2.5 Asset ID & Hierarchy

As maintainers, we know there is a lot of value in what we do. Without our work, plant, and equipment will soon stop and our companies will then go out of business. What we do impacts safety, health, revenues, costs, and company reputation. A dirty little truth about maintenance is that it is only we who work in it, that really know the value of what we do – or do we? We do know our value in qualitative terms, but can we quantify it? Most maintenance can be improved and we know it. We can do things more efficiently, and we can keep things running more reliably. We often know how to do that, but when we want to make those improvements there is no money for them. Why? Most business people know very little about what we do and how it impacts their business. They see maintenance as a repair shop. We fix what breaks. And they know little, or nothing, more. They may know that maintenance represents a significant cost, and they may even know that they can’t get away with cutting it too much. But they do not know the full value of what maintenance can deliver, nor what it takes to deliver it. If you want to make improvements you need a decision-maker, someone with executive-level authority, to back you up. To get that, you will need to explain what value you can deliver, and in terms they can understand. You will need to show them the savings that are possible from doing things more efficiently, and the added revenues that can arise from investment in defining the right work. You will also need to show them how their support is needed to bring operators and the supply chain into the team with you to make those changes happen so that benefits are fully realized. Quantifying value and being simple in how you say it matters.

An Asset Health Index or AHI refers to analysis performed using various asset data to determine the state or condition of the asset. AHI can be used to better assess asset condition, used and useful life, progression toward potential failure, and failure probability. Further, using AHI can also enable the development of optimized maintenance and replacement strategies for assets using a set of objective criteria to assess the true health of the asset. However, entities vary widely in whether they develop Asset Health Indexes (AHIs) for their key assets. For those that do, there are marked differences in the level of rigour and sophistication employed in developing and applying AHIs for effective asset management decision-making. AHI calculations involve identifying and collecting data which may include a review of core asset attributes such as manufacturer, inspection data including field observations, destructive and/or non-destructive test data, maintenance data including historical records, operational records, and asset failure/refurbishment data. In other words, some are core inventory data, some work records, and some inspections or tests. This presentation will go through how to make the best use of asset SMEs and how you can start to develop useful AHIs from what you already know/have. Technically, the process begins with identifying the most critical assets and determining which can best benefit from AHI formulation development. The next steps are used to develop proposed condition factors (CF) and weighting factors (WF) that provide insight into the condition of the assets. Finally, CFs and WFs are used to develop a mathematical algorithm or formulas for the Health Index. We will also discuss how AHI can be used to develop asset management and maintenance strategies – the whole point of the data and analysis in the first place.

The asset hierarchy is often thought of as a way to organize assets so they’re easy to find in the CMMS. While a well-structured asset hierarchy does make work management easier, it’s much more than that. The asset hierarchy, when well conceived and utilized, will ensure the right reliability and costing data can be extracted from the CMMS. This enables more than just micro improvements in reliability involving a single asset; instead, it enables macro views of reliability and cost trends across the entire organization. Setting up an asset hierarchy to support these types of activities requires forethought and planning, but by following some guidelines, any organization can be set up for success. First, the asset hierarchy must have a standard that identifies how all assets will be categorized and described, and the specific data required for each asset class. This is vital, as not all assets warrant the collection of specific data, reducing the burden of the setting of the hierarchy. As assets are categorized, the failure code library can be developed and linked to the specific asset classes. This ensures only relevant failure codes are displayed for the assets, improving the adoption of failure data collection. With the asset hierarchy built and relevant failure data collected, trends can be established across asset classes, similar processes, etc. The trends enable reliability improvements to be implemented across larger swaths of assets, providing rapid improvements in reliability. This presentation will provide guidance in how to develop an effective asset hierarchy based on ISO 14224, how to implement the changes in the CMMS, and finally how to leverage the asset hierarchy to identify macro trends. Without a proper asset hierarchy, any organization will struggle to get meaningful and actionable data from their CMMS to drive reliability.

Oftentimes, maintenance is left to suffer the consequences of otherwise “successfully” completed and handed-over projects. While project teams are more interested in the project constraints of scope, time, and cost at handover, maintenance is concerned with maintainability, reliability, availability, cost, and safety for the duration of the asset lifecycle. This conflict is not often given due consideration, and maintenance is often brought into the team long after the asset has been commissioned and handed over to operations. This presentation will make a strong case for including maintenance at all stages of a project—a case for maintenance readiness. It describes the slowly changing paradigm shift and acceptance (albeit lukewarm) of operations readiness, with no corresponding consideration to maintenance readiness. It uses real-life examples to show that the "cost savings" from not including maintenance in projects is mostly eroded in the first few months of the asset lifecycle. We'll make the case for a paradigm shift toward including maintenance readiness to all projects. Inserting the maintenance team in all the project phases will not only improve asset availability, reliability, and lifecycle cost, but also enhance cross-functional team synergy and professionalism, and ultimately reduce this stress element from maintenance.

Early in 2018, the City of Edmonton adopted an Infrastructure Asset Management Policy to provide clear direction for how the organization should carry out asset management activities to achieve its vision, goal, and objectives. Infrastructure maintenance at the Parks and Roads Services Branch is accountable for all the actions necessary. In order to comply with the recently adopted policy, the branch developed an asset maintenance framework that would allow the section to not only align its practices to the adopted policy but also enable it to manage resource allocation; define clear accountability for financial results as well as for level of services delivered to citizens; and set the foundation for a management system that will allow performance-based reporting on how the execution of the different types of maintenance activities defined in each asset maintenance plan are supporting the expected asset condition levels targeted by the administration. 

Reliability Centered Maintenance – Reengineered, provides an optimized approach to a well established and highly successful method used for determining failure management policies for physical assets. It makes the original method that was developed to enhance flight safety, far more useful in a broad range of industries where asset criticality ranges from high to low. RCM-R® is focused on the science of failures and what must be done to enable long term sustainably reliable operations. If used correctly, RCM-R® is the first step in delivering fewer breakdowns, more productive capacity, lower costs, safer operations and improved environmental performance. Maintenance has a huge impact on most businesses whether its presence is felt or not. RCM-R® ensures that the right work is done to guarantee there are as few nasty surprises as possible that can harm the business in any way. RCM-R® addresses the shortfalls of RCM that have inhibited its broad acceptance in industry. Little new work has been done in the field of RCM since the 1990’s, yet demand for such a method, better adapted to industrial applications is higher than ever and growing. Demographics and ever more complex systems are driving a need to be more efficient in our use of skilled maintenance resources while ensuring first time success – greater effectiveness is needed. RCM-R® was developed to leverage on RCM’s original success at delivering that effectiveness while addressing the concerns of the industrial market. RCM-R® addresses the RCM method and shortfalls in its application. It modifies the method to consider asset and even failure mode criticality so that rigor is applied only where it is truly needed. It removes (within reason) the sources of concern about RCM being overly rigorous and too labor intensive without compromising on its ability to deliver a tailored failure management program for physical assets sensitive to their operational context and application. RCM-R® also provides its practitioners with standard based guidance for determining meaningful failure modes and causes facilitating their analysis for optimum outcome. It places RCM into the Asset Management spectrum strengthening the original method by introducing International Standard based risk management methods for assessing failure risks formally. RCM-R® employs quantitative reliability methods tailoring evidence based decision making whenever historical failure data is available.

Most organisations 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 decisionmaking or rely on technology to guide the basis of decisions. However, in many cases these same organisations approach a gap in tactical deployment and the ability to draw a connection to the follow-up or pre-emptive actions required to derive value from assets. This presentation will review the processes for establishing a framework for alignment and priority setting, while looking at the techniques employed for resiliency and risk management using a technology agnostic approach. We will review potential data sources which can be leveraged for decision-making and which reflect the needs and current state of the business environment. Further, we will discuss the relationship and application to the decision-making process. An overview of the fundamental outcome of key performance indicators and visualized metrics will be demonstrated. Finally, we will investigate the influence on decision making and the level of data confidence.

Due largely to the release of ISO55000x:2014 family of standards, Asset Management is gaining worldwide acceptance as a valid business practice for asset-intensive organizations. The challenge that organizations now face is how to operationalize the principles and move it from “being understood in theory” to being “the way that we work”, to truly distill effective asset management practices and principles to the nooks and crannies of the organization. One key tenet of ISO55000x is the management of asset risk at all levels of asset interaction. On the other side, one area that has been struggling to understand asset management beyond maintenance management is the traditional Maintenance Department. This paper will capture the steps that Veolia North America is taking one of its Municipal Clients through to understand risk at the more granular levels and build risk resilience into its maintenance strategy.Yet for the average Maintenance Manager, the challenge of interpreting asset risk for the organization is still uncharted waters. There are several ways in which the traditional Maintenance Manager can understand the wide breadth of risks facing the asset, determine appropriate responses and communicate them to the appropriate stakeholders. In fact, one or more of these may already be in place in the organization but may not be seen as building risk resilience. This presentation will explore one methodology used by Veolia to develop an asset-centric, risk-based Maintenance Strategy at the City of Winnipeg’s, Waste Water Treatment Plants using a Maintenance Management Maturity Assessment.The City of Winnipeg’s Waste Water Department is at a very interesting juncture in its history, in that there are several major capital upgrades being undertaken, whilst the plants continue to run. The goal of the Maintenance Strategy is therefore two-fold. To maintain the existing levels of service at least whole life cost with risk balanced against the cost of meeting objectives, whilst ensuring that there is a plan to maximise maintenance for the future asset base to realise the benefit of the investment over the whole life of the assets. As a result, in 2016, in collaboration with its selected O&M improvement partner, Veolia North America, the City of Winnipeg’s Waste Water Treatment Plants, went on a path of discovery. Two significant tools of investigation were employed: 1. An Asset Management Maturity Assessment was conducted and 2. The City participated in the National Waste Water Benchmarking Initiative (NWWBI) Maintenance Task Force Survey implemented by AECOM. The Asset Management Maturity Assessment examined 8 fundamental areas of Maintenance Management and outlined positions of excellence that the City hoped to achieve both at the 1-year and 3-year mark from the date of assessment with 2017 being Year 1. The NWWBI Maintenance Task Force Survey examined 42 granular yet, over-lapping areas of Maintenance Management, with 18 of them reporting significant gaps for the City’s Waste Water Treatment Plants. The results of the two analyses were combined into eight (8) key Objectives and the underlying activities required to achieving them over the next three (3) years. These eight (8) Objectives are: 1. Implementation of Asset Condition Assessment Plan (ACAP) 2. Inventory Management Optimization Plan (IMOP) 3. Work Organization Improvement Plan (WOIP) 4. Implementation of Maintenance Quality Strategy (MQS) 5. Financial Capability Improvement Plan (FCIP) 6. Asset Registry Improvement Plan (ARIP) 7. Implementation of Document Management (DM) 8. Revision and Implementation of Asset Criticality Model (ACM)This presentation will examine the detailed plans for each objective, the inter-connectivity and alignment of the Objectives, the Road Map for the next 3 years, the processes for monitoring and continual improvement and the benefits of implementing this approach. Presented at MainTrain 2017