281 – Asset Criticality with Gregory Perry

Welcome Gregory Perry to the Podcast. Gregory is a Capacity Assurance Consultant at Fluke Reliability. Today we will discuss asset criticality.

What is asset criticality? Why is it important to organizations?

Reliability is not just a function of the maintenance department but of every department in the organizations from top to bottom. If for instance, Uptime is essential to your organization, then what is the first element in achieving it?

Criticalness is the fundamental and basic building block to everything else in maintenance reliability.

There has been a conflation of work priorities versus asset criticality versus work order types. This is coupled with an inadequate understanding of scheduling tools such as RIME Ranking Index. Such a misunderstanding causes failure to meet targets.

Decisions on asset criticality need to be made early in executing a CMMS. This is done by objectifying an overall asset criticalness to the organization.

It is important because it will determine your entire maintenance approach.

How do organizations determine asset criticalness?

Requires a method of change i.e.:

• Determine the core team- has to be cross-functional to achieve consensus
• Core team familiarization- everyone in the team understands what criticality is.
• Everyone in the team understands the cases against which criticality analysis is going to be applied.
• The team has to know what the organization stands to gain from the exercise and what is in it for each of them.
• Understand the criteria of the analysis and that it has to be objective
• The criteria have to be aligned with the industry and the organization’s goals

It sounds like there isn’t one approach and it may vary even from site to site.

You have to look at the operational context to determine the approach to critical analysis e.g. the approach in a chemical factory is more comprehensive than in facilities management.

What about the ranking system within each category?

• Focus is often on granularity. You do not have to do 1,2,3…… You can do 1,3,7………
• Score yourself in a percentile or a summation. Also, mix it up such that some categories are in percentile some are in summation.
• Discuss the categories; the weighted values of each category as a team.

Create a rule of thumb to determine the number of variables to be considered in critical analysis: It gives you a place to start.

Also note that the document developed in critical analysis keeps evolving- it can grow or shrink. Always review it to ensure that it covers all the bases.

Everything between doing maintenance is management of change. The critical analysis document needs to be reviewed not only based on a time frequency but also during operational changes.

At what level do we do critical analysis?

It depends on how diverse your hierarchy and taxonomy are. Some organizations are not that granular and so they might use functional assembly as their approach. If they choose to go by function, then:

• Do they have assets performing as a functional location?
• As they write their correctional work orders- do they have a working maintenance strategy?
• Do they have PM schedules?
• If they have done FMEA, how did they know which ones to go for first?
• What assets qualify for RCA?

After analysis, carry out an assessment to objectively put each category into a tier. Take tier 1-4 and overlay them on a P-F curve. This will help determine how to expend your resources and time.

What else do we use criticality analysis for?

• Resource allocation
• Spares lead time should be featured in criticality analysis
• Asset maintainability, serviceability, supportability
• Design out maintenance and design in reliability
• Identify opportunities

Many Organizations do not do criticality analysis upfront

Yes. Because they do not make all-inclusive decisions for instance, procurement purchasing an equipment without involving the maintenance team.

What is the one thing that makes the biggest difference?

• Understanding criticalness and who owns reliability
• Look at criticality analysis as a means to gain consensus and certainty.

Eruditio Links:

• Eruditio
• HP Reliability
• James Kovacevic’s LinkedIn
• Reliability Report

Gregory Perry Links:

• Fluke Reliability
• Gregory Perry Linkedin
• Past Gregory Episodes
• Asset Criticalness
• Asset Criticality Workshop
• Accelix.com
• SMRP.org

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