Reliability engineering in a digital future
At a glance
Asset information has a significant impact on the bottom line of an asset-intensive business. Poor asset information processes can add substantial overhead, as much as 5 percent of the total annual budget (OPEX and CAPEX). This is the cost of process inefficiency and ‘shuffling’ data from multiple sources to various locations between different departments.
Nick Tompkins, Technical Leader Asset Advisory Performance and Optimisation, reveals the importance of capturing and storing good data and shifting the cultural mindset when preparing for a digital future.
To create a reliability program that delivers results within a short space of time, Nick recommends the following:
- Build a business case that focuses on improving cost, risk, safety and performance.
- Consider how complete, clean, reliable and trustworthy the collected master and transactional data is.
If you are like most organisations, the answer is ‘not very’. To get good data for making effective decisions:
- Adopt a robust time usage model so that everyone ‘speaks the same language’ and knows the difference between availability, utilisation, reliability and how it fits into the operations plan
- Implement a robust delay accounting system
- Review delays daily so that each delay event has been coded properly
- Look at loss of rate, loss of quality and downtime events
- Focus on data throughout the work management process
“We want predictive analytics” is the catch cry heard across many boardrooms and executive forums.
To achieve this you need to comprehend the cost of collecting data and understand the value of the decision that relies on that data being collected. The business case should address the following questions:
- What decisions do we need to make?
- What is the value of those decisions in terms of cost, risk and performance?
- What data is required to produce the information?
- Where does this data come from and how much does it cost to collect, store and manage?
What role does the digital strategy play?
A good digital strategy should be driven by an asset management strategy as well as the asset management plans. This will drive the decision-making criteria and processes which lead to the underlying material that informs the digital strategy. It is also worth noting here that effective business processes will almost certainly improve bottom line performance, however when combined with a good digital strategy, they will lead to a significantly improved bottom line.
Ultimately to get any buy-in, a good business case goes a long way – tie the business case to the business plan and the decisions that the leadership team are trying to make. Change management and adherence to business process need to be built into company values and nurtured as part of the company culture. This will in turn underpin good data.
GHD Advisory has adopted ISO55001 as a baseline standard for asset management business process maturity improvement. We take a long-term approach to implementing organisational improvements, efficient operations and delivering optimal asset performance outcomes. Our suite of services includes asset performance and optimisation, asset advisory and asset management systems.
GHD Advisory assists clients to optimise business outcomes in the capital (plan), create (design and construct/ install) and optimisation (operate, maintain and dispose) phases of their assets.
About Nick
Nick brings over 20 years of experience in asset management, engineering, project management, asset maintenance, asset systems development, production, business management and people management. Has a strong background in asset management, systems, maintenance and reliability.
Nick has key experience in a diverse range of asset-rich industries spanning steel manufacturing, rail transport, minerals processing, water and mining.