Asset Investment Planning Made Smarter with MAS Manage

There is often a gap between the strategic investment planning for equipment and the related tactical maintenance and operations activities. Performance and maintenance data that is collected in the field over the lifecycle of the equipment can be highly valuable during the investment planning process. The reverse is also true, the decisions made at the strategic level need to impact day-to-day maintenance operations in positive, clear, and relevant ways, otherwise the planning was a waste of time.

The MAS Manage Asset Investment Planning (AIP) add-on bridges this gap, bringing the valuable field data to bear on strategic decisions, and then provides a channel for those decisions to become actionable in the field. AIP is planned to be available for MAS Manage 9.1.

Asset Investment Planning

The primary challenge for planning of this sort is to allocate limited capital funds into the future while keeping risk and asset lifecycle costs to a minimum. While predictions always have uncertainty (risk) no matter how much confidence there is in the underlying data or information, having access to “good” asset maintenance, failure, and performance data can deliver a degree of confidence during the planning and decision-making process. The lack of field data, or data where there is low confidence, simply increases the risk that the plans will not hit their expected goals.

This begs two questions:

What field data is needed to support the investment planning process?

Is this data being collected in a consistent manner, so it is useful?

These are not easy questions to answer, mainly due to the following challenges that the planning process also faces:

• Organizational strategic goals or values are not supported by day-to-day decisions and data
• Diverse asset portfolios in size, location, age, conditions, and mixture can hide significant issues
• The limited field resources may be performing significantly different maintenance or operations activities, even on the exact same equipment sets
• Inconsistent analysis processes and decision-making tools reduce confidence in decisions
• Customer expectations may be well beyond the capabilities of the existing equipment sets

Obviously, not all the data needed for the Asset Investment Planning will reside in the underlying MAS Manage (formerly Maximo) data set. However, if the organization is disciplined to collect “good” and relevant field data, the majority of what is needed will be readily available.

What does the AIP process look like?

Step one is to determine the goals and values of the organization and categorize them into measurable entities. Is the organization trying to increase affordability, efficiency, safety, or reliability? Each of these is considered a “value framework” that can then be used to perform the planning analysis and uncover decisions that need to be made. The measures themselves need to be supported by available field data in which there is a reasonable degree of confidence.

For example, if the goal is the increased affordability of a set of equipment, then a measure of the overall “maintenance cost” is needed as an input into the process. This leads to the decision as to whether a piece of equipment should continue to be maintained, or if an investment in its replacement is more financially beneficial.

After the goals are determined the data extraction process begins. Equipment lifecycle costs, risk models, and overall health measures of the assets are excellent sources of field data. If the organization has been disciplined in collecting field data, then the cost of each maintenance action can be summed up into multiple categories. Costs related to planned preventive maintenance (including labor, parts, and outside services) can be organized by asset types, environment, etc. For those rare instances where corrective maintenance or other intervention is needed, those costs as well are captured via the work order lifecycle process. In-flight work can be ignored, with focus on approved and finalized work records.

Inventory usage also plays a role in the data collection process. Beyond just the labor costs needed to maintain or return the equipment to service, the cost of replacement parts and consumables can be significant. It is not unusual for a 5-minute work task to be related to the replacement of a $1000 filter. This is especially true if the replacement part is difficult to find or has a very long lead time.

Once the data is collected, there may be a need to perform some clean up or transformation prior to it being useful in the planning process. Any transformations from the original data need to be well documented so the use of the data is repeatable, especially during the next round of analyses. If the approach to the use of the data changes from one year to the next, then the ability to “look back” can be compromised.

The next step can be defining the expected outcomes and parameters of the analysis. If the focus is on optimizing capital expenditure, then the analysis tool must be configured as such. Just like the data transformation activity, the configuration of the analysis tool must also be clearly documented to ensure repeatability and confidence in the results it produces.

A tool such as the AIP add-on for MAS Manage then uses its built-in logic models and optimization to produce multiple scenarios and options for the team to choose from. There will often be several approaches that will be suggested to achieve the stated goals, so the team of humans will need to review the output and determine the best course of action. It is very possible that a hybrid of two or more scenarios would be the best choice.

AIP also takes advantage of running “what-if” scenarios to help the team refine the decisions which in turn make and formalize the chosen go-forward plan(s).

Decisions made… Now to operationalize

Using the AIP add-on, the “asset plans,” can then be impressed upon the underlying MAS Manage set of applications. Preventive maintenance intervals and tasks can be reviewed and updated in MAS Manage. For example, AIP may suggest that a quarterly PM be performed each month to get the equipment to its planned replacement in a few years. While this may increase costs in the short term, the eventual (and planned!) replacement will benefit the organization well beyond these initial costs.

Of course, these new changes to the maintenance and operations plans for the assets will need to be monitored over time to ensure they produce the expected results. Small corrections can be made in near real time to bring the plans into the reality they are operating within. These changes may also point out the need for new or different data collection points for the field teams to perform. Again, the discipline of data collection by field staff is critical to the success of any analysis and planning effort.

As a side note, be sure to introduce the use of technology and logical work processes that make data collection simple, efficient, or even transparent to those working in the field. Adoption of bar/QR codes, mobile devices, guided electronic forms, etc. go a long way to reduce the amount of “paperwork,” those in the field must deal with and greatly increase the quality and confidence in the data collected.

Who should use the AIP?

AIP is focused on producing results for plans and activities, so it may have utility for Asset Managers or Equipment Design Engineers. Upper levels of management such as Chiefs of Operations and Financial Officers will also find AIP useful in setting the organizational goals and value frameworks. The results of the AIP, those operational plans, should also be well understood by those expected to carry them out. The maintenance and operations teams must clearly understand where the new plans came from and how they may change the scope of the day-to-day work.

Conclusion

TRM has been assisting clients across industries during many different economic cycles to improve their business processes and maximizing the use of their EAM solution. The upgrade process from legacy Maximo to the IBM MAS solution allows for the opportunity to move from simple work tracking to a more comprehensive suite of analysis and decision-making tools such as the AIP add-on. TRM can quickly provide a quote for a cloud hosting approach for IBM MAS that meets the requirements of the business. Official pricing should be used for final decision making.

There are many advantages (not just financial) to the cloud that might not be apparent, so let us help you work through the details and develop a solution that benefits the business now and well into the future.