Decalogue of Physical Asset Management
Air France flight AF447 disappears between Brazil and France with 228 people of board. Investigators suspect that the speed sensors (also known as Pitot tubes) may have been a major factor. Flight 447 had been flying in stormy weather that may have included icing. This can block the Pitot tubes, which then give false information to the pilots causing them to fly too fast or too slow leading to a crash.
This is just one incidence from all the stories we hear from trains colliding in Washington DC because of the faulty signals sent by track sensors, to radioactive emissions from nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, to poisonous gas leaking from the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, the list goes on.
Maintenance has traditionally been viewed as an operational overhead and in many cases an act that is forced upon the organization by the regulatory authorities. With the recession getting deeper, organizations are forced to cut corners and this adds to the challenges of an asset manager. Physical assets are real assets that live and breathe in the real world and are not just figures on the balance sheet. They need to be monitored and maintained so that they deliver value for the organization and delight customers.
In this blog, I present these 10 commandments (Decalogue) for physical asset management:
1. Thou shall identify critical equipments that provide goods or services that delight customers
There is no better advertisement for an aircraft operator than its safety record and it’s on time operations. Smart maintenance organizations identify their key assets and channelize their maintenance efforts towards the safe and reliable operation of it.
2. Thou shall respect the environment and build sustainable maintenance strategies
There has never been a greater focus on environment before. Climate change tops the discussion at all global meets. Consumption of Water, Air, Gases, Electricity and Steam (WAGES) demands due consideration in an effective maintenance strategy.
3. Thou shall schedule maintenance and have a long term view on maintenance
Maintenance planning and scheduling is an integral part of any maintenance strategy. Incorporating long term forecasting and seasonal trend ensures that maintenance is done with a view of extending asset life
4. Thou shall not covet maintenance that serves no useful purpose
As everything else in an organization, maintenance strategy also needs a periodic review. Analyze preventive maintenance programs and job plans on historic data and fine tuned it so that over maintenance is eliminated.
5. Thou shall not place false equipment history in the asset bible (CMMS)
The elementary principle of garbage in garbage out holds true in CMMS systems as well. CMMS systems should aim at capturing data at the source and use failure codes. Thou shall not wait until tomorrow to document your work, for it shall never get done.
6. Thou shall respect thy skilled tradesmen, train well the young and develop the old in modern techniques.
Inventory of skilled resources is as important as inventory of critical spares in a maintenance organization. Vast amount of tacit knowledge is stored inside the grey heads of technicians and mechanics. Formalizing this knowledge and training resource for the every changing technological advancement is a key success factor in developing an effective maintenance organization.
7. Thou shall take time to review and benchmark.
What gets measured gets done and the best way to beat your competition is to do play the game better than they do. Benchmarking helps you in setting the bar and comparing your performance with global standards. Performance parameters like Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), Asset Sustainability Index, Mean Time between Failure and Mean Time to Repair are a few parameters to benchmark against.
8. Thou shall not falsely worship reactive maintenance
Asset intensive organizations should aspire be move towards predictive and reliability based maintenance methodologies. A fix-it-when-it-breaks strategy may be a cheaper option but has huge implications on customer satisfaction.
9. Thou shall not take the life of equipment by means of poor maintenance practices
Over maintenance is as lethal as under maintenance. Effective inspection and audit processes should be an integral part of the maintenance policy.
10. Thou shall make maintenance a profit centre
There may be other principles that I might have inadvertently missed out but these I feel are the most important ones.
In my subsequent blogs I will talk more about each one of these guiding principles and how to incorporate them in a successful maintenance strategy.
