Effective equipment asset 
management is a difficult assignment

Embracing the mission behind MIMOSA can make your life easier

In Webster's, it is only when you get to the last alternative definition that you learn an asset is "an item of value owned." That most people understood an asset to be a financial term usually associated with debt payment was certainly the case in the past. But now, within these pages and in most maintenance arenas, more people are talking about asset management. Not very much of it deals with financial assets.

Much has been written lately about various types of maintenance related asset management concepts. A bare bones definition for equipment asset management is lifetime care of the equipment to obtain greatest value from its use. This covers the equipment from design through installation and operation until the end of its economic life.

Putting more flesh on the definition, equipment asset management is the optimum combination of best practice, technology, organization, and administration directed to gaining greatest lifetime value from process, production, and manufacturing equipment. This definition conceptually links availability; capacity; and the operating and maintenance costs to business conditions and objectives. We accept that the items of value owned to be managed are the key to profitability and bottom-line success as seen from both the executive suite and the maintenance shop.

Pragmatically, this may be only mildly interesting to the typical harried maintenance mechanic, supervisor, or manager. They are not indifferent but find themselves on most days living the metaphor of taking a drink of water from a fire hydrant--an overwhelming experience. We will consider how an asset management process can be implemented in a realistic process without excessive cost and how MIMOSA interfaces enable integrated maintenance management systems.

Converting a typical maintenance program into an asset management program is not just a case of relabeling the program.

Most readers' maintenance plans are built around time-based maintenance, a small amount of condition-based maintenance, with continued frustration over some number of equipment failures that degrade profitability. Trained, knowledgeable people who operate the technology, who make the inspections, who make the decisions about which problem to schedule and plan corrective maintenance accomplish the day in, day out management of these plans. Within almost every organization there is an advocate or believer who knows a focused effort could produce an advanced level of maintenance management with improved evaluation techniques and improved costs and profitability margins. It is to those forward thinkers this article is directed.

Asset management articles advocate program results to be achieved in the future. It is important to lay out the goals and objectives for reaching those well-intentioned markers. With an understanding that equipment asset management begins with the design and fabrication of equipment, most plant maintenance professionals with currently operating plants may wonder what they can do to reap any benefits from this concept. Getting started with an effort that can be sustainable and produce early results is critical to its acceptance.

Converting a typical maintenance program into an asset management program is not just a case of relabeling the program. The prime differentiation to be made is the tight connection with the financial impact of maintenance actions. If you are going to obtain greatest value from refined maintenance practices, you must be able to deal with financial aspects of maintenance matters. Any such financial justification plan must be coordinated closely with senior executives. It only brings frustration if the maintenance staff is unable to communicate in the same financial language as used by the company decision-makers. So, what methods and financial justification program should you use? The company's--whatever justification format it uses. Spend the time and energy to learn how to determine and define maintenance savings and costs using the terminology and techniques of the company's decision-makers.

Historical documentation is important if you are to avoid repeating past mistakes in your revised maintenance program.

What, if anything, must be changed in the maintenance plan for this known-problem equipment requires an assessment of the effectiveness of the current maintenance program? This assessment can be done by outside consultants or people inside the organization, or a combination of both. If done by plant people, a controlled skepticism is necessary to best examine the equipment's critical characteristics, to evaluate its operational performance, to study the maintenance records, to research its parts usage rates, and to evaluate its installation and appropriateness for its intended application. Since this assessment is to determine asset management characteristics, find and retain the costs associated with the existing maintenance program for later comparison. It also means that any changes require estimating the costs for the revised program.

Learning the failure causes for equipment is important when examining problem equipment. Recurring failures need a root cause analysis investigation. Knowledge of what preventive or predictive maintenance was involved routinely helps to understand the effectiveness of the existing maintenance plan. Historical documentation is important if you are to avoid repeating past mistakes in your revised maintenance program.

There are several ways to determine the assignment of condition or time based tasks for specific equipment. A reliability centered maintenance approach is useful for new equipment without any operating history. Studying failure modes and effects and determining applicable and effective countering tasks can be expensive. Less costly studies use similar applications and generic studies. For equipment with a history of maintenance, even if only anecdotal, a study of what has worked well or failed in the past often produces cost-effective results. If a critical safety issue is involved, more costly methods may be justified.

As this approach continues, the need for prioritization becomes more apparent. Attend to equipment critical to production first. Next focus on equipment less critical to production. Performing a task, the need for which was discovered by condition monitoring, is less expensive than the cost of repairing an unmonitored failure.

As stated earlier, asset management requires the financial impact on production to be a factor in determining the maintenance program makeup. Methods exist for evaluating the financial impact even when there is a seasonal variation in production needs or redundant systems share the production responsibility.

It only brings frustration if the maintenance staff is unable to communicate in the same financial language as used by the company decision-makers.

Integrated maintenance management systems are not new. Indeed, there are a number of well-designed systems installed. They work well. However, their connectivity is based on a proprietary or custom set of interfaces. The problem is this. As technology evolves, these custom interfaces must be revised and the cost of their maintenance ever increases. With an open systems standard
interface, the newer technology systems or a product from another vendor fits in seamlessly.

Figure 1 is a model showing how the data from condition assessment technology programs flow into the decision support module and gets converted to information. This information stream passes to the maintenance management system for the management of the real work, procurement of parts, and recording the expenditure of resources. In this example, the data is typical vibration data.

The benefits MIMOSA brings to end user

• Economically attractive delivery of information to gain highest commercial availability, efficiency and value from process, production, and manufacturing equipment assets.
• Least cost, standardized means for open electronic exchange of vital information for a variety of condition measurement and advisory systems; vibration, lubricating and hydraulic oil condition, operating performance, electrical condition, thermography, as well as condition assessment, control, maintenance management, and enterprise information systems.
• Greatest value at least cost through freedom to assemble comprehensive, self-integrating condition assessment systems from multi-source best-for-application components without expensive, inflexible, and confining specialized system integration.
• Enterprise-wide awareness of results, benefits, credibility and business value of optimized maintenance processes and practices through full participation in the information structure.
• Assurance of continuing least cost upward growth and expansion to gain maximum advantages from improvements in knowledge, technology, practice, performance and product features in condition assessment, equipment, maintenance management, controls, and consumer information systems.
• Increased value through maximum use of economical, high performance consumer components with proven reliability, multi-source support and rapid evolution to meet requirements of far larger markets.
• Access to a group of progressive, preference-sharing users and suppliers, a neutral, broad-based forum for the mutually beneficial identification, discussion, and solution of common interest technical, application, and financial issues.
• Accelerated development, introduction, and testing of new ideas for equipment asset management.
• Increased efficiency, results and value gained from condition assessment and equipment asset management.

The benefits MIMOSA brings to suppliers:

• The ability to concentrate resources and investment on highest value, core competency, application optimization and advancement rather than low-value platform and custom interface requirements.
• Bringing new life, acceptance, expansion and success into the equipment asset and condition assessment fields by full participation in advanced information processes.