Featured Articles on Reliability and Asset Management

Loreto Carvallo: the power of change in the face of difficulty

posted 11 days ago
The WIRAM LATAM session had as a special guest Loreto Carvallo, an industrial engineer of Chilean origin who experienced firsthand the challenge of creating the vaccine by Pfizer during the COVID 19 pandemic.  Every four years the month of February has 29 days. And it was on this special date that the WIRAM session was held with special guest Loreto Carvallo, impeccably led by Gabriela Mejías, LATAM Director for Women in Reliability and Asset Management, WIRAM, the organization that seeks to make women visible in the world of engineering and ...

OEE: How Do You Use It?

posted 06-21-2024
By Ron Moore Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is an often touted tool for managing a manufacturing operation. In its basic form, it is intended to identify production losses, primarily so they can be managed, for example, planned and unplanned downtime, rate, and quality losses, and perhaps other losses. It is simple in concept, but much more difficult in practice. For example, do you measure availability during no demand times? Where do you measure – on all machines or processes, or just one? How do you measure? What specifically do you ...

Hero or Goat? The Difference Is Knowing the Difference

posted 06-21-2024
Asset management is concerned with the total cost of ownership and a corresponding long view. Many decision-makers do not think this way nor do they allocate resources in this manner. Trusted advisers must understand what is meant by a decision, the different types of decisions, and the external influences on decision-making in the presence of complexity and uncertainty. Asset managers must properly evaluate their problem-solving and communication approaches if they are to be successful. The Anatomy of a Decision Let’s take a look at a not ...

Maintenance Costs as a Percent of Asset Replacement Value: A Useful Measure?

posted 06-21-2024
By Ron Moore Someone recently asked for a benchmark for maintenance costs (MC) as a percent of asset replacement value (ARV) for chemical plants, or MC/ARV%. They also seemed curious about the usefulness of the measure. These questions led to a series of other questions, the result of which is this article. Before addressing these questions, remember these two points: You must understand and apply the processes for achieving benchmark performance for it to be sustainable . You cannot apply the numbers arbitrarily; Do NOT focus on any one ...

Assume the Decision Maker Is Not Stupid to Make Your Communication More Powerful

posted 06-21-2024
By JD Solomon Many make allowances for decision makers, saying some are “faking it until they make it.” However, this is the wrong default position to take when communicating with decision makers. Instead, the probabilities will be on your side if you assume they are more qualified than you. Take, for example, the Board of Mount Pleasant Waterworks in South Carolina. It is comprised of several successful business owners, a member with expertise in risk management and financial management, an environmental consultant with a PhD, a former, long-time ...

Making Asset Management Decisions: Caught Between the Push and the Pull

posted 06-21-2024
By JD Solomon The chief executive of a large state port authority had the reputation of being erratic. His inner circle was a revolving door of who was on “the list.” The line of “dead” consulting firms went out the door and into the parking lot. When it was another consulting firm’s turn to step into the limelight of a big capital renewal and replacement program, the consultant did not have a good answer when one of its executive leaders asked, “Is this a good thing or a bad thing?” The consultant quickly studied the recent major capital investment ...

Turning the Oil Tanker

posted 06-21-2024
By Daniel A. Lachman and Roy Tjoen A Choy Don’t Get Locked into Your Performance Management System This article highlights the hidden trap of performance management systems. Though the idea behind such systems is usually sound, getting bogged down in those systems can cause an organization to be slow in responding to driving factors from the environment that require it to change. This article draws parallels with concepts and theories from thermodynamics and recent insights from economics and applies them to the organizational setting. Performance ...

Seven Chakras of Asset Management

posted 06-20-2024
By Terrence O’Hanlon Disclaimer: I make no claim to have knowledge beyond a basic wikipedia level of "Chakras", a five thousand year study of energy and the human body. This article simply uses the basic analogy of chakras as a lens to view the culture and practice of asset management and the resulting asset management system. - Terrence O'Hanlon In Sanskrit, the word “chakra” means “disk” or “wheel” and refers to the energy centers in your body. These wheels or disks of spinning energy each correspond to certain nerve bundles and major organs. ...

Confessions of a Risk Matrix Zealot

posted 06-20-2024
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary defines  risk  as the “possibility of loss or injury.” The International Organization for Standardization’s ISO31000 defines a  risk matrix  as “a tool for ranking and displaying risks by defining ranges of consequences and likelihood.” With these two definitions, you can simply define a risk matrix like the example in Figure 1. Figure 1: Risk matrix example The problem with this simple approach is context. Can it really be said with confidence that a rare but catastrophic event is as low a risk as a negligible ...

Asset Reliability or System Reliability?

posted 06-20-2024
By Armando Vittorangeli When explaining reliability, I usually ask this question: Where is an airplane naturally located — in the air or on the ground? Some people pick the first, because an airplane is made for flying, whereas others, influenced by the law of gravity, opt for the second. There are large graveyards of airplanes in the Mojave Desert, and I haven’t seen any of them in the sky yet. That’s because the airplane is naturally on the ground, and if it flies, it’s only because everything is working properly. Then, I ask the second question: ...

Data Analytics, Machine Learning and Root Cause Analysis — A Practical Path to Continuous Improvement

posted 06-20-2024
By Umeet Bhachu Continuous improvement is a key theme in many operating plants, and a lot of money is often spent to understand the key gaps in facilities to help optimize maintenance and/or operational goals, with the ultimate intent being the production of a commodity in the most cost-effective, safe, and reliable way. The customer is ultimately paying for the commodity, and the plant has to ensure that it is able to provide this by keeping operating and other secondary costs in check in order to maximize profits and keep expenses and waste ...

Implementing Operational Readiness: Flawless Startup & Steady State Availability for First Operating Cycle

posted 06-20-2024
By Regan Pooran What is Operational Readiness? An Operational Readiness Program is executed from the project’s inception and throughout the commissioning and startup phases. This program has four primary objectives: Ensure that projects meet first cycle of operations at the required production availability with minimal disruptions impacting health, safety, reputation, and product quality. Ensure assets are developed in accordance with the Capital Expenditure (CapEx), Operating and Maintenance Expenditure (OpEx) and Total Cost of Ownership ...

Unlocking Hidden Plant Capacity & Optimizing Costs

posted 06-19-2024
Benefits: Increase production up to 10% Reduce operational expenditures up to 15% Reduce inventory costs 5–10% Reduce reactive maintenance 10–40% Resulting in: Business Case Achieved High Client/Owner Satisfaction Competitive $ Per Unit of Production What is Hidden Plant Capacity? The hidden plant represents the maximum amount of additional production or capacity that can be unlocked without any capital investment. Production availability losses due to unplanned and planned maintenance activities represent the largest ...

MAINTENANCE & RELIABILITY - Management of Ageing Assets Part A – Asset Condition Assessment – 7 Step Approach

posted 06-19-2024
By Benourine Benomar What is Asset Condition Assessment? Asset condition assessment (ACA), asset health index (AHI), and asset remaining life (RL) all have the same essence, and all share a common goal: toassess and measure the condition of an asset in terms of physical degradation,loss of performance, and obsolescence. While they may differ in specific detailsand methodologies, they all aim to assess the overall condition of an asset (ISO-55000). Step 1: Organization of an Asset Condition Assessment Situation The current state of an ...

MAINTENANCE & RELIABILITY Management of Ageing Assets, Part B - Asset Life Extension Projects - 7 Risks to Consider

posted 06-19-2024
by Benourine Benomar This paper is a continuation of Part A, published on July 31, 2023, apropos a 7 step approach to assess and measure the condition of ageing assets with respect to physical degradation, loss of performance, and obsolescence. Definition of Asset Life Extension Projects The aim of asset life extension (ALE) projects is to extend the useful life of assets through retrofit, upgrade, renovation, refurbishment, or complete replacement. They all have the same objective under different names. Still, the best and easiest way to ...

FM Cheat Sheet: Five Tech Strategies That Will Make Your Team’s Efficiencies Skyrocket

posted 06-17-2024
By Nivedha Sridhar Does your facility management (FM) team fall short of their full potential and struggle to keep up with tasks? Fear not! Here’s a cheat sheet with five tech-driven strategies that will propel your team's efficiency to new heights. These strategies will help you transform your FM operations into a well-oiled machine—even if you're not a tech expert. Harness the Power of a Unified Platform Approach You might not realize it, but you are currently stuck in a software maze. Overcome the challenge of fragmented tools and systems ...

Maintenance & Reliability, asset risk management, asset preservation - Job Plan 0.0

posted 06-17-2024
By Benourine Benomar The aim of this article is to frame the development of an asset preservation contingency plan in response to eventual catastrophic risks (Fig-1) like pandemics, natural and climate change disasters, armed conflicts, cyber-attacks, or disturbances in the supply chains including power and energy supply, that may cause temporary shut down of facilities. This adaptation initiative can further strengthen organizations’ risk management capabilities. Fig-1: Extraordinary Threats Definition of Asset Preservation Asset ...

How to Make the First 90 Days Count of Being an Asset Management Manager

posted 06-17-2024
by Hilary Okeke Whether it is within your current company or at a new one, transitioning into asset management, or even management of maintenance and reliability, is a critical time filled with opportunities and challenges. The first 90 days are vital in setting the foundation for success. To ensure you succeed as an asset management manager, the following recommendations are provided by consultants, some of whom were maintenance or asset management managers themselves, and are based on many years of industry experience. 30 Days: Lay the Groundwork ...

Maintenance and Stores – A Partnership?

posted 06-17-2024
by Ron Moore Introduction Maintenance and Stores – Is it a partnership? Should it be? Or, are these two separate functions who occasionally meet when the need is critical? Is each serving the other well? In my many years of experience in working with hundreds of industrial operations, the storeroom or spare parts is one of the most frequently criticized functions, and the self-assessments at these operations suggest the criticism is justified — at least in the eyes of the maintenance department. Each is not serving the other well, not because ...

Asset Management An Enabler for a Circular Economy

posted 06-17-2024
By Raunak Agarwal A circular economy is a shift toward sustainability and regeneration. In the context of asset management, asset-intensive owners and organizations can make existing assets last longer by applying best design practices for products, spares and components that can be refurbished over multiple lifecycles and finally create value chains that offer greater sustainability and regenerative outcomes compared to their competitors. There is a clear opportunity in the asset management discipline to be more widely recognized as one of the ...