Asset Strategy Management supports the work management process and ensures the basics of asset care are executed on all assets, says ARMS Reliability chief executive officer Jason Apps
In any organisation, the work management process has a single goal – to support and capture details of effective and efficient execution of maintenance, including both routine maintenance and corrective work. The problem is that the work management process itself has little impact on asset performance and maintenance costs; instead, it’s the routine maintenance executed that is the biggest contributor.
What happens in many organisations is that maintenance plan master data, that is, the data that represents the routine maintenance that will get executed, is changed in an unstructured manner over time, allowing suboptimal maintenance practices to creep in.
Asset Strategy Management is a process that ensures that the basics of asset care are in place on all assets, maintenance is optimised on critical assets and any changes to maintenance plan master data are structured, justified and effective.
Implementing ASM is straightforward, and most organisations have many or all the building blocks in place. The key elements are:
1. Identify all assets and associated components
2. Understand asset criticality
3. Document basic asset care principles for each component type
4. Deploy those basic principles and adjust as required for specific
operating context
5. Group tasks into maintenance plan master data
6. Generate forecasts
7. Implement the process of review with trigger points
Identifying assets and associated components
The first step is to understand exactly what assets you have and the components that make up that asset, including the lower level components. For example, the asset may be a conveyor, but what pulley types are present and how many of each are there?
Understanding asset criticality
If not yet completed, a criticality assessment is needed to make sure the right level of maintenance is deployed to each asset. Ideally a consistent criticality assessment approach is adopted organisation-wide.
Document basic asset care principles
The most important step involves consolidating failure modes and applicable maintenance task content for each component type into a consistent format, structured for the organisation’s master data requirements.
Deploy the basic principles
Once the basic asset care principles are established, they can be deployed to each asset. Minor updates can be made to reflect the requirements of specific installations based on operating context and environment. The process is one of review by exception, so the time to develop is significantly reduced compared with traditional methods of maintenance plan review or optimisation.
Group tasks
The routine maintenance tasks that have been decided for each asset are then grouped into the appropriate maintenance plan master data automatically, based on the master data guidelines for your organisation.
Generate forecasts
Next, forecasts can be generated of maintenance spending, serving two main purposes. First, to provide a forecast of costs, resource use, spares use and so on, so that a continuing comparison of forecast to actual can be used to drive continual review and improvements; and second, to support resource levelling based on the routine maintenance that needs to be executed on an continuing basis.
Implement the process of review
Once the foundation data structure is in place, implementing a process of review ensures that the routine maintenance is always optimised and that any changes to the maintenance plans are justified and based on real data from the work management process. It is critical that appropriate triggers are established so that the review process focuses on where it adds the most value and that the maintenance plans are adjusted as required.
Implementing an ASM process will mean that routine maintenance is always optimised, and the basic principles of asset care are established and, most importantly, maintained on a continuing basis. This in turn will mean the work management process becomes more effective and asset performance will be driven up while cost and risk will be minimised.
Jason Apps is author of Asset Strategy Management ASMx: A Leader’s Guide to Reliability Transformation in the Digital Age
For further information on ASM, visit www.armsreliability.com