5.02 Asset Management Leadership

Dear Future Leader: You are quite bright and very ambitious. You have as much of your career ahead of you than behind you. You have goals to eventually advance into an executive position. You aren’t in Finance or Human Resources, which is unfortunate because the skills and practices required in those disciplines are tried and true. No, your road in operations and asset management is less traveled; where the skills and practices are less certain and the landscape is changing at breakneck speed. I present to you some advice to aid you in your journey. I offer this because as seasoned asset management practitioner I’ve developed certain expectations of my senior leaders to drive the most value out of our assets. I’ve seen things good and bad. I’ve learned where value is most often leaked across the asset life cycle and the practices to stop the value leakage. Here are the competencies you will need to develop to assure you add value to your company and be successful in your current and future leadership roles.Sincerely, Paul Daoust, Asset Management Professional

Asset Management Roadmaps aren’t always perfect. Often they are a work in progress. In this webcast participants will see the journey that EPCOR Water Services Inc. (EWSI) undertook when developing its Asset Management Roadmap/Framework, and learn that even with challenges along the way, the organization overall ended up with a greater understanding and acceptance of asset management.EWSI’s initial framework, developed in 2011, was closely aligned with BSI PAS 55 and later revised to reflect ISO 55000 standards. Participants will learn more about the organization’s first attempt at a typical management system development process that took place over the next 24 month period, and see how this initial approach was unsuccessful.With lessons learned, the organization revised its approach in 2013, looking at asset management related gaps with EWSI operations and used process improvement methodology to develop procedures and tools to resolve those gaps. One of the major gaps identified was lack of asset management plans. The next year, a pilot project focusing on the 10-Steps of asset management (SIMPLE) was completed.Participants will see how this pilot project demonstrated the start-to-finish development of an asset management plan, and the development and field testing of several standards, procedures and tools that would become part of EWSI’s asset management framework. This approach demonstrated the value of asset management, resulting in greater understanding and acceptance of asset management throughout EWSI.

Jeffboat is a company with a long history.  Originally named the Howard Steamboat Company, Jeffboat is America’s largest inland ship builder and has been manufacturing ships for over 100 years.  Jeffboat has built such famous ships as the Mississippi Queen, the General Jackson showboat and the Casino Aztar riverboat casino. Like most manufacturing firms, Jeffboat has an enormous amount of equipment stretched out over a shipyard that is over a mile in length that is needed to make its boats.  Also like many old-line manufacturing firms, Jeffboat has both equipment and employees who have been there for several decades. Overall, because of the size of the shipyard and age of the equipment, Jeffboat’s maintenance was used to working in reactive mode.  There was no CMMS software in place and equipment was put into numerous Excel spreadsheets.  In addition, it was often hit or miss whether the right parts were in the stores room and finding the right equipment often took maintenance technicians a significant amount of time.  There was no Scheduler/Planner and maintenance procedures were done informally and based on need at that particular moment.When implementing a maintenance management strategy, a critical component is the resistance to change. Whether it is the introduction of new software or a complete overhaul of the maintenance function, the process of change represents disruptive technology (Christenson, …). According to Christenson, most changes are really improvements on something old and the old paradigms can be used. However, there are changes that organizations need to make that disrupt the dominant paradigm, rather than sustaining it. These are disruptive technologies and make the old things less important or obsolete. The problem with these disruptive changes is that people are still applying the old paradigms to the new realities. They are trying, in a sense, to understand the car as nothing more than a carriage without horses.

Industrial maintenance has evolved from simple repair when it breaks to amazing predictable strategies. With these come the need of handling more data to enable better decision-making and effective work management. Unfortunately, we tend to forget who would feed this data into our sophisticated CMMS: people. Any EAM system is like a racehorse. It can help us to win the race — only if it’s well-fed, cared for, groomed, and trained properly; all these actions are done by people who need to understand how their functions are vital for the health of the horse and for the ultimate goal of winning the race. In asset management, people are very complicated assets, usually performing complex activities as part of a bigger picture, and CMMS/EAM systems are just the tools humans use to perform as intended; therefore, people should always be a priority. In this presentation, we’ll explore the evolution of CMMS and how human reliability is a key component for the success in the implementation and use of any software solution for EAM.Presented at MainTrain 2018

Many organizations have embarked on asset management programs and struggle to implement best in class practices, find it difficult to sustain the new ways of working and find it difficult to demonstrate the return on the investment in AM.  Success in Asset Management (AM)  Development and Sustenance of the AM Program depends of effective Change Leadership throughout the program. It requires a focus on the following areas:1. Program and Steering Team Charters2. Comprehensive Business Case3. Comprehensive Project Management  Plan4. An AM Framework and Policy that provides a clear vision for AM5. A Leading Change Plan (and an effective issue management process)6. Communications Plan7. Tracking and Reporting of BenefitsThis presentation will provide practical guidance to people who are embarking on an AM Program, in the throes of implementing one or trying to sustain the new way of working. Participants will hear abut real case studies where challenges in the areas listed above were successfully managed.

Most front line lead hands or supervisors are appointed to their positions because they are good at their jobs. But how often do they get management training to work effectively with people and build their teams? This presentation highlights five companies who invested in front line supervisor in-person leadership training to work effectively with diverse workforces. It describes their struggles, successes and explains what works to transform "good workers" into "inspired, confident team leaders".

After each of its biannual meetings the GFMAM posts a communique on the progress of the various projects. It's a concise way of learning about what work is being done.