[ Insights from the " Asset Management for the 21st Century - Getting Ready for ISO 55000" Seminar, May 2013, Calgary  (Part 4 of 12):This blog is based on a series of interviews with John Woodhouse from the Woodhouse Partnership (TWPL), who delivered this well-received seminar. It is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management Community. ]

Asset management can make a significant impact when companies start thinking about the systems (the collections of assets that provide value) and stop focusing on maintenance of individual components.

Too often in asset management programs, the physical equipment units are used to define the assets. This leads to local optimization of say, a pump and its costs, performance, and reliability, rather than looking at the pumping system and how it contributes to plant performance. Most of the effort goes into maintaining pumps, but the benefits of healthy pumps are only measureable at the system performance level—where the sum of many parts yields lower total costs or increased performance and sustainability.

For example, a well maintained, pump in good condition is of limited value if the operating environment cannot exploit the pump’s capability, the upstream fluid sources are erratic, or the electrical power system is unreliable. Pump management must be coordinated with the management of “pumping” as a system, which must in turn be managed with plant-level performance, plans, and priorities.

Sometimes it is even better to define the functional systems themselves as the assets and individual equipment items as just components. That way it is far easier to optimize operational costs, risks, and performance in line with the plant or organization’s objectives. This higher-level perspective is reflected in the PAS 55 standard for asset management, as shown in the following figure.

Coordinating Asset Management

The graphic above describes the different concerns at different levels of asset management.  Near the top is managing a portfolio of assets to achieve business results in line with a corporate strategy and stakeholder expectations. The next level down is where systems come in: portfolio performance is achieved by managing various types of systems, delivering their required performance at the lowest cost and level of risk. This is the level where many optimizations take place, such as between short-term opportunities and longer term consequences. And within asset systems, the individual assets are in turn managed for lowest total life cycle cost.

One implication of this structure is that objectives cascade downwards and performance information can roll back up. The life cycle characteristics of each asset influence how the asset systems perform and should be managed. The needs and capabilities of each system then determine what can be expected in terms of business results.

In this way, a mature asset management process provides a clear line of sight from organizational strategy all the way down to what gets done to an individual asset, and back up the process in terms of what can be achieved by the assets being managed. This line of sight alignment, when commonly understood across the organization, is the backbone for rapid and sustainable progress.

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

Basics of Warranty Claims: 

With this Business Function you can create and edit warranty claims from service and maintenance documents. You can use a warranty claim to request reimbursement of material costs, labor costs, as well as other costs that arose while rectifying faults in an object. Prerequisite is that a valid warranty exists for the object.

New Features:

• Trigger warranty claim processing from a service document or a maintenance document when the replaced part or service rendered is covered by a warranty contract

• This enables you to recover the price of the part or the labor cost for the repair from the manufacturer.

• Trigger the returns process from the service document or the maintenance document

• Trigger the returns process from a warranty claim document

• Track the status of the return part in the warranty claim document

• Process warranty claim items

Prerequisites:

  You have installed the following components:

• Customer Service Processing

• Warranty Claim Processing 

Master Data:

  1) Create the master warranty VIA Transaction Code-BGM1

  2) Enter the master warranty in Equipment Master Or Functional Location Master

  3) Enter the responsible partner details in Equipment Master or Functional Location Master

  4) Create the Warranty Claim VIA Transaction Code-WTY for Equipment Master

BR

Rakesh

Some Do’s while Discussing, Documenting and Blogging

Jogeswara Rao Kavala

The following is a compilation of few personal views of the author which he felt time to time while posting and participating in Discussions / Documents / Blogs in SCN. This is with an objective to maintain good  forum environment. It is so believed that this post might certainly benefit some, especially beginners, the status to which the author belonged to, not very long ago.

• When you are posting a Discussion or a Blog, be clear in mind about the intended objective, and mention the same.

• As far as possible, ensure the correctness of your answer before it is posted, while providing technical solutions to the forum.
  

• Also focus on good grammar, expressions and good vocabulary with a sole objective  to effectively communicate, what you want to say.

• Structure your post with screen-captures wherever possible. As we know that pictures are the most effective communicating medium.

• Go through thoroughly what you've just posted, and if you find scope to improve the expression use EDIT and do it, until you satisfy and before someone replies to your post, whichever is earlier.     

• You’ve posted and soon realized that your post is not relevant to the query, use Delete facility, to remove your post, before someone replies.

• Avoid guess work. (Though this sometimes scores), This is one area, which very likely leaves you embarrassed.
  

• Suppose someone replied to your query by referring  to an earlier SCN thread and you are benefited. In this situation do not forget to reward helping posts inside the thread by giving a  Like(This is valid in the case of Documents and Blogs also)

• Often it happens that good comments are received, praising the content of the article, but members forget, or in some cases not aware of giving a Like to the article.  Had you given a Like, the Document / Blog would display for a long time on the Home screen making many other members go through the same.

• In a similar way, often it is forgotten, to give a star-rating when a post (Document / Blog) is liked. (Good rating is either 4 stars or 5 stars)

• Please do not forget giving a Like to the replies inside the discussions wherever you liked, even if you are not the author of the thread, or even if you are not participating. Such gestures are very essential to encourage Good Quality replies also this builds good-will among members.

• When you are replying to a thread in a similar lines to an earlier reply in the thread, do mention the name of the member, by using phrase like "As rightly pointed out by ....."

• Also please rate the Original Discussion posts with Stars for their Quality.  (Stars are provided below the original post for this purpose)

• You should even Like the original post (Discussions are often ignored) , by clicking on the link given on the right side of the original post.

• When you've found some article interesting and of your use, and then book-marked this for later reading, then please do go through such book-marks and rate these articles. (Though SCN lists such book-marking under acclaims, this activity does not attact any scores, I suppose something is on the anvil)

• One more important thing is Tagging. We do not Tag our Posts. If you Tag the postswith suitable strings, it will be easy for others to find the same.  See the following picture, the place where to Add Tags  (below the original post)

•   Forum community home page displays related Tags  below the Related Content on SCN head.

         For example, in EAM  it is as under.

• We should avoid to Tag an article with two words relating to same community. For example, If I use both PM and EAM as Tags here this article would appear twice in this space, and thus consumes space of some other article.  ( Let's expect this correction from SCN, if it is possible)

• Also please try to avoid two or three word acclaim comments. It will be helpful and encouraging to the authors, if you can explain briefly, (atleast in a full sentence) what appealed to you,

• Be tolerant to redundant answers, If you choose to inform about the redundancy ( which becomes essential in some cases),  choose your words too.

• Keep away from posting Redundant replies in discussions. This quite likely will put you in a situation.
  

• Beginner?  Do not get discouraged, when you face harsh/critical response to your post (while initial trials to contribute to the discussions). It is very natural that unintentionalredundant answers or mistakes happen. Harsh responses are rarely seen, but do happen. Mistakes do happen by all without exceptions.

• An old and very valid advice, Never react.  If it is a constructive criticism, accept and thank the friend. Answer in a cool state of mind if it is a must.
  

• In situations similar to the above, laugh-it-off, admit if some mistake really happened,  and make use of the emoticons for better expression.

• We have around us in our community itself, few  members (including Moderators) from whom we can learn these things,  who in fact stand as examples for all good practices in the forum. (Perhaps this post is an inspiration from them)

At the end, only to say that this list is not exhaustive, and every member will certainly have his/her views on such many Do's, to provide better knowledge sharing environment.

Cheers

Jogeswara Rao K

Post Script

Can you guess who is the first admirer of your work? ......No clue?..

It's YOU.

I am hinting at a feature presently available for the Authors to rate their own Documents / Blogs (No scores please)

[ Insights from the " Asset Management for the 21st Century - Getting Ready for ISO 55000" Seminar, May 2013, Calgary  (Part 5 of 12):. This blog is based on a series of interviews with John Woodhouse from the Woodhouse Partnership (TWPL), who delivered this well-received seminar. It is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management Community. ]

Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Bhopal, Texas City, Piper Alpha, Macondo.  After traumatic and tragic events, people often exclaim “How could this have happened?” and “It must never be allowed to happen again!” 

Tragedies and catastrophes like these come with direct, indirect and societal consequences that cannot be accounted in any conventional system. Nothing can prepare us for them in a human sense, and no amount of preparation can help us recover from them easily. Nonetheless, we must do the best we can to preconsider and prepare for such events, in the rigor of our preventive efforts and in contingency plans or emergence response. It is part of responsible asset management to think about the ‘unthinkable’.

As much as we would like to, we can’t eliminate risk: there’s no such thing as ‘zero risk’ in operating and managing complex systems.  And, unpleasant as it is to consider and discuss such possibilities, we have to include low probability, catastrophic consequence events in our risk management strategies. Risk management is a core part of asset management, and a professional, disciplined consideration of rare, catastrophic events is part of this responsibility.

But remote probability events are hard to envisage, and even harder to quantify. Similarly, the scale of consequences of major incidents is difficult to consider, and many people simply choose not to think about it. But there is a way of dealing with the subject: of considering the scales of risk and the appropriate asset management implications.

In the UK, the Control of Major Accidents and Hazards (COMAH) legislation includes a requirement for “disproportionality” in risk management. This forces the extra degree of conservatism needed when assessing and managing rare event risks.

Let's explain what is meant by this.

If we estimate an incident as having a 1 in 10 chance of occurring, and the event consequences as $100,000, then the level of risk is 1/10 x 100,000 = $10,000 and a preventive action (or insurance policy) costing less than this would be justifiable.

If, however, the event were rarer, say a 1 in 10,000 chance, with consequences that could be as high as $10 million in impact, a “proportionate” risk assessment would say the risk was the same (1/100000 x 10 million also equals $10,000). However, the rarity of the very rare event means that the quality of our knowledge or estimate is much poorer, and so is our ability to predict potentially massive consequences.  To reflect this weaker information, we have to inflate the fear in case we are wrong.  This is “disproportionality” and it requires a deliberate non-linearity in probability scales and in consequence scales.  Rare, catastrophic events must be assessed as if they were less rare, and have even greater catastrophic consequence, than we would directly estimate.   Asset managers must show that this conservatism is built into their risk management processes in determining how to control such risks, and to what degree. 

We will never eliminate all risk but we can manage it to the best of our ability. And a head-in-the-sand reliance on simply complying with rules and procedures is not an adequate or acceptable practice.

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

[ Insights from the SAP-Centric EAM 2013 Event - Huntington Beach March 2013 ( Part 8 of 12): This is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Community. For the past nine years, the Eventful Group's SAP-Centric North American Event ( Supported by SAP and ASUG ) has brought together the EAM community to network, share ideas and experiences, and explore solutions for Enterprise Asset Management.]

While there is nothing new or surprising about companies taking a stab at simplifying SAP screens to make things easier for workers, what is surprising is that many companies are lax in doing this!

Wesley Dean, Senior Asset Care Engineer at MillerCoors, made a presentation at the SAP-centric EAM conference in March that chronicles the in-house customization of the SAP interface for its maintenance workers. MillerCoors currently runs five plants with about 1,800 workers who use SAP, managing some 35,000 pieces of equipment. With six more breweries slated to go online with SAP in the near future, the company decided to make the move toward a more user-friendly interface for its workers.

"What if SAP were as easy for technicians to use as an ATM machine ?  Creating a simple, one-stop shop transaction inside SAP can help them execute transactions and receive assigned work with ease," said Dean.

Dean and his team created a company specific transaction (ZIW37) to come up with a new Asset Care Desktop. Scheduled work is pushed to users when they log on, and a row of icons simplifies how they can pull up a specific transaction. In addition, SAP user training has been simplified, reducing training hours. So far the customization is a win for MillerCoors, as workers love the one-stop shop functionality.

What MillerCoors did here is provide a mechanism to simplify the capture of business decisions. At the end of the day, we have to tailor the system to capture decisions easily and concisely, allowing workers to record them for analysis purposes. That’s the intent of using SAP. If companies haven’t completed simplification projects or chosen to make the use of SAP more concise, it has serious analytical downstream effects. That’s why Dean’s presentation has so much merit. MillerCoors’ solution is inexpensive, doesn’t trample over SAP, offers a lot of latitude, and is upgradable.

I bet if we were to benchmark the new system against the prior system, we would find the quality of business decisions and information likely improved because users can navigate more freely and perform their tasks more expediently, with higher levels of confidence that they’ve done the right thing.

Isn’t that the best way forward ?

To learn more, read Wesley Dean's presentation. 

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

Need for ATM like User-friendly menu for Plant Maintenance Users

____________________________________________________________________________________

Jogeswara Rao Kavala

Background

A company did an innovative work which achieved a great deal of user-friendliness to the workers, in the area of daily work in SAP.  One day this company comes to know that exactly similar work was done by someone else in some other part of the globe, which was presented at the SAP Centric EAM 2013 and received lot many acclaims.  Such was the situation given rise to this post. (The author belongs to the company mentioned above)

The idea for posting this blog was born after going through the blog Stories from SAP Centric EAM 2013 – “ A Simple Screen Modification Can Renovate a Crafts World “  by Paul Kurchina.

See the following screens.

These are just two screen-parts (I could share here) from several such, we produced and using for user-friendliness in my company.

These include screens for

1. Worker Level (1st picture)
2. Senior Management Level (2nd picture)

These screens were designed to achieve,  the ATM  like user-friendliness to the users, with outputs on single mouse click.

My views here are:

• The presentation about such innovation during the event cited above must have certainly attracted several acclaims, because of the fact that the potential it has got to influence the user-friendliness of end-users (especially workers), which forms the foundation for any SAP-PM implementation to survive.

• These tools have got great significance in plant maintenance, where the worker often is not adequately computer literate. (He certainly needs an ATM sort of SAP screens).

• Even the senior maintenance management need such products. (It has been always difficult for this class too to deal with standard SAP screens).

• I am sure that, there are not 2 or 3 such cases of these innovations or few more. There will be many across the globe, because of the fact that SAP original screens very likely  force companies to discover such tools for their workers.

Purpose of this post is two fold.

1. Express my views on the topic in the referred post, which I think already did,
2. Some Facts and Suggestions  to SAP

Let’s look at the second part

• There is a need to recognize that users compare and expect the degree of user-friendliness of SAP screens with browser based systems they used earlier and even to ATMs as Paulrightly mentioned.

• The issue discussed above is more relevant to Plant Maintenance Environment and such basic needs are required to be addressed through standard programs.

• In the present  SAP modular architecture , the constraints  faced by the Functional modules, caused by the degree of dependency on Technical resources in situations like above should not be undermined.

• Such ATM like screens discussed so far will have benefits beyond the user-friendliness, such as drastic simplification of Training Time and Expenditure as rightly observed by Paul (We can list many other such benefits) 

The Suggestion Time:

It would be very useful to the Plant Maintenance community, if SAP identifies the areas for ATM like user-friendly screens and provide such products in Standard.

In addition OR alternatively,

SAP should provide a tool to Functional people in Screen Programming area (similar to Infoset Queries in Reporting area) which can develop the user-friendly Customized screens required by the users.

The author is a senior maintenance management in a large SAP customer company. He has 24 years shop-floor maintenance exposure and 6 years of ERP (SAP-PM) exposure .

The views expressed by him here are out of his above experience and believed to be more relevant to Plant Maintenance area. Hope it has got a constructive sound.

Thank you

Jogeswara Rao K

[ Insights from the SAP-Centric EAM 2013 Event - Huntington Beach March 2013 ( Part 9 of 12): This is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Community. For the past nine years, the Eventful Group's SAP-Centric North American Event ( Supported by SAP and ASUG ) has brought together the EAM community to network, share ideas and experiences, and explore solutions for Enterprise Asset Management.]

All too often, there’s a problem when operations takes over a project at the handover phase from the engineering, procurement and construction contractors, and tries to operate a facility at nameplate capacity. The transferal is usually riddled with misinformation – or information that is not succinct or clear enough that operations can easily consume it.

Even more disturbing, the information is often inaccurate because change management processes have not been put in place to ensure redlined drawings or updated data books and equipment records are in place for operations. An operation needs a fully functioning library ready to draw upon when taking charge of a facility.

At the SAP-centric EAM Conference in March, Maria Abella, senior manager of process integration at Suncor Energy, and Teresa Brooks, director of process integration at Suncor, presented steps to make information handover at a new facility much easier.

Abella and Brooks offered advice on how to:

• Break down silos to establish governance and stewardship among external and internal stakeholders
• Manage multiple tools and databases effectively to collect and maintain asset data
• Use dashboards for more effective communication

“ In the automobile industry, master data on a $25K vehicle (30,000 parts) and its related repair and replace procedures is readily available for any vehicle to any licensed mechanic (for example, “Snap-On” tools and software). So why is this so difficult to maintain for a multi-billion dollar plant ? " asked Abella.

There are plenty of examples of big projects experiencing an information black hole at the time of startup, resulting in significant production loss and huge safety issues. It wears people out trying to work in an environment where they can’t find the information they need. It makes it tough to do the job of maintaining a facility.

Abella and Brooks offered seven recommendations for building integration literacy between major projects and operations:

1. Establish governance
2. Build a roadmap for asset master data
3. Define ownership and accountability
4. Define operations readiness
5. Establish shared services agreements
6. Build KPIs and dashboards to measure asset information
7. Enable technology to meet interim and long term requirements

As long as we’ve put literacy into play, I like to think of this problem from the standpoint of a library. We’ve forgotten how to be librarians when it comes to handling information. We’ve catapulted this expectation over the fence to IT and are expecting computer systems to auto-magically file, categorize, and govern the information. Well, let me ask you this: how easily can you find your own files ? When was the last time you went searching for a Microsoft Office document that you created, only a short time ago, and knew exactly where you filed it, only to come up empty handed and embarrassed ? I will venture to guess this happens more often than you care to admit. The point is that it’s too easy to create information (data, documents, drawings) and it’s too hard to store them in a readily retrievable library.

It’s great to say, “Hey, we’ll build a factory and we’ll spend billions on it and it’s going to start up on this day and produce X amount of product.” But when we build a physical plant, we must also build a virtual plant of information. It’s a longstanding concept. Therefore the statement above needs to be  “….and the information will be considered an asset and be expected to produce information products of a similar nature to the physical products. ” The challenge is, we create an information requirement definition at a high level and proceed to think everyone involved in the project will provide information to produce a library at the end of the day. This just doesn’t happen.

If we were to physically as part of the project build a library and staff it with librarian to control information coming in and going out, we’d have a much better mechanism for controlling information and reaping its benefits.  Because of regulations, some industries do this well, notably the pharmaceutical, nuclear and airline industries. You expect an airplane to be complete, reliable and safe…..right ? It wouldn’t be that way without information!

So here’s a call to action: Everyone who is involved in managing information, whether they have influence or not, must be aware of the impact they are having. Everyone in the space should take the time to understand the full asset lifecycle of information—from idea to creation to the asset being destroyed. This needs to be managed. There are many places to be educated on this. Intergraph, NRX, SAP, OpenText, and ISO 15926 (there are more) all have information about standards on this topic.

To learn more, viewMaria Abella’s and Teresa Brooks’ presentation

[ Insights from the " Asset Management for the 21st Century - Getting Ready for ISO 55000" Seminar, May 2013, Calgary  (Part 6 of 12):This blog is based on a series of interviews with John Woodhouse from the Woodhouse Partnership (TWPL), who delivered this well-received seminar. It is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management Community. ]

A popular metaphor in asset management is managing assets from “cradle to grave.” At first blush, this sounds compelling. But it is actually an incomplete vision. It is better to begin the management process when the assets are being designed or selected—indeed from the first identification of need or opportunity.

Functional requirements, design, and appropriate asset selection are where some of the biggest prizes are to be had in getting better life cycle value for money. By the time the asset is in the cradle, it’s too late—the ‘DNA’ is already determined, along with 80% of the cost and performance characteristics of the asset over its whole life.

A better metaphor for asset management is from “lust to dust.” In this way, we include the important “desire and conception” stage.  Then, we have a better chance of getting the right assets in the first place.  And the metaphor goes right through to decommissioning, recycling, or disposal.  This backend of the life cycle is fuzzier than you might think. “Grave” implies that an asset simply dies and has to be put in the ground as a unit.  But there are usually possibilities of life extension, recycling, re-sale or alternative usage.  You could have a situation where the only thing that remains is the nameplate.  An asset could have infinite life through the constant replacement of all of the individual components (look at the number of old VW bugs still on the roads today!). 

Another dusty aspect of the backend of the life cycle is associated with residual liabilities. Even when you’ve decommissioned an asset, you need to be aware of any risks or liabilities that exist beyond that point because they’re part of the cost of ownership. The nuclear sector is an obvious example, or the environmental cleanup responsibilities of chemical process plants. In the construction world, architects have a 20-year personal consequences liability, even after they’ve finished their design job.

Even when we extend our management of asset life cycles to cover lust to dust, there are complexities and blurred realities to consider:

1.     Defining life stages. The life stages may not be clear-cut; the asset may go through cycles of creation, usage, disposal, new acquisition, re-usage, modification, partial decommissioning and recycling again, passing through different functions, configurations and ownerships.

2.     Possibility of infinite asset life. An asset could have an infinite life if it is defined at a functional system level (rather than as an independent and disposable unit). It may be possible, for example, to sustain a system-level asset indefinitely through maintenance and renewal of the component elements.

And what if the responsibility for managing the asset is split across organizational boundaries, either in different life cycle stages (construction by one company, sold for usage by another, and maintained by a third)?   What if it forms part of a bigger system that has part-ownership and management responsibility by different organizations (train operators and track infrastructure companies)?  How should the responsibility, costs, and risks for the asset life cycles then be apportioned? 

In practice, the most useful interpretation is to be selfish—defining life cycles only from the viewpoint of organization’s ownership or contractual responsibility (and therefore asset management obligations and value realization opportunities). This is also the position taken in the ISO 55000 standard for asset management which defines the life cycle as “the stages involved in the management of an asset”, where an asset is “an item that has potential or actual value to an organization”.  After all, asset life cycle management is complex enough already.

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

[ Insights from the SAP-Centric EAM 2013 Event - Huntington Beach March 2013 ( Part 10 of 12): This is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Community. For the past nine years, the Eventful Group's SAP-Centric North American Event ( Supported by SAP and ASUG ) has brought together the EAM community to network, share ideas and experiences, and explore solutions for Enterprise Asset Management.]

This post is based on the presentation " Data Quality Taxonomy & Failure Coding Structure at Owens Corning  "   by Brian Gilson, Lead Reliability Project Manager at Owens Corning Sales and Ralph Hanneman, Senior Consultant at Meridium at the Huntington Beach SAP-Centric EAM 2013 Community event in March.

In this age of industry and technology maintenance professionals need to use failure coding to identify the bad actors among their assets. The purpose behind this process is simple: Equipment breakage and failure diminishes plant capacity, and it’s up to maintenance to get the plant back up to capacity after a failure occurs.  

Tracking such failures through some type of statistical coding structure allows maintenance to trend what the failures are. The airline industry is the best at this. By going through rigorous failure analyses, the industry has improved reliability exponentially, to the point where today we don’t consider the risk of flying from a reliability perspective. Most companies are trying to achieve similar reliability results using SAP to capture the coding.  The problem: In my experience, no one can ever agree on what the coding structure should be for long enough to make it worthwhile.

The folks at Owens Corning did come to an agreement, which was the basis for the presentation by OC’s Brian Gilson and Meridium’s Ralph Hanneman. In a nutshell, Owens Corning needed to do something different. The company was running multiple versions of SAP, had no standard work management process, no asset classification data was being used, and a one-size-fits-all failure coding system was not working well. Things had to change. Working with Meridium, Owens Corning came up with a system based on a standard that many companies are now adapting to suit their needs, ISO-14224-2006.

The results were impressive. People use the new structure and are committed to it, and coding mismatch errors (where damage codes do not match part codes) have been eliminated.

Hanneman and Gilson quickly saw positive results from their labors. Summing this up: "Simple, robust and accurate failure reporting and asset classification in SAP can be a reality today. Just imagine ... ease of use by a craftsperson, quality data stored for reliability analysis, and an easy methodology for querying the data.”

The solution not only enabled bad actor analysis, but also focused visibility on systemic failures with laser like precision. Oft times it is the small failures that take place across a population of dissimilar assets that are affecting the plants performance. Without a good design for failure coding these are very difficult to identify. Early results proved the value in the solution.

Kudos to Owens Corning and Meridium for not only implementing a new coding system, but measuring its efficiency. In my experience, what a lot of companies do is make a change, but then forget to take the next logical step. When they find patterns of failure in equipment or parts, do they go to the manufacturer and ask them to eradicate the problem? If it’s an internal matter, do they make the fix themselves?  Do they use their analysis to determine what training or techniques are needed, putting those in place to deliver results and improve equipment availability.

The lesson here is don’t just change the coding structure. Perform code reporting analysis and asset performance management, which will ultimately eradicate failures from facilities. And isn’t that the goal of maintenance and reliability departments ?

To learn more, read a related blog post about the implementation and view the PowerPoint of this presentation.

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

[ Insights from the "Asset Management for the 21st Century—Getting Ready for ISO 55000” Seminar, May 2013, Calgary (Part 7 of 12):This blog is based on a series of interviews with John Woodhouse from the Woodhouse Partnership (TWPL), who delivered this well-received seminar. It is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management Community. ]

Asset management is a process that is often confused with asset maintenance. IT’s role in supporting maintenance is usually to hold information about the assets and facilitate the planning and control of work orders.

But asset management is actually a management science, with a business dimension, and this allows IT to play a more significant role to improve the component processes as well as the larger system of managing the assets for maximum value over their whole life cycle.

Here are ways in which IT supports asset management and how that support can be extended:

Data processing. Asset management involves good decision-making, and decisions should be based on facts wherever possible. This requires collection, interpretation, and retention of data. IT’s involvement in this can be positive if the purpose of the data collection and retention is clear, or negative if it creates or compounds confusion, or merely automates inappropriate processes.

Information management. The volume, diversity, and complexity of assets and asset systems means that information is correspondingly large scale, varied, and complex. So information systems are needed to hold it, navigate it, and sustain its integrity. In addition, IT should have the capability to properly present this complex data to the target audiences that need to understand and use such information. For example, geographic information systems (GIS) can help to correlate and navigate asset technical information, work information, and systems, providing geographical or spatial information in a visual context. 

Control of workflow. IT support is vital for control, coordination, and recording of the multidimensional activities of managing assets. This is because planning work, achieving consistency in task specifications, and capturing feedback are also high volume, complex processes. An example of a process is the planning and work management of a major plant shutdown, which could entail a million man-hours of diverse, often safety-critical tasks and involve multiple contractors.

Objectivity in identifying and solving problems. Continual improvement requires focus on the real problems and opportunities, and IT systems can assist with identifying, investigating, quantifying, and prioritizing performance, reliability, or cost improvement opportunities.

If done right, IT can be the linkage—the single source of truth—to different parts of the business, providing disparate functional interests (finance, operations, and safety assurance, for example) with the same critical source material, so everyone contributes to, and works with, the same set of facts.

PAS 55 and ISO 55000 standards help to define what needs to be done for coordinated asset management.   And IT is one of the vital enablers that can facilitate individual activities and also help to integrate and align the different processes to deliver better overall value the business.

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

Insights from the SAP-Centric EAM 2013 Event - Huntington Beach March 2013 (Part 11 of 12) : This is part of a twelve part blog series brought to you by Norm  Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing  experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Community.  For the past nine years, the Eventful Group's SAP-Centric EAM North American Event ( Supported by SAP and ASUG ) has brought together  the EAM community to network, share ideas and experiences, and explore  solutions for Enterprise Asset Management.

This post is based on a presentation by Karsten Hauschild, LoB EAM, SAP Labs LLC, at the Huntington Beach SAP-Centric EAM 2013 Community event in March.

There are 50 billion machines in the world. That’s more machines than people. Annual global maintenance spend is close to half a trillion dollars ($447 billion). These two key facts presented by SAP’s Karsten Hauschild illuminate a challenge in the EAM world that can’t be understated: Whether we like it or not, we’ve created a situation that demands mobility.

We’ve created remote installations of compressors and of transmission lines with complicated structures in hard-to-reach places that are often unsafe and risky to maintain. Yet technology hasn’t kept up with the ability to construct asset-intensive facilities in those remote locations.

Conversely, the consumer world has kept up. We can travel around the world with mobile devices and for the most part transmit and receive data from anywhere with a connection. With a satellite phone, the sky’s the limit, literally.

Hauschild’s talk took the idea of mobility in remote places much further. He argued that mobility is necessary for good asset management practices, enabling workers to do an number of tasks such as: collect and manage samples, conduct operator rounds, manage inventory, and ship and deliver products, among many others—anywhere, anytime.

The session elaborated on SAP’s strategy, solutions, and roadmap for mobile asset management, highlighting SAP’s solutions based on the company Syclo which was acquired by SAP in 2012. If we think about what ERP systems did for the accounting world, perhaps SAP has the same capability from a mobility perspective to fill the large gap between mobile functionality for the maintenance worker and ERP functionality for the office worker.

This would lead to better reliability for maintenance and engineering departments, which could allow for asset management in real-time, without delays from the wrong materials received or the wrong information being communicated. That’s not to say that mobile isn’t working within the maintenance space. "Using mobile solutions, SAP EAM customers have reduced downtime/production delays by 20-30 percent and maintenance backlogs by up to 60 percent," said Hauschild.

So mobile management’s time has come. There is the question, however, whether the EAM community is ready to adopt, embrace, and use mobile. Let’s face it: most of us have been exposed to mobile projects that have provided little benefit. That’s why I recommend looking hard at mobility before you leap. Will your workers really use it? Will it truly result in increased efficiency?

Start slow, talk to other SAP customers who have mobility programs, and don’t just jump on the mobility bandwagon.

To learn more, view Karsten Hauschild’s PowerPoint presentation

.

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

[ Insights from the "Asset Management for the 21st Century—Getting Ready for ISO 55000” Seminar, May 2013, Calgary (Part 8 of 12):This blog is based on a series of interviews with John Woodhouse from the Woodhouse Partnership (TWPL), who delivered this well-received seminar. It is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management Community. ]

One of biggest mistakes that is made in trying to improve asset-intensive businesses is the thought that an asset management system is simply a software solution. Yet is it surprisingly common to find people who think that because they have EAM or CMMS software that holds a register of assets and helps to plan and schedule work orders for maintenance, that this somehow equates to an “asset management system” (a coordinated and integrated system of management—like a quality management system).

While it’s good to have an EAM or CMMS tool, because you want to be able to track assets and control work, an Asset Management System is a much higher level construct—a governance and coordination layer that involves alignment of strategic business objectives with the contributions you’re getting from each of the asset systems and the life cycle activities that are worth doing. Asset management is about getting best value-for-money from assets, not just maintaining them. So by looking at things from a maintenance perspective, you’re leaving a lot of the opportunities and benefits of asset management on the table. Here are a few things that asset management does that go beyond what asset maintenance can do.

Asset management looks at the whole asset life cycle, such as considering at the design stage how to eliminate the need for maintenance, how to improve operability, or how to extend the achievable life cycle. And in the environment of aging assets, when a maintainer’s concerns are usually “How do I keep these assets going?” an asset manager’s viewpoint would be “How should I manage the risks?”, and,“Is enhanced maintenance worthwhile or should I replace the assets, and if so, when, and with what?”

Asset management makes value realization the primary, shared goal for everyone, in contrast to the siloed objectives of separate groups fighting each other (e.g., operations ‘sweating’ the assets, finance trying to cut costs, and project management seeking ‘on time and under budget’ whatever the consequences for others). And value manifests itself not just with asset performance and financial success, but also through satisfying other stakeholder expectations—such as safety assurance, brand reputation, and environmental responsibility.  So value realization involves handling competing priorities, and asset managers have to understand and deal with various trade-offs to find and demonstrate the optimal compromise. Such trade-offs include costs versus risks versus performance, short term versus long term, capital costs versus operating costs, and so on.

An effective asset management system aligns business objectives with what gets done day-to-day. Values are clearly defined and quantified, including risks, criticalities, and decision-making criteria. The entire organization has the same agenda: everybody is part of asset management. Asset care (maintenance) is an important contributor to this, but is only one dimension of asset management. Similarly, while an EAM or CMMS system can be a powerful tool for information management and work control, such technology is just one of the enablers for better activity and resource coordination, process integration, and data-driven decision-making. A management system for asset management includes all these and a whole lot more—as identified in the PAS55: 2008 and ISO55000 standards (see www.ISO55000.info).

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

[ Insights from the SAP-Centric EAM 2013 Event - Huntington Beach March 2013 ( Part 12 of 12): This is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) Community. For the past nine years, the Eventful Group's SAP-Centric North American Event ( Supported by SAP and ASUG ) has brought together the EAM community to network, share ideas and experiences, and explore solutions for Enterprise Asset Management.]

This post is based on a very highly rated keynote presentation by Mark Foster, Managing Director of Revisia Ltd., at the Huntington Beach SAP-Centric EAM 2013 Community event in March.

Listening to Mark Foster’s keynote speech on 3D visualization, the book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work came to mind. Author Matthew Crawford writes about a disconnect between human and machine and how working with one’s hands and understanding the mechanics of things is becoming a lost art. Some examples of this from Crawford: Washrooms now have infrared mechanisms that detect movement, making the flushing of toilets and turning on and off faucets automated. And some cars don’t have dipsticks anymore, replaced with warning indicators and out-of-the-way gauges.

Crawford’s book illustrates that slowly but surely we’re removing the human aspect from our interaction with machines. This interaction has existed since the industrial revolution and the early days of the automobile and mechanical equipment. What does this have to do with 3D visualization in Enterprise Asset Management? Quite a bit.

In his keynote, Foster, who founded Revisia Ltd., an Auckland-based 3D industrial visualization consulting firm, talked about his experience with long-time client New Zealand Steel. At the plant, 50 percent of the workers are over 50 years old, and 20 percent are over 55. From a maintenance point of view, the veteran crew has built up a large body of knowledge on how plant assets work and how they can be repaired when they don’t work. Unfortunately, much of what they know is in their heads.

As these 50-somethings retire, how can the plant help a new generation of workers—one that isn’t as mechanically inclined as their predecessors—do their jobs? Through 3D visualization of assets, said Foster. Visualization can be a key component of knowledge capture. It also crosses educational and language barriers. But 3D visualization can do much more. It can be a tool for training, education, simulation, and testing—which ultimately makes 3D visualization an effectiveness and efficiency tool as well.

Over the last several years, Foster, who one would consider a pioneer of 3D visualization in the maintenance field, has pushed the boundaries of what is possible at New Zealand Steel. Maintenance personnel now have access to a living library of knowledge that is wrapped around lightweight, interactive 3D animations and virtual equipment models linked to SAP.

"The visual plant can be likened to having a pair of X-ray vision goggles for your plant—enabling real-world transparency of your assets while navigating through layers of digital asset information," said Foster.

Here are his visualization takeaways:

- Embrace technology in your tribe. It’s here to stay.

- Capture knowledge before it walks offsite. As baby boomers retire, what will you do to enable the next generation of maintainers?

- Your 3D effort doesn’t have to be bigger than Ben Hur. You can chip away and over time you will create a 3D-enabled plant.

We urge anyone in the maintenance realm to think out of the box—not in 1D or 2D, but 3D. It’s much easier to do this today, as SAP offers its SAP Visual Enterprise solution. Facilities struggle with training and education—and that includes the lack of visual training in 3D. We can make a difference by encouraging the use of 3D models in EAM.

You too can move from this

To 3D

And 3D linked to SAP EAM

To learn more, watch the video of Mark Foster’s presentation and read the PowerPoint.

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

[ Insights from the “Asset Management for the 21st Century—Getting Ready for ISO 55000” Seminar, May 2013, Calgary (Part 9 of 12):This blog is based on a series of interviews with John Woodhouse from the Woodhouse Partnership (TWPL), who delivered this well-received seminar. It is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management Community. ]

When an organization implements EAM software, it’s a challenge because you are introducing a system to track assets and manage maintenance work at the same time as enabling (or constraining, for greater consistency) some complex, cross-disciplinary business processes such as planning, resource coordination, performance reporting, and decision-support.  So two levels of thinking are needed—the daily mechanics of data models, work orders, and information flows, as well as the more strategic level: “What do we want or need to do in the first place, and how can we use the information system to get better at it?”  

To successfully implement EAM software in line with the full range of asset management activities (and not just maintenance management), you have to address both levels at once. Any large enterprise software application can be a challenge to implement. But an EAM system, because it affects most of the organization, is one of the most difficult to effectively deploy. Here are a few of the most common mistakes that people make when implementing enterprise asset management software.

Big is bad, small is good. The chance of failure rises geometrically with the scale of IT projects, especially if they are cross-disciplinary. And if the project gets too big, the truth about its poor cost/benefit ratio is often hidden through embarrassment, vested interests, or a sense of powerlessness to tame the beast. It’s better to go through a prioritized series of smaller, more manageable stages than to try to do it in one big integrated systems project.

Mismatch between IT capability and the organization’s level of understanding of asset management processes. Underexploited technology is an expensive waste, and insufficient sophistication leads to frustration and disillusionment. IT innovation occurs at a very different pace to that of organizational maturity or workforce understanding of the technology. Tied into this common misalignment of ‘capability versus readiness’ is the lure of the flashing lights—the overselling of (and gullible belief in) a fancy technology that will somehow make all the problems go away. Instead, mistimed or overly sophisticated technologies can even make problems worse, such as helping you to do the wrong things quicker, or introducing more cost and confusion.

Insufficient investment in training, communications, and engagement. System developers and integrators rarely appreciate the importance and scale of efforts needed to address human factors, and when IT budgets overrun (not unusual!), the training budget often gets raided. And training methods are often naive and shallow—out of touch with the human factors needed to establish competency and confidence.

Data quality is a moving target. Setting a fixed target such as “I want all data to meet a plus or minus 5% accuracy” is a completely inappropriate and false hope. A fixed target for data quality is a distraction from reality. Spurious accuracy is an endemic weakness of most EAM systems (e.g., the system forcing you to enter a cost to 2 decimal places even if the value is only known to +/- 30%). So too is the common perception that available hard data is either pretty good or total rubbish. Uncertainty and confidence limits, range estimates, and fuzzy knowledge are all areas where EAM systems struggle, yet they are a reality of asset management. Forcing uncertain information into EAM hard-edged boxes, or believing information just because it is presented in a multiple digit format, leads to loss of long-term credibility and support for the system.

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

[ Insights from the “Asset Management for the 21st Century—Getting Ready for ISO 55000” Seminar, May 2013, Calgary (Part 10 of 12):This blog is based on a series of interviews with John Woodhouse from the Woodhouse Partnership (TWPL), who delivered this well-received seminar. It is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management Community. ]

When trying to support asset management, CIOs typically subdivide the problem to get their heads around it and create models that center around individual physical asset records on the asset register. This makes the data library simpler (asset attributes are more consistent if they are structured by asset type, and at least some transactional data is asset type-specific) but, from the business value perspective, it is usually better to look at the way in which diverse assets work together in functional systems to deliver value and business results (which is why the assets exist in the first place). This system is harder from the IT modeling perspective, since systems usually comprise a mix of asset types, functional locations, and overlapping system and sub-system hierarchies and have complex performance interdependencies. However, it does reflect how we actually use assets to generate value—so it aligns better with performance outcomes, risks, criticalities, and value focus.

We also tend to do thingsto individual assets (e.g., inspection, maintenance, or renewal) but measure and getbenefitsfrom the systems in which they operate. So determining the right thing to do, and when to do it, requires us to evaluate impact at the systems level for costs typically incurred at the component asset level. A systems’ perspective is therefore essential for optimized decision-making, work prioritization, and delivering best value-for-money. It also means that you must understand what business outcomes are desired, how the various asset systems contribute to these, and only then how the individual components (assets) contribute to the performance of the systems. Dealing with assets as if there were independent data elements, needing maintenance and accumulating performance history, is like grouping parts of a jigsaw puzzle by their similarity of shape instead of referring to the overall picture and how neighboring pieces fit together.

Let’s look at electric motors as an example. Some asset management requirements and data attributes are evidently linked to the fact that it is an electric motor (rather than, for example, a pipe or an instrument).  But the same design of motor should receive very different asset management strategies, data and performance tracking depending on its functional location (or system context): such as if it has an installed standby alongside it, or if it is used only two hours a day, or if it is in a business critical role with big failure consequences. These factors are usually considered in strategy development (e.g. RCM and RBI studies) but not often mirrored in EAM systems and data structures.

Strategic planning of business priorities (e.g., investments and improvement programs) is primarily a top-down process, informed by bottom-up asset realities (constraints and opportunities in what is possible, given the assets’ condition, performance, flexibilities, etc.).  Asset systems are where these two influences collide—the performance desires of the business versus the component asset capabilities and constraints.  So, in the pyramid of assets in the total portfolio, it is the operational systems level at which strategy needs to be most carefully optimized: it is the negotiation layer, where stretch targets get set and challenged, and it is the layer where success or failure needs to be measured and reported.

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

[ Insights from the “Asset Management for the 21st Century—Getting Ready for ISO 55000” Seminar, May 2013, Calgary (Part 11 of 12):This blog is based on a series of interviews with John Woodhouse from the Woodhouse Partnership (TWPL), who delivered this well-received seminar. It is part of a blog series brought to you by Norm Poynter and Paul Kurchina, designed to inspire and educate by sharing experiences with the SAP Enterprise Asset Management Community. ]

In the not so distant past, most enterprise applications were based on a range of data that was heavily constrained by what was collectable. It was hard to acquire data and ensure it was of high quality (and it still is for some types of data!). Now in the modern world, with the Internet of Things and the ability to collect data from a variety of different sources, automatically in many cases, you can easily end up with overwhelming amounts of data. But Big Data can often result in Big Confusion.

Some of the data has a natural home, such as asset registers and technical records. Some can be distilled, analyzed and converted into useful management information. But a large amount of it falls under the category of ‘it might be useful one day’—a large, often unstructured mix of activity records, asset performance and condition attributes, sometimes having localized or temporary usage but often collected just because it is now easily collectable.

The real challenges therefore are to understand what data is worth collecting in the first place, and why (how it would and should be used). Then we have to put it into organized repositories that are more like a library and less like a swamp. Here are some ideas on how you make sure that you can store more relevant data, with clearer understanding of why it is needed, without it becoming a messy liability that is neither used nor trusted.

Step 1 think of data as part of a demand-driven supply chain in which justification for collection, retention and usage has to be made from the business risk or cost of not having it (to the appropriate standard at the right time).  The apparently low cost of acquiring data and the motive that ‘it might prove useful’ are not enough to justify collection and retention. This bucks the trend of data provision being seen as an availability-driven process that triggers a search of usages. Demand-driven thinking requires greater understanding of how the data will be used, selective extractions from it, and what business value is achieved from using it.

The SALVO Project, a multi-industry R&D program to develop innovative approaches to asset management decision-making, has yielded good examples of this approach. Three of the necessary six steps in the SALVO decision-making process illuminate the demand-driven data specification.  Step 1, “Identify problems and improvement opportunities” spells out the business impact criteria for which assets need what attention in the first place, and the desirable evidence to support this identification. This includes definition of asset health indices (relevant mix of performance and condition features) and criticality measures.

Step 2 is the drill-down into the identified problems or improvement opportunities to ask why they are problems (root cause analysis).  This often reveals a mismatch between expectations and realities in the use of data to demonstrate patterns and correlations.  The noise in the system, the inherent limitations of data samples, and the volatile business environments in which data is collected (including consistency of collection method) mean that pattern-finding or ‘non-randomness’ is rarely provable, irrespective of the clever data analytics that are applied. Except in very rare cases, the available data will normally be constrained and ‘censored’ in various directions, so the collectable evidence needs to be used with great care—and with a healthy dose of realism and ‘tacit knowledge’ from asset design, operations, and maintenance experts.

Step 3 of SALVO covers the selection of potential actions or interventions, and these can be a far wider range of options than the technical tasks normally considered (such as inspection, maintenance or renewal).   SALVO has identified 42 practical options that might be applicable to solve asset management problems.

Step 4 then covers the business value-for-money evaluation of the potential solutions, requiring assumptions and, if obtainable, evidence of costs and short-term and long-term consequences. This step combines observable facts (mostly helpful in quantifying the ‘do nothing’ implications) with external data needs and the tacit knowledge of the experts in forecasting and estimating the degrees of improvement that might be achievable. This is a stage where reliance on collectable hard data is fairly limited, but at least we can be clear about the questions that need to be asked (that is, what data is desirable to support the decisions). SALVO has mapped the information needs for all 42 common decision and intervention types — the information required to determine if the interventions are worthwhile and, if so, when. For example, there are 13 specific questions or data elements that must be considered in deciding whether to buy a critical spare part and how many to hold. These decision-specific checklists help to focus on the relevant and useful information within the background swamp of confusing evidence. They, and a ‘what if?’ approach within the evaluation process, reveal the role of the data to support decisions.  They demonstrate the business value of collecting the right stuff, by quantifying the ‘cost of uncertainty’ when forced to rely on range estimates or assumptions.

For more information, here's a post with all of the links to the published blogs in this series.

It was not that long ago ( March 2013 ) that the Eventful Group's SAP-Centric EAM 2013 North American Event  ( Supported by SAP and ASUG ) was held in Huntington Beach, California. This event brought together the EAM community to network, share ideas and experiences, and explore solutions for Enterprise Asset Management. We were very fortunate to hear excellent presentations from SAP Customers, Partners and SAP Experts.

In reflecting back on 2013 as we approach the end of yet another year, I wanted to share with you some of the quotes that I obtained covering most of the SAP Centric EAM 2013 speakers. These quotes covered a variety of different EAM focused topic areas.

For more detail on some of the highlighted presentations from the SAP-Centric EAM 2013 Event - See the 12 Part Blog Series.

Another year is soon to begin and with that SAP Centric EAM 2014 is fast approaching, I have attended the SAP Centric EAM event ever year for the past nine years and I am looking forward to the upcoming tenth year of this event. I have already registered, booked my hotel and plane ticket ...Austin will be a lot warmed than my home town of Calgary in February, so this is yet another added bonus to attending this event.

I am really looking forward to February 24 - 27, 2014  in Austin, Texas for what should be our best SAP Centric EAM event ever, especially given the excellent sessions and speakers that have been scheduled tp participate in the program. Looking forward to more great EAM insights and speaker quotes from this upcoming event.

Enjoy these quotes and I hope these words of wisdom inspire you as they have inspired the people that attended the SAP Centric 2013 Event.

I would be interested in hearing what is your favorite speaker quote from the many great quotes to chose from in list below ?

Keynote Speaker Quotes -  SAP Centric EAM 2013

SAP Enterprise Asset Management - Enabling Asset Managers and Maintenance Professionals

"Of course you can use your SAP system to support maintenance execution, but imagine how life could be if you used it for linking asset management to your business objectives."

Achim Krueger, SAP

The Top Five Transformations in SAP to Get Ahead and Stay Ahead in a Global Market

" The future value opportunities for your business can be found in your data, make sure your data is accurate and reliable. "

Joseph Grobler, Reveal USA

The Next Great Innovative Leap: Design for ROI

“Our skyscrapers, office parks and plants aren’t filled with process flow diagrams.  They are filled with people.  Here is where innovation will be discovered.”

Harold Hambrose, Electronic Ink

Achieving 100% Reliability: Learning from Top NASCAR Teams

"Why is it that we often struggle to improve the way our equipment and facilities run - faster, better, consistently ? It should be a lot easier... and it can be easy. Reliability is more about the 'human factors' than it is about new technologies and tools."

Robert (Bob) Williamson, Strategic Work Systems

How Adding a Visual Layer to EAM Brings New Depth in Maintenance

" The visual plant can be likened to having a pair of X-ray vision goggles for your plant - enabling real world transparency of your assets while navigating through layers of digital asset information.  "

Mark Foster,  Revisia

What Every EAM Professional Needs to Know about Asset Management Standards

“Unless organizations can remove the silos between their financial, engineering, operational, and maintenance organizations, they will never fully realize the benefits that they could achieve with asset management strategies.”

Terry Wireman, Vesta Partners

Main Program Speaker Quotes - SAP Centric EAM 2013


Building Integration Literacy between Major Projects & Operations

" In the automobile industry, master data on a $25K vehicle (30,000 parts) & their related repair & replace procedures is readily available for any vehicle to any licensed mechanic (i.e. “Snap-On” tools & software). So why is this surprisingly difficult to attain & maintain for a  multi-billion dollar plant. "

Mario Abella, Suncor

Improving Work Planning & Scheduling Using Root Cause Analysis

" We need simple robust processes to make our tools, like SAP, work for us. Then we need to stick to the process and not cheat. Then if the processes isn’t working fix it, but above all, don’t cheat. "

Keith Berriman, Agrium

A Simple Screen Modification Can Renovate a Crafts World

" What if SAP were as easy for technicians to use as an ATM machine?  Creating a simple, “One-Stop-Shop” transaction inside SAP can help them execute transactions and receive assigned work with ease.  "

Wes Dean, MillerCoors

Mobility Challenges Beyond the Application

"In designing a mobile application, Customers should design the process, where-as, Users should design the screens."

Marty Johnson, ConocoPhillips

SAP Asset Data Quality Rapid Deployment Solution

"  You cannot undertake effective asset management without good quality asset information ”

Dean Fitt, SAP

Using BOMs to Gain Planning & Scheduling Efficiencies

“The true value of SAP EAM is the integration with all the modules, if your company is not taking advantage of the integration then you are missing pieces to the puzzle.”

Jeff Smith, Fairfax Water

Plant Maintenance and Project Systems Integration for Turnarounds

" Rely on the data and build with what you know, use Project Systems to tell you more about your Plant Maintenance. "

Jason Seymour, Dow Corning

ROUNDTABLE: Connecting EAM Metrics to Business Goals

" To get the respect maintenance deserves, show the connection between your goals and C-Suite metrics which are in the annual report.  Then, you can obtain and retain management support. "

Ralph Rio, ARC Advisory Group

Work Clearance Management: Operational Switching Achieves Greater Safety and Best Practice Compliance

“ SAP Work Clearance Management is an exceptional way to improve operational safety and integrate your isolation process with your maintenance process – would I do it over again ?  You bet – only much sooner ! ”

Wendy Underhill, Department of Water Resources

Optimizing Resource Planning with Real-Time SAP

" Maintenance schedulers should provide a challenging schedule, not an impossible schedule. By ensuring that resources are appropriately utilized throughout the plant and clear expectations are set, we set our trades up for success.”

Sarah Jo Rowley, Hemlock Semiconductor

Improving Productivity and User Acceptance within SAP Plant Maintenance

“You are implementing your EAM solution in a new area. Time and people are scarce. How do you increase buy in, save time, and still get your required data ?  Simplify the user interface. ”

Jason Moore, Marathon Oil

" It's all about making SAP EAM flexible, accessible, and mobile.  Enable and deploy your Maintenance workforce anywhere, anytime. "

DeeDee Kato, Synactive

Update on EAM Enhancement Packages SAP

“ Enhancement packages and business functions enable you to considerably simplify the process of introducing and using new SAP developments for Enterprise Asset Management. You can selectively introduce individual new developments to optimize selected business processes. ”

Dean Fitt, SAP

Managing the T&D Network: An SAP-GIS Integrated Approach

Cesar Martinez, Hydro One Networks
Tyler Towers, Hydro One Networks

Leveraging SAP HANA for Insight in your Maintenance Operations

" SAP HANA is groundbreaking technology that will allow you to aggregate and analyze asset data to gain insight you may not have believed possible in the past. "

Joyce Swanke, SAP

SAP PM/EAM Continuous Improvement through the Cycle of Communication

“Pay now or pay forever.  When data is wrong or missing, invest the time and resources to ensure accuracy.  Otherwise, you will be doomed to pay for that single error multiple times throughout the life of the asset.“

Alex Lackner, Dow Corning

Effective Data Governance for Material Mass Update

"Data Governance for Materials Management is not just about establishing the IT systems and data requirements for controlling master data, it's about empowering field staff with simple tools to manage the process.  Material updates made easy."

Rex Ahlstrom, BackOffice Associates

Marathon Uses Standard SAP to do Daily Maintenance Order Scheduling

“Take it to the limits – Our conviction has been to understand the capabilities and the limits of SAP, then exploit what its standard functionality has to offer prior to pursuing 3rd party bolt-ons to maximize ROI and minimize TCO.”

Sarina Miller, Marathon Oil

Making SAP EAM Easier for the End User

"If you want accurate and reliable asset information out of SAP,  you need to make it easy to get the information into SAP."
Kim Bassuener, Johnsonville Sausage

It's Not the Silos, It's the Bridges

"SAP is a tool which gains its value and power from the strengths of those who use it. Any organization that commits its time and efforts to empowering their people, will be able to maximize the power of the SAP system.  "

Natalie Christensen, City of Abbotsford

Using Syclo Mobility to Improve MRO Materials Management

"  It is hard to believe that in 2013 there are still companies that aren't taking advantage of mobile bar code reading capabilities, when you consider that nearly every store you go into has been scanning bar codes for years.  "

Gene Wakkuri. MeadWestvaco

Linear Assets Configuration Details and Demo

" Many EAM business transformation initiatives do not succeed because users find it difficult to navigate new processes and they often blame the SAP system. Delivering a simplified user interface leveraging existing SAP functionality provides a more user friendly way to execute your processes. "

Augustine Spivak - Pricewaterhouse Coopers

Tools for Contractor Service Entry

" Accurate and timely service entry by service providers, anywhere with an internet connection, with real-time comprehensive cost and progress reports."

Edgardo Rivera, Chevron Phillips Chemical

PANEL: Should the EAM Community Seek Compliance with ISO-55000 ?

“ If companies do not pursue some form of a documented Asset Management Strategy (PAS-55, the developing ISO-55000 standard), the regulatory agencies and insurance companies will eventually increase their cost of doing business to a level that will make the company unprofitable. ”

Terry Wireman, Vesta

" The most obvious examples of strict compliance to standards are in the Airline Industry and Pharmaceuticals.  We trust both with our lives........why should EAM be any different ?  "

Norm Poynter, NLAS

" Start with PAS-55 compliance as preparation for ISO-55000 compliance when it finally comes out. When your PAS-55 compliance business gaps are bridged then pursue certification or shift to ISO-55000 compliance then certification. "

Robert (Bob) Williamson, Strategic Work Systems

" International standards and best practices are most effective when you build them into your business processes and they are visible within your day to day business data and controls  "

Joseph Grobler, Reveal USA

An EAM Policy — Can Your Organization Improve Without One?

"Why pursue EAM ?   The rationale for EAM can be defined in terms of three goals/objectives - Safety, Reliability/Availability, and Analysis. Our efforts and behaviours have to support this rationale and EVERYONE has to understand, support and contribute through their daily activities."

Norm Poynter, NLAS Possibilities

" Out of the box  SAP EAM is void of master and transactional data and without this, its an empty shell.  Our role is to define the policies, standards, processes/procedures and measurements to ensure behaviours are established such that SAP EAM goes from an empty state to a wealth of valuable asset information"

Norm Poynter, NLAS Possibilities

Use of Integration PM-PS for Effective Long-Term Planning

" Implementing EAM is not just talking about maintenance software functionalities,  it’s foremost having in mind that our assets are at the center of the company. Optimizing their management IS optimizing our business. "

Joseph Layani - Societe de Transport de Montreal

Data Quality Taxonomy & Failure Coding Structure at Owens Corning

" Simple, robust and accurate failure reporting and asset classification in SAP can be a reality today. Just imagine ... ease of use by a craftsperson, quality data stored for reliability analysis, and an easy methodology for querying the data. "

Brian Gilson, Owens Corning and Ralph Hanneman, Meridium

Mobile Asset Management: Successes and Roadmap

" Using mobile solutions SAP EAM  customers have seen reduced downtime/production delays by 20-30 percent and maintenance backlogs reduced by up to 60 percent "

Karsten Hauschild, SAP

Achieving Operationally Efficient Information Handover in Large Capital Projects

" Having master data is like mining precious metals, when it's good quality and readily available it provides generous returns on investment. "

Brian Darragh, Code Expert International

“Managing Capital Project Information Handover can be like attempting to drink from a firehose.  Fortunately the technology, industry standards and best practices are catching up with the challenge.”

Mike Jordan, Utopia

Asset Repair Process Made Trouble-Free

"Tip #1 for Asset Repair Process Made Trouble Free; Managing asset repair costs can be a nightmare when budgets are tight. Assign the repair cost to inventory and defer your costs until you are ready to install the asset.”  

Kenneth Allenburg,  PSEG

Leveraging Sustainability Efforts to Improve Capacity Utilization

"SAP is a tool. Putting it in a manufacturing a site in it does not make them better. Continuously coaching them on how to use it better improves the business."

Ray Kastle, Merck

SAP  EAM Education Center Speaker Quotes - SAP Centric EAM 2013

Effective Real World Reporting

“Real world reporting involves focusing KPI’s on the core business processes.   Without this focus, KPI’s become just a numbers game.”

Terry Wireman, Vesta

“Real world reporting requires all parts of the company, even different plants, to have complete consistency of their data as it is collected and analyzed.  Unless this occurs, it is impossible to compare performance across the various organizations within the company.”

Terry Wireman, Vesta


Making your CBM Strategy a Reality

“ It’s time to step up to Condition Based Maintenance and reap the benefits of a leaner, more efficient approach to maintenance execution. ”

Martin Stenzig, Vesta

Integration — Making It Work

“ Take a Modern approach to Integration. Let current Technology help you exceed business expectations. ”

Martin Stenzig, Vesta


Getting Away from the Standard GUI

“ SAP is too hard to use” – We have all heard the statement, SAP has heard the statement and has responded by making significant investment in tools and the User Interface for entering or accessing information that makes “SAP easy to use ”

Len Harms, Vesta


SAP 3D Visual Enterprise for EAM – Learn How it Can be a Window to All the EAM Information Your Team Needs

" Have you ever thought about how efficient you could do business with a user experience integrating 3D visualization – as provided by the latest release of SAP ? "

Rainer Jahraus, SAP

PANEL: Getting the Most of Your EAM

“ When you get great minds together, you can have a great impact on the profitability of a company. ”

Kahn Ellis, Vesta

Interested in hearing what is  your favorite quote from these SAP Centric EAM Experts  ? 

Paul Kurchina, a prominent contributor to the SAP community, encouraged me to prepare an article summarising a paper I recently wrote discussing how ISO 55000 presents a unique opportunity to re-imagine the role of engineering and technical documentation in asset management (click here to access the full paper). In the paper I argue that few firms make good use of technical information resources and suffer reduced maintenance efficiency and effectiveness as a consequence.

My original paper cites published commentary from John Woodhouse of The Woodhouse Partnership Ltd. I wrote it unaware of John’s enormous contribution with "The Asset Management Imperative - Getting Ready for ISO 55000" series. I offer my deepest thanks to Paul for encouraging me to contribute a few thoughts alongside such illustrious company as John. My focus looks specifically at technical documentation issues against a backdrop of ISO 55000, but I hope to faithfully build on the foundation already provided by others.

Woodhouse notes that " ISO 55000 is the first worldwide attempt to capture the generically applicable ‘must do’ items for the management of any asset type….. the new standards will also provide significant opportunities to re-examine and refine asset owner and service provider relationships, governance and regulatory frameworks and insurance, customer relations and other stakeholder confidence. " In this powerful understatement, Woodhouse asks us to re-examine every aspect of our thinking in relation to asset management, to challenge our assumptions and use the moment to seek end-to-end improvements. He observes, " While it is nothing new to ask everyone to squeeze out costs, asking them to think about how to manage assets in a more thorough and sophisticated way can have a much higher return because it spurs creativity in how to think about assets, the value obtainable from them, and how to re-engineer processes to release that value. "

Does this have anything to do with mundane manuals, drawings and parts books? Surely we already have sufficient access to enough technical documentation? Haven’t we got Document Management Systems in place and pdf files hidden in every nook & cranny? Surely this is not an example of " more thorough and sophisticated ways … (to) … much higher return " ? In any case, are the returns worth the effort?

In his article, “Setting a good standard in asset management”, Woodhouse cites several examples of tangible benefits from better asset management – for example, “Nuon Holland: 30% ‘total cost of ownership’ savings”. In relation to technical documentation specifically, during the late 90’s Kennecott Utah Copper reported a 10% overall maintenance productivity improvement achieved through implementation of comprehensive access to technical documentation for all maintenance staff! These are non-trivial numbers and should, at the very least, attract some C-Suite attention.

Before putting the whole elephant on the grill, so to speak, let’s try a ‘sniff test’ with a  couple of simple questions: Would we allow a welder to use a new type of welding electrode without ensuring the MSDS sheet is available and understood? Would we ask a welder to repair a cracked frame or hub without providing the crack repair instructions suited to that component?

If we are honest, we should voice a resounding “ No ” to the former and a hesitant “possibly” to the latter. Why ? In both cases, the element in question is just information. If we assume the welder in question is properly trained, she could be assumed to know the risks associated with welding fumes and to understand how different materials react to weld stresses.

In the first example, the health and safety risk is obvious and regulations dictate obligations for the supervisor. In the second example, an inappropriate repair might ( only ? ) lead to repeated cracking or component failure.

If it is obvious that we must provide the information to reduce health risks to individuals, why is it not equally obvious that we should provide relevant information that might impact the health of our assets? If it is obvious why we must ensure employees understand safety instructions – for example, by providing them in a relevant language, why is it not equally obvious to ensure that technical information is relevant to the specific component in question?

Now, let’s expand our horizon from the simple example and envisage a normal plant: hundreds or thousands of equipment items, each made up of ever more complex components. Suddenly the challenge of providing accurate and configuration-specific information across all equipment and components, available to all asset maintainers is manifestly different.

Moving from paper manuals to digital media is a great first step. However, have we simply replaced the old project office stuffed to the ceiling with archive boxes bulging with manuals and drawings with terabytes of pdf files bulging with the same – now digital – documents?

Is it sufficient to hold a 300 page pdf file in our DMS that includes a warning that cracks in the frame or hub of a component cannot be repaired by welding? What if there are different variants of that component, some suited to weld repairs, some not? Do we expect our theoretical welder to find that warning in the pdf file and determine if it applies to this specific component?

Data is not information, information is not knowledge … Providing a link to a large, complex document is a little like providing the raw data and asking maintainers to analyse it and draw conclusions themselves – each time a task is performed! If we are seeking those ‘higher returns’, then the answer is clearly, “ It is not good enough ”.

In his “Introduction to ISO55000”, John Woodhouse discusses the concept of “line of sight” as an alignment between strategic objectives to detailed maintenance actions. I think it is a fair extension of the concept to consider line-of-sight as including a direct connection between an equipment item, or task and explicit, supporting information.

By creating a LoS between an equipment item or task, we potentially remove errors from using incorrect information and we can capture the effort of converting ‘data’ into ‘information’.

The LoS concept illustrated here is enabled by software, but it is not about a software system or software product. If it was a pitch for a tool, it would have no place in a discussion about ISO 55000.The LoS concept here is about outcomes and, arguably, within the scope of the re-imagining ISO 55000 should stimulate.

Technical documentation is typically created (and maintained) externally – by OEMs, suppliers, EPCMs, etc. It represents a vast body of information and knowledge, often freely available. OEMs and suppliers are continually looking for ways to deliver increasing value with their products (albeit at low costs to themselves); we can confidently assume that bi-directional information partnerships will emerge in the future that would be seen as unwelcome intrusions today.

So, do we need to wait until our plant and equipment is available in active holograms hovering above our desk ? Do we need to wait for U.S.S. Enterprise to arrive in orbit to beam us up into the future ? The illustration below is taken from a live example where an active library of refined technical documentation is typically less than two clicks away for all operating equipment and tasks.

ISO 55000 presents a potent opportunity to ‘re-examine and refine asset owner and service provider relationships’. The example above shows how much can be achieved with even small, but determinedly innovative steps today.

The time is right to move forward. ISO 55000 is ready - it sets the framework and provides the roadmap. The software tools are ready – and available straight off-the-shelf. The time is right to take that first step.

What are you waiting for ?

The ASUG EAM Community has announced a three part webcast series for both ASUG members and have opening this up for non ASUG members to register as well.

With the recent publication of the ISO 55000 family of standards, the ASUG EAM Community has launched a three part webcast series that will run from February 2014 to April 2014. This series is focused on helping ASUG EAM Community members both understand this standard, what it can and will mean to them and how SAP can help support this.

There has also been an ASUG Discussion group setup to facilitate conversations and the exchange for information about this topic.

They have a great group of speakers lined up to cover various aspects on this very important topic for our community.

Webcast details and links to register for ASUG members and non ASUG members are included below please sign up and join in both the webcasts and the conversations in the discussion forum.

This is your opportunity to learn more about this and what it can mean to your organization. It should be a great series

if you have any questions about this series please contact ASUG EAM Community Volunteer Chair Jeff Smith via email JSmith@Fairfaxwater.org

ASUG Webcast Series - Focus on ISO 55000 (3 Part Webcast Series) February to April 2014

February 19, 2014 at 12 pm ET          ISO 55000 - What, Why and How                 

March 26, 2014 at 12 pm ET              ISO 55000 and SAP: Realizing the Value of Good Asset Management Practices                 

April 23, 2014 at 12 pm ET                 ISO 55000 and your Organization - Expert Advice and Guidance                

Webcast Details and Registration Information

1) February 19, 2014 Webcast at 12 pm ET

Title:  " ISO 55000 - What, Why and How”

This webcast will provide attendees an ideal, rapid introduction to the new ISO55000 standards for Asset Management.  Find out what they cover and what they mean to you.  In this webcast will share with you the latest worldwide innovations and achievements in optimized, whole life cycle asset management.  It will help you to see how all the pieces of asset management can be made to fit together in a joined-up 'management system' for Asset Management.

Presented by John Woodhouse, one of the best known international experts in the subject (and member of the ISO55000 development team), the webcast is your opportunity to hear the story and recent case studies and understand the practical implications and performance improvement opportunities that ISO55000 represents.

This session will equip you with information and understanding about what is ISO55000,why it is important, and how other organizations are improving their joined-up, whole life cycle approach to asset management.

Links to additional background ISO 55000 information in case you want to do some reading in advance of this webcast

ISO 55000 Standard     www.ISO55000.info

" The Asset Management Imperative - Getting Ready for ISO 55000 " Blog Series

http://scn.sap.com/community/eam/blog/2013/10/02/the-asset-management-imperative-getting-ready-for-iso-55000-part-1-of-12


Speaker:  John Woodhouse, Woodhouse Partnership

Registration Link for ASUG Members:  http://www.asug.com/events/detail/ISO-55000-What-Why-and-How

Non-ASUG members are welcome to attend by contacting Michael Ochs ( Michael.Ochs@asug.com ) or Timothy Seymore ( Timothy.Seymore@asug.com ): they can get you the details to attend.

2) March 26, 2014 Webcast  at 12 pm ET     

Title:  ISO 55000 and SAP: Realizing the Value of Good Asset Management Practices

Profound shifts in society, business, and technology suggest that a new industrial revolution is under way. Manufacturers and companies in asset intensive industries must adapt to continuous change and find innovative ways to compete in global markets while achieving value out of their investment in assets. Technological innovation can help them optimize existing processes and build new services and business models. Operational excellence focused on asset management requires processes and collaboration that span organizational and geographic boundaries, enabled by the right technology infrastructure.
The ISO 5500X suite of International Standards addresses these issues and describes a management system for asset management with the framework on how to establish, implement, maintaining, and continually improve it. SAP solutions enable organizations to achieve operational excellence by providing visibility and transparency of asset relevant business information throughout an entire organization.
This session gives you an overview of ISO 5500 relevant SAP solutions - using them as the common information technology platform on which an organization can implement an asset management system.

Speaker:  Karsten Hauschild, SAP

Registration Link for ASUG Members:  http://www.asug.com/events/detail/ISO-55000-and-SAP-Realizing-the-Value-of-Good-Asset-Managem

Non-ASUG members are welcome to attend by contacting Michael Ochs ( Michael.Ochs@asug.com ) or Timothy Seymore ( Timothy.Seymore@asug.com ): they can get you the details to attend.

3) April 23, 2014 Webcast  at 12pm EST

Title:  ISO 55000 and your Organization - Expert Advice and Guidance

Hear from our expert panel about their perspectives on the ISO 55000 family of standards on what companies really need to know. They will discuss if and how companies can benefit from this as well as how they might best implement in their organizations. You will receive practical insights on this topic as well as ideas for quick wins that you may wish to consider, as well as understanding more about the certification process.

This will also be your opportunity to get your questions answered and take back insights and potential action plans for your organization.

Moderator: Norm Poytner (Nexen)

Panelists: Achim Kruger (SAP), Michael Kuijl ( Vesta ), Marc LaPlante ( Meridium )

Registration Link for ASUG Members :   http://www.asug.com/events/detail/ISO-55000-and-Your-Organiztion-Expert-Advice-and-Guidance

Non-ASUG members are welcome to attend by contacting Michael Ochs ( Michael.Ochs@asug.com ) or Timothy Seymore ( Timothy.Seymore@asug.com ): they can get you the details to attend.

Here is a list of 3rd party companies that provide alternative printing options.

Please contribute.

• Seal Systems: Document Output Management
• Prometheus Group: Print Manager
• Adobe:
• OpenText:
• PrinterOn: