1.1 Requirements & Expectations

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.

There is little doubt that managing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and making plans for re-entry to the workplace, has been challenging for building professionals. The epidemic triggered a rapid shift on establishing new work protocols, the handling of facility maintenance routines, dealing with greater sanitization requirements, emergency measures, and new work behaviours. As vaccinations continue to be administered, businesses have had to develop strategies for safe and enhanced re-entry workplace procedures. During the session, a scan of the past year’s trauma and experiences will be shared from a building professional’s perspective. These experiences have strengthened and accelerated new opportunities as we rebuild an optimal workplace. The session will look at different workplace options in the new paradigm.

In 2010, a privately owned tissue-converting facility in New Brunswick (Irving Tissue) considered itself a well-oiled machine, being able to product 10 million cases of product annually—a huge leap forward from where it started in 1990, with 200,000 cases. The site was piloting a PMO on one of 12 production lines when a vision was pitched to the site leadership team: implementing PMO’s activities and principles on each production line would allow the site to streamline its efforts and result in increased production, with a higher product quality and fewer injuries. This pitch aligned with several of the company’s core values and allowed the leadership team to see there was still substantially more gains to be made at the facility that didn’t necessarily require capital investment, but simply changes to work processes. While this plan didn’t come to fruition, it aligned the leadership team to make reliability a focus rather than just production. This alignment paved the way for several reliability-centred improvement initiatives at the site. The cornerstone achievement of this shift toward reliability was the implementation of “Reliability Windows.” This regular cleaning (two to three times weekly), inspection, and PM task-oriented activity shared between the operations and maintenance groups helped move asset care to a joint effort, rather than just being the responsibility of the maintenance department. This initiative has been a major contributor to the site being able to produce 15 million cases in 2020 (about a 50% increase from 2010—without any additional production lines). This has been a huge advancement in ROA.                Originally presented at MainTrain September 09, 2020   Webcast  presented November 24, 2020 

If you are working in maintenance, reliability, or asset management, but not involved in ‘pulling wrenches’, then communication is a significant part of doing your job effectively. And even if you are pulling wrenches, communication still is important to your work.

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! 

Enbridge Liquids Pipelines is at the midpoint of a multi-year journey to advance the M&R program for its electrical and mechanical assets. This presentation will share successes and challenges while aiming to apply M&R best practices to a midstream pipeline operator. Our initiative will improve M&R processes and culture, with a focus on improving multiple work streams. These include the planning, scheduling, and execution of preventative and predictive maintenance, information management, spare parts, and CMMS use.

Even today, many organizations see maintenance as a necessary evil neglecting the importance it has toward attaining optimum business results. These organizations have maintenance managers, supervisors, and technicians who are responsible for the preservation of their physical assets. Upon talking to and sharing experience with many maintenance colleagues in various countries, I've learned that most maintenance supervisors and managers don't have a formal maintenance educational background, yet they must make important decisions regarding assets affecting their business's bottom line. We learn about maintenance the hard way, learning from equipment failures and guessing how to avoid them by applying what has resulted well in the past and what the equipment manufacturer tells us. When organizations realize they must do something about maintenance to improve their business bottom line, they're exposed to a lot of information about many tools boasting to offering what they need to do better. This presentation will showcase the results of various case studies performed by our consulting firm at crude oil pumping, pharmaceutical, and water treatment organizations located in North and South America. Several methodologies ranging from Uptime (Strategies for Excellence in Maintenance Management) to RCM-R, ACA, RCA, and even PdM were used to tackle situations at the strategic, tactic, and operational levels.

"Who’s on first. What's on second. And I don’t know's on third!" For some, these three simple sentences, which begin with questioning words but don't end with question marks, will appear puzzling. To others, this nostalgic phrase will trigger a grin as they're reminded of the famous 1938 radio play by Abbott and Costello. Regardless of your reaction, these sentences represent a strikingly large gap in asset management, maintenance management, project management, program management, and other domains that leave practitioners feeling confused and infuriated. Who is the real sponsor of the work? What, exactly, is the sponsor supposed to do? And, do we know if the sponsor is the same as the asset manager? Guidance surrounding the role of a sponsor is rather dismal and unstructured while the amount of literature on roles such as maintenance planners, schedulers, reliability professionals, and project managers is overwhelming. Why does such a vacuum exist? This session will provide a framework for the duties of a sponsor and guidance to asset and maintenance practitioners on recognizing a good sponsor or surviving a bad one. We'll demonstrate why the sponsor is not only important for success, but also essential; how the sponsor can best support asset management and maintenance management professionals through asset lifecycles; and the skills and behaviours sponsors should exhibit to ensure the "right" work is being sanctioned.

Many organizations 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 decision-making or rely on technology to guide their basis. In many cases, however, these same organizations approach a gap in tactical deployment and in the ability to draw a connection to the follow-up or pre-emptive actions required to derive value from assets. We'll review the processes for establishing a framework for alignment and priority setting while looking at the techniques used for resiliency and risk management using a technology-agnostic approach. We'll review potential data sources that can be leveraged for decision-making and can reflect the needs and current state of the business environment. Additionally, we'll discuss the relationship and application to the decision-making process.  

Airports are an important economic hub for a region. They help regional economies extend their reach and often create a localized cluster of companies around it, termed “airport cities.” Indeed, airports face many of the same challenges that municipalities do. They have a portfolio of diverse infrastructure that supports a variety of services to customers in a challenging, dynamic environment. There are many stakeholders who have an interest in service levels, and revenues are often less than what is required to meet expectations. Edmonton International Airport (EIA) has implemented an asset management program that began with the successful implementation of a computerized maintenance management system to better understand its cost of service. It has also recently established an asset management strategy that systematically employs risk, strategic goals, and service priority for investment decision-making. This presentation will provide a case study of EIA's progress to date as well as future steps.