08 Material Resource Mgmt

Thriving instead of surviving: how a little bit of redundancy is helping companies to thrive in tumultuous times. Changing the strategy and planning around “trimming the fat” or “make it lean” is going to take some time, but the change is required. The events of the past four years have proved that “lean and mean” is more akin to clinging on by the fingernails or being left behind. Proper asset management strategies depend on being able to access parts in a timely manner so that preventative maintenance can be performed as scheduled. Keeping a spare or critical spare on hand acts as a buffer when a supplier is unable to deliver on time, or a shipment is stuck waiting in a port. It may appear to be a “waste of money,” as this piece of inventory is now hitting the bottom line and is not yet needed; however, what is the cost of not having it? Or the cost of having to outsource it last minute? Moreover, how are the supplier relationships? This presentation will explain how redundancy can help save money and time through changing how businesses operate and view their bottom line. Attendees will learn how to review and calculate the cost of a stockout and compare it to holding a spare or critical spare; hear how to set or adjust inventory review policies; and discover that having multiple supplier options will help operations continue even in times of change and emergency.

SIGGA Technologies deployment with Votorantim Cimentos SAP PM

Join us for an opportunity to learn about what we must consider for asset management with new constraints to the supply chain. We will delve into shipping restrictions, budget changes and planning considerations. We will also touch on opportunities that have risen out of the learns from the past two years and moving forward with the risks in mind. 

We are in unprecedented times. Covid-19 wreaked havoc on supply chains; decreased production during times of increased demand. Labor shortages, chip shortages, long lead items turning into “maybe next year, if you’re lucky” items. The Russia Ukraine war added further stress to supply chains through sanctions, port closures, fuel shortages and much more. What once was reliable is now unreliable. So how can companies overcome an unreliable supply chain to maintain their reliability? There are several ways to mitigate unreliability; scenario planning, supplier management, and technology. There is no one size fits all and what may work for one company will not necessarily work for another. Scenario planning involves reviewing every potential situation that could occur, then working through to see how the company would be impacted. Ultimately this results in mitigation plans for each scenario. These can then be reviewed and implemented. Proper Supplier Management includes ensuring all suppliers have their scorecards reviewed on a regular basis. Their information updated and kept current. It can also include reviewing which suppliers can become substitutes for others in the event one is not able to provide the required product in time. Technology is important as it links all the information together. Algorithms can be created to let management know that certain parts are low, equipment is wearing out sooner, it also collects information on suppliers for the scorecards. Overall technology is the glue that binds and provides real time information updates. This presentation will review how to best use technology to help mitigate reliability and supply chain issues.

Reliability and Maintenance (R&M) teams at manufacturing facilities employ different maintenance strategies on their physical assets to achieve the desired reliability and maximize the availability of the assets. Most of the production downtime in manufacturing facilities is because of unexpected (or) random failures of equipment and the associated reactive maintenance work. One of the factors that affects the total time to fix failed equipment is spare parts availability. The increasing complexity to minimize production downtime with aging assets demands problem-specific decision models. In this study, a multi-criteria decision model is proposed to assist the R&M stakeholders at manufacturing facilities in making decisions on stocking the right parts. The proposed model will help facilities to stock the spare parts required to maintain the system with-in acceptable and manageable risk. Two case studies from a pulp mill will be presented to demonstrate the use of the proposed decision model. The first case study deals with “Pulp Machine Process Area” with historical data on equipment failures and spare parts usage while the second one focuses on a newly commissioned plant without failure information. The proposed decision model helped to identify the right parts to stock and minimized the risk and inventory costs in both cases.

Asset Criticality is an important input to production system design, maintenance strategy definition and short term work execution management processes. The value the supporting FEMA exercises provide in determining these categorizations is well understood in the Reliability Community. Less common is the extension of this analytical rigor to the spare parts required to maintain equipment. Establishing and maintaining robust part criticality values can be an invaluable link between operations and the supporting supply chain, helping to set stocking strategies, inform alternative material management approaches and quickly flag when expediting is required. Despite the value, part criticality values (or Risk Priority Numbers) are rarely objectively derived and even less frequently maintained. This presentation is intended to: 1. Establish the link between asset health and spare part availability 2. Illustrate common item criticality practices 3. Provide an overview of a robust item criticality assessment approach 4. Highlight the benefits to be gained from an enhanced approach to item criticality determination.

The presentation will show the 21 specific harms to business that arise from ad hoc, weak, and unstructured spare parts (MRO materials) identities. The focus will be on the 6 specific harms to the maintenance. 1. Confusing material searches in WO planning 2. Extra validations used in WO planning 3. Work scheduling delays when planned parts are out of stock but are available under a different number in the warehouse 4. Job schedule interruptions from mis-identified materials 5. Production loss from wrong parts issued to a job (bigger impact than just work schedule impact) 6. Work to return wrong materials to the warehouse from a job The presentation will cover what the identifying elements of an MRO material or item record are. The necessary elements to solve the MRO material identity problem will be discussed. Useful MRO identities are structured based on rationalized noun classes. Applying the taxonomy to an MRO catalogue makes items comparable in a way that was not possible before. This allows for the removal of duplicates, assignment of items to equipment / functional locations and then removal of clutter items. Finally, the beauty of life in the Maintenance Department with a rational effective MRO material catalogue will be revealed!

Sharing a recent mandate with a mining client where we assessed the maturity of maintenance management. The webinar will also cover the findings and our actions for improvement.Approach   1. After dozens of interviews from trades to maintenance manager, from operators to supervisors, we started to gather an understanding of the situation.   2. Then, a thorough analysis was performed on work order history, PM percentage vs total available work hours, schedule compliance and production KPIs to help pinpoint several recurring issues.   3. The analysis was concluded with on-site shadowing of supervisors and trades. We selected key dates to execute day-in-the-life-of exercises (i.e., shutdown days) to assess the quality of shutdown management and observe the execution effectiveness. Actions in partnership Tool time is a powerful metric because it helps to expose the majority of the teams’ shortcomings: engagement of the team, respect of processes, communication between departments and productivity of all the maintenance members. After the assessment and analysis, we got to work:   1. Work management process   2. Maintenance tactics review     3. Maintenance execution   4. Spare parts analysis Results With a SWAT team approach, we reduced maintenance backlog by 20%, which allowed us to focus on high criticality assets. In less than 8 weeks, we started to see a reduction in major breakdowns of equipment. We started performing root cause analysis on each breakdown and defect elimination workshops to achieve better reliability. By reducing waste related to maintenance activities in planning & execution, the team managed to transfer the work hours toward preventive tasks. The actions got translated into an improved plant availability and higher engagement

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.

Is your company struggling to forecast, and have parts arrive on time to perform preventive maintenance, or know when downtime should occur that would be least disruptive? Would your company benefit from more accurate cost predictions and a decrease in last minute emergency breakdowns? Or perhaps you cannot depend on what the system has for inventory or how many staff are required on site at a given time – there are somehow too many or not enough at any given time. These are common issues faced by many large manufacturers from Marine, to Mining to Oil & Gas, and many others. This session will provide an overview of how basic Machine Learning techniques can be applied to Supply Chain, Reliability, and Asset Management to gain increased insight, and better overall performance. But what is Machine Learning? It is a subset of Artificial Intelligence, where algorithms improve through experience (new data sets). The algorithms constantly evolve as more and more data is run through it. Machine Learning is useful for finding unknown patterns and relationships in data, such as sales, plants, store, or forecasting. It is an effective tool to gain insight and efficiency in day to day operations, while also providing a future forward view.