2.02 Operations & Maintenance Decision-Making

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.

ESG targets and reporting are becoming increasingly important. Investors and governments around the world are pushing for transparency and ever more rigorous reporting on ESG indicators. It is likely that financial regulators in North America will make ESG reporting mandatory within the next 2 years.  Many components of ESG frameworks affect asset management, and conversely good asset management can help improve an organization’s ESG scores. Think of climate change, pollution, health & safety, risk management, water use and GHG emissions to name a few.  It is therefore crucial for asset managers to understand the current frenzy around ESG reporting. Yet the ESG ecosystem can be quite baffling: there is no single definition of what ESG stands for, or what is “in” or “out”, or what reporting standard to follow.This presentation will shed some light on who does what in the ESG ecosystem, what standards and reporting options are available, and how all this will increasingly affect the way organizations make strategic decisions. Asset management has a big role to play in this context. Many asset managers have been confronted with complex, multi-stakeholder decision-making frameworks for years and are quite adept at aligning various departments to a common set of objectives. The definition of “value” in asset management often already contains many metrics that are now part of ESG reporting. We will explore how robust value frameworks can help organizations reach better decisions and improve their ESG scores – with the guidance of their asset management team!

Asset intensive companies continue to rapidly advance their thinking regarding Enterprise Asset Management – including through the influence of connected assets and remote condition monitoring. These advancements, among others, have shifted focus from reactive to predictive maintenance practices based on real time failure data. Yet, despite the direct impact that spare part availability has on timely maintenance and Asset Health, the approach to spare part management has often lagged in asset heavy industries. The disconnect between asset decisions and supporting spare parts (MRO) inventory through the Asset Management Lifecycle contributes to stock outs, obsolescence, and unplanned downtime. The objective of this paper is to introduce the concept of the MRO Lifecycle as a complementary framework to the lifecycle management of assets. And to explore how actions and decisions made at each stage of the MRO Lifecycle correlates and contributes to more robust decisions throughout the Asset Management Lifecycle. The session will also introduce how software solutions are helping uncover and drive improvements in MRO Inventory Management to enhance the quality of Asset Management decisions, encompassing spare parts and the role that availability plays in improving overall Asset Health. Drawing from more than 20 years of industry experience and leveraging examples across sectors such as food & beverage, automotive and mining, Xtivity will share approaches, solutions and results from global industry.

How does your organization differentiate between asset management, and maintenance and reliability?

Maintenance of critical assets and life safety infrastructures is extremely important. Therefore, significant precautions and risk analysis should be given to the potential effects of human errors during preventive and corrective maintenance, including bypass requirements, deactivation of system, and the expected impact of the failure on the program operation. Unanticipated or unplanned downtime is costly, negatively impacts building operation, and often impacts an organization’s reputation and brand. For planned activities (preventive or corrective), it’s important to proactively document the scope of work and identify potential problems that could occur so that risks are managed and all stakeholders are aware of them. This presentation contains a real-life application that will provide the basis to improve the future of your maintenance organization and prevent future downtime. The permit-to-work process is a real-world best practice to help improve communications, manage risk in your organization, keep your critical infrastructure running, and minimize productivity loss or damage due to unplanned downtime. We’ll provide an overview of the permit-to-work procedure and its associated risk assessment and mitigation protocol. There are seven learning objectives: evaluating maintenance performance; reducing or eliminating human errors; improving stakeholders’ engagement; enhancing interdepartmental communications; focusing on culture change by leveraging risk management tools; enhancing critical equipment reliability by reducing potential downtime; building a staff-vendor-client relationship by implementing clear expectations; and protecting your critical assets and reputation by minimizing unplanned downtime.

Asset management (AM) is a far-ranging topic and can be very confusing or overwhelming to anyone who is now embarking on a program or trying to take their existing program up a notch. The biggest impact in AM is on the planning side of the AM Framework. Essentially, if you plan well, then you can execute the right activities (capital project, operations, and maintenance tasks) well. Conversely, which is the case with many organizations, there is poor planning but with efficient execution of the work and attendant sub-optimal performance. Excellence in AM requires effective planning in three areas: Growth and Rationalization, Renewal & Replacement, and Operations & Maintenance. This presentation will provide best-in-class concepts for developing these three areas and the return on investment in effective planning, and will be supported by real-life examples.   Originally presented at MainTrain 2020

This article is to address the difference in conditional probability of failure patterns, and the impact on how best to maintain assets based upon those differences.

As the influence of the asset management approach continues to expand within Nova Scotia Power, we need a structured approach to ensure we continue to seek opportunities to optimize maintenance strategies. In a new installation, techniques such as failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) and reliability centred maintenance (RCM) can be used to develop an optimized maintenance strategy from the start, in a top-down approach. However, the vast majority of Nova Scotia Power’s equipment was in place long before the asset management office—and, therefore, the asset management approach—existed. The result of that is a collection of value-added, but developed after-the-fact maintenance strategies. Each maintenance strategy has components of operator surveillance (rounds), testing, predictive pattern recognition (also known as advanced pattern recognition, APR), predictive maintenance (condition-based monitoring and risk-based inspections), online monitoring, and preventative maintenance. While efforts had been made to “baseline” the equipment processes when maintenance strategies were developed (i.e., “clean out” existing activities), the organic growth of the approach and the distributed nature of assets and personnel have made this difficult to maintain. Therefore, we needed an approach to optimize existing maintenance strategies, without recreating them. Nova Scotia Power has therefore undertaken an effort known as maintenance strategy optimization, and has made this activity a core accountability for the asset management team, which recognizes the need to seek continuous improvement (vs. a one-time exercise). With a focus on digitization wherever appropriate, Nova Scotia Power has asked a number of questions to streamline, standardize, and optimize its maintenance strategies. Is there opportunity to reduce PM frequency? Is there opportunity to collect more information such that we can strengthen our APR models? Can our in-house standards be revalidated to sustainably reduce operating and maintenance costs? Nova Scotia Power is answering yes to these questions, and more, and pursuing opportunities to optimize its maintenance strategies—from the bottom up! 

Many asset-owning organizations engaging in enterprise digital transformations aren’t realizing the expected value. Follow the money and you’ll see asset-owning organizations spending tens of millions (sometimes hundreds of millions) of dollars and the only clear winners are the solution providers and supporting management consultants. Why? Some approaches can lead their organizations further away from achieving their business goals. Ambitious digital strategies are great, but success is best achieved through technology and first-principles practices and decision-making. Paul Daoust will explore a digital transformation strategy that combines technology with asset management and operational excellence practices into an integrated operational management framework that works.