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The Conscious Asset Framework – 4

The Conscious Asset Framework – 4

Putting the Framework to work – steps 3 and 4

By James Reyes-Picknell & Uri Wittenberg

3. Planning

It is vital to get Planning right, so it will take some time to execute. This is where some of the philosophies, concepts and tools, conveyed during the Awareness portion in concert with past knowledge and experiences, will help assemble the overall implementation project plan with all its pieces. It should consider cross-functional daily interaction between all areas in the organization vital to the successful operation of all business essentials. [Read more…]

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The Conscious Asset Framework – 3

The Conscious Asset Framework – 3

Putting the framework to work – steps 1 and 2

By: James Reyes-Picknell & Uri Wittenberg. The Four Sustainability Stages of the Conscious Asset Framework™ comprise 3 building blocks each. Each of these blocks will be reviewed and customized to fit each individual organization’s unique needs.

Let’s take a closer and more detailed look at each of the four stages and their elements. [Read more…]

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The Conscious Asset Framework – 2

The Conscious Asset Framework – 2

Building a successful and sustained asset management program

Putting the Framework to Work

By: James Reyes-Picknell & Uri Wittenberg. In figure 2 below, it should be clear that The Conscious Asset Framework™ is general in nature. It is what we want to achieve but how do we get there?

Few of us are fans of cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all, approaches and methodologies. They just don’t work without some sort of tailoring. Some consulting firms have rigid approaches and they won’t vary from them. Others claim to have no approach, but in reality most simply haven’t taken the time to articulate one. Most, including many “experts”, do use some guiding methodology or model even if they can’t (or won’t) describe it clearly. [Read more…]

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The Conscious Asset Framework – 1

The Conscious Asset Framework – 1

Building a successful and sustained asset management program

Part 1 – setting up the framework

By: James Reyes-Picknell & Uri Wittenberg. Many companies struggle with improvement efforts of all sorts. The ISO standards on Asset Management have sparked a great deal of interest that goes beyond just the maintenance and engineering communities.

CFOs understand the potential benefits of good asset care and good life cycle asset decisions – they want the financial performance, improved revenues from dependable production capacity, reductions in CAPEX and OPEX from higher reliability, increased standardization and design for maintainability as well as operability. [Read more…]

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Uptime: Managing Failures Before They Occur

Uptime: Managing Failures Before They Occur

Uptime: Managing Failures Before They Occur

Being proactive with your assets is all about managing failures before they occur. You can reduce or eliminate the consequences of failure by forecasting what is likely to happen and deciding in advance about what to do about it.  The advantage to doing this is that major business impact due to equipment breakdown can be avoided.  High performing companies manage proactively – they foresee and avoid problems. It’s good for business! [Read more…]

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Capital Asset Management: Setup part 3

Capital Asset Management: Setup part 3

Capital Asset Management: Setup part 3

What is added to the capital investment?

Your upfront capital investment must go beyond engineering, procurement and building costs. Additional activities that will need to be done that fit within the 2 – 3 % of capital cost figure are:

RCM analysis on the new design (preferably at both concept and detailed design phases so you can incorporate design change recommendations easily) [Read more…]

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Capital Asset Management: Setup — part 2

Capital Asset Management: Setup — part 2

Capital Asset Management: Setup — part 2

The rest of us are missing the boat!

Check out part 1, too.

RCM has two potential uses – to set you up for success or to regain success from the jaws of failure.
Regardless of when you use it though, RCM alone isn’t enough to get all the benefits. Applying it after the systems are in service, to recover shortfalls in performance, and then failing to follow up on RCM’s results only delivers part of the benefit. That’s where the aircraft and nuclear industries and the military have it right – they take those extra needed steps. The rest of us don’t! [Read more…]

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Capital Asset Management: Setup — part 1

Capital Asset Management: Setup — part 1

Plan to Get Capital Asset Management Right

This is the first of a three part series.

Except for a few industries where mistakes can have high costs in terms of human life or massive environmental impact most of us do a poor job of setting ourselves up for success. We build or acquire new capital assets making little or no provision for spare parts, training of maintainers and operators in new skills and knowledge. Most of us do a very poor job of providing technical documentation to the support disciplines – project engineering often simply files whatever it has gathered and often in a file scheme tied to contractor contract numbers rather than using the asset hierarchy that everyone else will use in one form or another. Commissioning activities rarely push the new assets hard enough – they ramp up slowly, almost gingerly, because so few really know much about how it all should work. They are unprepared for any semblance of normal operations. [Read more…]

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Increase Productivity and Competitiveness with MRO Technology – Part 2

Increase Productivity and Competitiveness with MRO Technology – Part 2

Excluding primary practices that still prevail in most industrial companies, the evolution of MRO Materials Management Technology can be summarized in three technological waves, as shown below.

First Wave: Conventional Technology 

There are many grave technological limitations. However, in view of room limitation, I will mention just two of the most relevant and easy to understand limitations. [Read more…]

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Increase Productivity and Competitiveness with MRO Technology – Part 1

Increase Productivity and Competitiveness with MRO Technology – Part 1

In search of excellence in MRO Materials Management (indirect materials / spare parts), I have noticed two curious facts.

First, even in developed countries, industrial companies and providers of ERPs (enterprise management systems) are technologically very backward in this specialty.

Second, those very little companies or experts who developed differentiated technology keep it safe guarded as a trade secret.

This exposure results in considerable accumulation of knowledge and expertise, and a unique set of observations and conclusions which certainly could not fail to be shared with the concerned community.  [Read more…]

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Linking RCM Facilitation with Effective Maintenance Program Implementation

Linking RCM Facilitation with Effective Maintenance Program Implementation

Most of us would agree that there is a new global economy being forged right now in the manufacturing sector.

Inevitably, this translates to a renewed focus on transferring more business value to the customer. Central to this will be linking RCM (Reliability Centered Maintenance) facilitation with effective maintenance program implementations.

In short, the difference between what we, as RCM Facilitators, have been doing in the past and what we will be doing from now on is: a strong emphasis on what tactics are required in order to achieve the failure management strategies an RCM Team defines.

That is, we will conduct the decisions phase of the analysis somewhat differently. (i.e. The 3rd pass through when walking-the-dog in an RCM analysis) [Read more…]

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Searching for Quick Fixes Now Leads to Problems Down the Road

Searching for Quick Fixes Now Leads to Problems Down the Road

I want it now and I want it cheap! Oh – and I don’t want to do any work for it.

When it comes to information, entertainment, finding your way around and communications these days, we more or less literally have it all at our fingertips and available to us just about anywhere.

We can even order and pay for coffee to pick up on our way from the commuter train to the office – no lineups for delays. We can book hotels, airlines and rental cars at the touch of our fingers with apps that show us the cheapest options.

We live in a world where instant gratification is a reality in many aspects of our private lives.

Consumer electronics has transformed a great deal of business – basically, anything where there is a service or goods that a consumer might buy on their own, we can get it easily and immediately.

We’ve grown used to instant gratification in much [Read more…]

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Cost Control or Value Generation?

Cost Control or Value Generation?

If you can’t sell all you can produce, then reducing costs is often the only way to improve margins, but that simplistic accounting perspective is not always the case.

Cost control is often thought to be key to attaining profitability but it the case of maintenance it can get you into trouble.

Cost control can have a big opportunity cost if you don’t take advantage of the opportunities you have. [Read more…]

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The Need for Maintenance Management Assessments

The Need for Maintenance Management Assessments

Conventional consulting approaches begin with assessments to determine your current state of affairs, judge what’s good and bad about it, give it a score, provide a long list of recommendations and then build an improvement strategy based on the outcome.

Strategy development is normally carried out by a select leadership team and then the change is rolled out to lower levels in the organization. This approach has served well for a long time and it is at the outset of almost any major consulting engagement.

It is useful when comparing sites among each other, but is there some sort of award for being best? Usually not. [Read more…]

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Process Optimization

Process Optimization

Welcome to the final blog in my 10-part series called “Uptime Insights”, where we explore a journey of excellence in maintenance.

To stay on top, managers must implement strategies that keep operations performing at high levels. In these articles, I will show you how to achieve excellence in maintenance – a critical business process in any capital intensive industry.

Uptime Insights Part Ten:

Process Optimization

Whenever you are following a set of steps to achieve some goal you are following a process.

Your people do their jobs through day to day implementation of those processes in order to deliver results.  If the processes are ill-conceived or inefficient things move slowly and results are more expensive to obtain than they need to be.

Well designed, efficient processes that integrate with other related business processes keep things running smoothly, costs down and help to keep people motivated. [Read more…]