09 Information Management

Through the introduction of online monitoring technologies in the field, including substation monitors capable of providing near-real-time data and readings on power transformers, switchgear and circuit breakers, along with line monitors for overhead conductor and monitors for underground cables, organizations now possess novel opportunities to integrate this data into their asset management frameworks such that decision-making can be enhanced. This presentation will examine recent efforts to develop Asset Performance Management (APM) frameworks, leveraging available near-real-time data that is being retrieved from online monitoring devices. This presentation will touch upon the emerging field of analytics that can be applied to this data, including machine learning techniques, in order to detect specific signatures within the data that can be correlated to specific failure modes. Robust APM frameworks are able to leverage this near-real-time data for the purposes of delivering dynamic health index results based upon the newest readings, as well as operational alerts that can detect possible failures that will occur in the next few weeks or months, providing organizations with enough time to take action. For complex substation assets, an APM solution can allow plant managers to manage and mitigate significant risks within their system. This presentation will also present the results from specific case studies, where near-real-time data from field sensors was successfully leveraged and integrated into an APM such that the organization was able to enhance their risk management and asset management decision-making approaches.

The successful use of the technologies associated to Building Information Management (BIM) depends on the interest and levels of investment that owners are willing to put into their projects. According to U.S. and Australian studies, the costs of poor information management in construction for each of these countries are nearly 15 billion U.S. $. The largest losses (almost two-thirds) were found among property owners. The implementation of BIM technologies for facility management focuses mostly on the technological aspect and often neglects the change management required to migrate from traditional approaches to asset management processes. BIM leverages the generation and use of digital representations of buildings and infrastructures in design, construction, and operations. The cost, efficiency and communications benefits that accrue from fostering single source of truth integrated data sets throughout infrastructure project lifecycles are forcing engineering firms, construction companies and public policy offices to rethink their processes and actions. The biggest potential opportunity for leveraging BIM processes following design and construction is for Facilities and Assets Management. Potential benefits include higher quality overall results, improved data preservation and transfer between life-cycle actors, effective predictive maintenance and energy efficiency. Leveraging the benefits of BIM technologies is easier said than done. There are few generally recognized best practices and many outstanding questions. How can we better plan the integration of BIM and FM into future projects? How can we integrate BIM into the management of existing infrastructure and real estate inventories? What best practices can we learn from existing global trends? This presentation offers some insights on how to transition towards BIM-enabled facility management. Success on this digitization path requires strong leadership from owners and operators, from project inception to operations phase. It investigates the transfer process of information technologies in place as well as changes in the business culture and organizational structure through case studies. Ultimately, a robust process to seamlessly create and transfer data across a facility lifecycle lays the ground for leveraging advanced Construction 4.0 technologies to further optimize the operations and improve the occupancy conditions for facility users.

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.

In a long career implementing and improving SAP SCM business processes in Oil & Gas, Pipelines, Utilities and Transportation companies, the number one consistently observed problem is poorly identified MRO material masters. Material master identity consists of the item descriptions, the manufacturer and manufacturer part number fields and classification data that support material identification. This presentation is meant to raise the profile of the topic and the value lost by not addressing the problem without going into detailed solutions. It is aimed at a general level to all practitioners that make use of maintenance or SCM business processes that use materials.The presentation is software agnostic. These challenges are found in shops running SAP, Oracle, JDE, Maximo or any other business software. It is of value to all businesses that have MRO business processes in their value chain. The concepts presented are original thinking of the presenter and address a business problem that software vendors and business consultancies have given marginal attention to date. Hence, the MaintTrain audience will be introduced to value saving concepts. Topics: • Introduction (discussion applies to asset intensive industry and the MRO materials records used in their supporting business processes) 3 min • Generalized view of the current state and how we arrived here. 7 min • Structured identification taxonomy – standards and why coherence in the structure is important. 10 min • Material master lifecycles are often not considered- beginning, middle, end. 8 min • Conclusions: This is not an insolvable problem or one that necessarily demands another $$$ system implementation. It exists only because it has been invisible. 3 min • Questions? 14 min   Originally presented at MainTrian 2021

Often organisations are conflicted on where to direct capital and resources, given constant request and competing priorities requiring resources and money, many initiatives and maintenance activities are deferred or cancelled all together in order to meet the constraints of budget and available capability expectations. How do you know if the allocation of your money/capital and resources are being directed to the areas of greatest need and also delivering greatest value? How do you evaluate value? A deep dive into capital and resource allocation may uncover wasted effort where valuable resources have been allocated to initiatives and activities that are not as value add as some activity that has been deferred or cancelled. These decisions are often made with little or no consideration of the vast amount of information being held within the company’s CMMS. Every initiative and job can be justified but is it the best use of time and money? What data do you use to decide where best to allocate your valuable money and resources? I will share the principles behind real life examples of where failure data has been sorted to demonstrate both micro and macro impacts on a business bottom line, allowing for managers to make better decisions on resource allocation, and decisions that will deliver high value outcomes for the business. These decisions were made using information freely available, but largely ignored, within the CMMS. The information was sorted into failure modes/types and overall cost of unreliability and presented in the form of a pareto chart. When organised in this simple manner the data clearly identifies areas requiring attention that have significant impact on the business performance, and also leading to reduced wasted effort on jobs that are less important. This approach also removes some of the countless debate over the order of priority when people within the organisation feel they are competing for the limited resources up for grabs, instead allowing people to focus on what is best for the overall organisation and not just their patch.

2020 was a very different and transformative year for all industries due to the pandemic and mining was not an exception; one of the important challenges for the Kinross’ corporate team was to provide support from the headquarters in Toronto without the capability of travelling to sites; among the different corporate functions, the Maintenance team is responsible for leading the identification; application and effective implementation of practices aiming to the continuous improvement and evolution of Maintenance in order to better position the function globally towards asset management optimization Kinross Gold is a senior gold mining company Headquartered in Toronto with a diverse portfolio of mines and projects in the United States, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Mauritania, and Russia. The proposed paper and related presentation will explain how the Corporate Maintenance group had to adapt and evolve in order to provide meaningful support to sites in spite of the impossibility of traveling and work side by side with our site based counterparts; in particular the presentation will focus on describing: - Initial failures and struggles in the adaptation process - New streams of support that were developed to overcome the mobilization challenge - How the maintenance corporate changed for good due to the new way of working - The overall performance of the maintenance function globally - The challenges that remains and new barriers expected for the future The proposed paper is simply an effort to share our experiences with the hope that the Asset Management community globally considers these lessons and benefit from them on their own quest for excellence

The Northwest Territories has 33 geographically dispersed communities, many of which are not grid connected for community power supply. The majority are powered by small, local diesel plants with others supplied by three hydro systems which generate the majority of the total power produced annually by the Northwest Territories Power Corporation (NTPC). This paper will describe how the condition of these assets is assessed and monitored, the process used and how the results form part of the annual capital planning and implementation process. Asset management at NTPC is divided into Thermal, Hydro and Transmission and Distribution; the focus of this paper will be primarily on thermal and hydro asset health inspections. On an annual basis, one third of the assets are inspected in person by the relevant asset manager and a small team of subject matter experts. The process by which these inspections are conducted will be outlined, including what information is gathered, and what we look for when carrying out the inspections. The asset condition information for various component parts is entered into one spreadsheet for each asset. The paper will describe how an asset health index for that asset is assigned. The condition of the asset determines what further action or inspections are required and the criteria used will be discussed. The presentation will also outline how the results from the inspections are used as part of a project prioritization process for capital planning. Current reporting practices on individual asset health indices and for each power plant will be described. In discussing this topic, NTPC sees an opportunity to receive feedback from others and to promote discussion on best practice from other power utility companies.

This will cover the Theory of Technology Implementation: Technology, Process, and People – Pyramid. Any technology implemented is as only as good as the people who use it in the processes you have. With proper training and clear, consistent processes, technology results can be amazing! Mobile has been floating around Plant Maintenance for around a decade but finally got the political will and funding in 2018. We were able to leverage that we were also setting up our Maximo system with Assets and PMs to make them Mobile and reporting friendly, from the start. Our Requirements gathering included realizing that we needed a disconnected solution because we work in many areas without a signal, like Subway track level and we have emergency exit buildings all over the city with no network connection. We chose Maximo Anywhere on Samsung Tab As. We are using the Train the trainer method now with COVID, to limit contacts outside each section. We have a training video produced by IT for basic functionality, but individual training material still needed to be produced. For training of our people we took the slow and steady wins the race approach, allowing each crew to really get personalized support at the beginning of their Tablet use. I always encourage people to ask questions and speak up. I even started a 10 minute rule: If you can’t figure it out in 10 minutes – call/text me! There was also training to be done with Forepeople and Supervisors: How do I see the results? What to do I do with the results? Management has been very happy with results – a picture is worth 1000 words. The Good: Results The Bad: Connectivity issues The Ugly: Early Negotiations over items that when everyone got to test on the tablet, there was an immediate consensus.

Written by a Certified Maintenance and Reliability Professional (CMRP) with more than three decades of experience, this resource provides proven planning and scheduling strategies that will take any maintenance organization to the next level of performance. The book resolves common industry frustration with planning and reduces the complexity of scheduling in addition to dealing with reactive maintenance. You will find coverage of estimating labor hours, setting the level of plan detail, creating practical weekly and daily schedules, kitting parts, and more, all designed to increase your workforce without hiring. Much of the text applies the timeless management principles of Dr. W. Edwards Deming and Dr. Peter F. Drucker. You will learn how you can do more proactive work when your hands are full of reactive work.  Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook covers:   •The business case for the benefit of planning.   •Planning principles.   •Scheduling principles.   •Handling reactive maintenance.   •Planning a work order.   •Creating a weekly schedule.   •Daily scheduling and supervision.   •Parts and planners.   •The computer CMMS in maintenance.   •How planning works with PM, PdM, and projects.   •Controlling planning: the best KPIs KPIs for planning and overall maintenance.   •Shutdown, turnaround, overhaul, and outage management.   •Selling, organizing, analyzing, and auditing planning.           Palmers "Maintenance Planning and Scheduling Handbook" is listed a reference for Module 6 of the PEMAC  Maintenance Management Professionals (MMP) Program.

Most asset owning and operating organizations managing maintenance activities use a computer system – either a CMMS, or an EAM, or possibly a module in their ERP. Usually they want to sustain reliable performance of their assets to deliver high availability to their operations or production groups. These systems are often sold under the moniker, “solution”. Implied in that is the solution to some sort of a problem, one might imagine that it will deliver high reliability, or better maintenance practices, yet they don’t and can’t. Many have fallen victim to slick marketing, buzz words, and promises of functionality that are little more than dreams – vapourware. To get those practical business results you need to change what you are doing and how you are doing it, not how you are tracking it and managing the activities. Those systems do provide some help with data storage, reports, keeping organized and work flows, but they don’t help you define what work to do, nor how often, nor who should do it, they don’t do anything to ensure you actually do the work, and then record what you did with any accuracy. The result is often a system that is riddled with inaccurate, incomplete, or otherwise unfit data that can actually make work for, and be misleading to the system’s users. Interestingly, after seeing hundreds of different instances of different systems in a large variety of organizations, there are some common problems. If you are a supplier of these systems, you can probably relax now. Very few of the problems m have anything at all to do with the software itself. This presentation will explore the reasons for those disappointments and some of the possible solutions.