Presented at MainTrain 2018