Our guest blogger is Mr Stephen Young, a Founding Director of The Asset Partnership.

He holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Electro-Mechanical) and Graduate Diploma in Asset Management. He is a Chartered Professional Engineer. Stephen has spent more than twenty-five years in field of maintenance and asset management with particular experience in Power Generation and Distribution, Water Utilities, Petrochemicals Food Processing, Brewing, Wine and Spirits, Mining, Defence, Manufacturing, and Printing.

Hazard and operability (HAZOP) analysis has a well-deserved reputation for systematic and thorough evaluation of industrial hazards with the safety, environmental, and economic benefits far outweighing the cost.

Developed by ICI in the 1960s as a form or “what-if” analysis, HAZOP has undoubtedly made the industrial world a safer place by identifying credible incident scenarios that had, or would have had, a significant impact on safety and operational capability.

HAZOP review teams apply an agreed set of ‘guide’ words to identify possible deviations Typical guide words include NONE, MORE, LESS, AS WELL AS, REVERSE, BEFORE, AFTER, EARLY, LATE, etc. Possible causes and consequences of the deviation are identified, along with any safeguards that may exist. Actions that are required (such as design changes, need for procedures, etc) are documented and assigned for action.

The HAZOP review team typically includes operators, designers, technical specialists, and maintainers in addition to the HAZOP facilitator and needs (or must develop) a detailed understanding of the system under analysis.
For most HAZOP studies, 50-60% of the recommendations address product quality or plant operability issues and not safety or environmental concerns. The driving benefit is for engineering design teams to identify potential problems on paper during design rather than in the field during start-up.

Risk management through a HAZOP analysis, is usually through the addition of further technology such as protective devices to initiate some action to avert the consequences but the process does not necessarily address the possibility of the installed projective devices failing to operate as intended. There is no methodology within a HAZOP analysis to develop a rigorous and defensible strategy for managing the reliability of protective devices, or indeed the reliability of the process equipment at all.

The leading maintenance strategy development tool is SAE JA 1011 compliant Reliability Centred Maintenance (RCM), which applies a structured decision logic to the outputs of a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA). This technique has been demonstrated to significantly improve plant safety, reliability, and maintenance cost-effectiveness.

RCM was developed in the aviation industry in the late 1960s to address the inability of traditional maintenance programs to effectively manage aircraft reliability. The process is now applied throughout industry.
Today’s RCM uses a multidisciplinary team of people including a facilitator, operators, craftsmen, and other specialists as required to review a defined system.

The team:

• Defines the operating context of the system, including a description of what the system does and a list of the equipment within the system
• Defines all the functions of the system including primary functions, secondary functions (e.g., containment, contamination prevention, protection, economy, efficiency, support, appearance, environment), and protective functions (e.g., alarms, interlocks, devices for relieving abnormal conditions)
  
• Lists all the failure modes and effects for each function
  
• Uses a decision diagram to guide decisions on how to best maintain the function of the equipment to minimize the risk of equipment failure or process malfunction.
  
• For equipment failures which can not be prevented from failing, appropriate strategies are developed to minimize the impact of failure.
  
  

As a result, the resultant risk management strategies depend not only on the failure characteristics of the maintainable item, but also on the consequences of the failure in terms of operational performance measured in cost, product quality and customer service but also on safety and environmental impact.

The RCM process is unique in the manner in which it both recognizes and manages hidden failures. Many components, particularly protective devices can fail in such a way that no one knows that the item has failed. These failures, known has hidden failures, have no consequence until some other failure also occurs which requires the device to operate such as a high-high level switch (the process normally never reaches the high-high level, so there is no way to tell if the switch works without testing it)

With the inclusion of appropriate HAZOP guide words into the Functional Failure assessment of an FMEA/RCM analysis, the aims of both analysis processes can be satisfied with the minimum of effort.

SAE JA 1011 compliant RCM rigorously assesses the possibility of projective devices failing to operate as intended and develops functional checks of devices based on a proven algorithm considering the probability and consequences of failure. Further, RCM uses a rigorous, defensible and auditable process for developing the most appropriate strategy for managing the reliability of assets.

FMEAs can be either component or system based, and the modern evolution of RCM as developed by John Moubray, uses a process based functional FMEA analysis. John Moubray’s RCM 2 clearly identifies the process functions and the failures which can affect the performance of that process. Identified failures include equipment malfunction, equipment degradation, human error and inappropriate or incorrectly designed or installed plant. The RCM 2 process then seeks to find the most appropriate method to manage each one of those risks.

There is a great similarity between the HAZOP and the preliminary stages of an SAE JA1011 compliant RCM analysis. The sequential application of HAZOP and RCM analyses within an organisation therefore wastes precious resources for no benefit. But with a very subtle modification, a robust SAE JA1011 RCM can satisfy the requirements of HAZOP but, a HAZOP in isolation, is unable to generate the same outputs as an RCM analysis.

The Asset Partnership

The Asset Partnership is one of Australia’s leading Asset Management consulting organisations with offices in Sydney, Auckland, Perth. We specialise in partnering with clients make efficient and effective use of their investments in physical assets in the most demanding of environments by:

• Maximising the sustainable capability of existing assets.
  
• Reducing asset ownership costs and risks
  
• Optimising capital outlay

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.

During my career I have been fortunate enough to work in over 27 different countries. This teaches you a lot about many things, but above all it teaches you how to find work.

Where to look, who to talk to, what to say and where you are most likely to find the most challenging and interesting roles that are on offer are all part of the skill set I have developed to enable me to continue doing what I do.

Amazing how things change isn't it? When I started out doing this there was always work, but never an abundance of it. Today, there is more work than people. Almost all of my clients report that one of their key issues in implementing reliability is trying to find adequately experienced and competent resources to do this.

In fact, in our recent survey on Asset Performance Management the second most common problem when implementing reliability initiatives is finding competent reliability resources.

So, looking at things from the other side of the fence, here are the top ten techniques to help consultants and operational companies to track down hard-to-find reliability resources!

1. Use an agent. In fact use several!

This ones a no-brainer! You are not in the recruitment business - so why do you think you can do it any better?

Agents have ready made databases, they have a budget for advertising, they are experts at the filtering process and pre-selection and if you play the game correctly they will do so for low or no cost until you hire.

One agent will give you a lot of names you don't currently have, so imagine what two agents could do! Even better make it an open listing, set targets, time frames, requirements and profiles and see what they deliver to you.

This also gives you a better insight into the workers that you are attracting. If a resume appears in two or more searches it tells you that this person is very proactive about managing themselves in the job market - it may be worth trying to find out a little bit more about them!

2. Don't use "Dodgy Brothers Body Shop"! (We find 'em you fry em)

If you are going to scrimp on price them you will probably get what you deserve. The recruitment game is one of the most democratized sectors on earth. Everybody has had a go at it, a lot of people operate from their living rooms, and there is always somebody who will give you a better price.

But, you get what you pay for!

If you seriously want to get the most suitable candidates, then go with established and professional firms. Companies that have significant reach. Adecco for example is a company that I have worked with a lot over the years, and when I was working as a technician I used to use Skilled a lot, and there are many others.

Check them out, take the time to have a discussion with them to see if they can fit the bill, and then start to worry about the price.

3. The world is your oyster!

Some countries are still difficult for people to get work visas, but most have made it remarkably easy these days. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that your next brilliant hire has to be somebody from your own neighbourhood, city or even country.

Many young professionals are longing for a chance to travel overseas and to see the world through the lens of an international employee.

4. Use web based posting boards

If people are seriously looking for work then they use the Internet. Full stop.

In Australia you cannot go past http://www.seek.com.au/, in the USA you would be mad to not think of http://www.monster.com/ or http://www.hotjobs.com/, and in the UK my experience has been that http://www.jobsearch.co.uk/ is one of the real leaders.

But don't just post one and be happy about it. Post many, flood the place with your ads. And don't forget the specialized boards.

For example, our own board "Whos Hiring" receives between 3,000 and 5000 hits a week. And we drive them from this blog and from Google mainly. So if your target audience is in the field of reliability I hope you will consider advertising with us.

But there are still others; http://www.top-consultant.com/ runs a website where people pay to search the "Contractors Corner". These are self selected professionals who are so keen to earn good consulting or contracting rates that they will pay for the privilege of doing so. An ad here will get you to a select group of UK consultants. And there are, of course, many more.

Again, ,web based Internet job sites are now extremely common and extremely competitive.

5. Be realistic!

Face it, this is a sellers market. And if you can find a degree qualified expert with ten years experience in RCM, International experience and a knowledge of different cultures who will work for $50k then you have a problem.

They are either not what they say they are, or they will only be with your company until the next offer comes along.

6. Look for potential!

Some of the hardest working people I have ever come across are those who are trying to work their way into the game of asset management. So try to get past the pre-qualifying garbage and look for potential.

The people you hire, mentor and build up could well end up being some of your companies best ambassadors, or most innovative thinkers.

7. Consider an interim appointment, or s sub-contract resource.

"Subbies", or interim managers or professionals, often represent the best source of potential labor. Sure there are issues that will need to be overcome but think about it.

These are people who are so confident in their abilities that they are able to float themselves on the open market.

They may cost a little more initially, but they are generally more aware of the business end of employment. E.g. "You give me money, I give you great services. If I stop giving you great services you are going to stop giving me money!"

Some of my best roles have been as an interim manager.

8. Pay the price

If you want good people then you have to offer good money. Full stop. I don't care how many surveys out there tell you that people have a lot of non-financial motivators; the number one rule of hiring good people is paying them good money.

And here's one for free - Advertise how much you will pay! Today if the price is not advertised then why should you waste your time to apply, go through the hoops of pre-qualification and so on only to find out that the package is not what you were looking for.

Why bother? There are many other opportunities out there.

Paying the price has many faces including hiring bonuses, finders fees, recruitment programs, paying housing and relocation and many others.

9. Keep current

I have just checked out the Internet for two companies I know are looking for people. Both searches led me to a range of dead end advertisements on some regional out of touch boards, whose dates had expired. So people are no longer able to apply but it is still advertised. Wonderful!

10. Use headhunters

Agencies are one thing. But there are specialists out there who are experts in finding out who the guru's are within a company and approaching them.

Before you judge this as ethical or not, think about what we are doing here. You are in a battle with other companies of your size and scale for dwindling resources.

I hope these are of use to you, there are many more but I thought these would be of interest. So the next time your company, client, boss tells you that they are doing their level best to find resources. Hopefully you now have a few places to look to see if they really are or not.

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.

Guest blogger Ray Beebe says that he got bitten by the “condition monitoring bug” when he started his 28 years as a mechanical engineer in steam power generation in Australia and the UK. He built on that with nearly 17 years at Monash University, leading their off-campus postgraduate programs in maintenance and reliability engineering since 1996.

Each year, around 200 students around the world study while working in their home country.
Ray is committed to learning and sharing. He has written two books and many papers for conferences and technical magazines. As the Monash studies are work-place oriented, he and the other 6 staff teaching the programs add to their own experiences by learning much from the students.

As with our other invited columnists, he has a free rein to cover any aspect he considers relevant.

“Maintenance is out, Asset Management is in”

What’s in a word? People have been working in the maintenance and reliability area for years. Standards have evolved that often include definitions or terminology, professional organisations work on agreeing in terminology, yet….

As one guy said to me, “maintenance means the janitorial aspects”. I have never had that understanding. To me, maintenance means stewardship of the plant so that it produces at the quantity and quality to meet the needs of the business. That includes activities to improve plant reliability or output. I altered the title of our Monash programs to reflect that wider view.

“Asset management” can also mean juggling financial assets: stocks, shares etc.), so a more correct label is “physical asset management” as used by John Mitchell in the title of his excellent book. Asset management does imply wider coverage than just the engineering part, and should therefore draw in other professionals than engineers.

A catchy definition I heard is "lust to dust". This is a fine overall concept, but how many of us have the luxury of being involved in a plant asset from the start? Like I suspect is so for the majority of engineers, I have worked at several places in the middle - someone else had decided the design, someone else again built it, and after I left, someone else will decide the decommissioning and dismantling. Two of the plants I worked at have been demolished - both with their latest parts built in 1960 or so (yes, before my time: just!). Not too good to get emotionally involved with your workplaces! What really means something other than a name is the expectations of a job's role. Maybe I have a renegade tinge, but many of my jobs have evolved rather differently to the starting expectations as set out in the job description. Maybe this is part of what is meant by "managing upwards?"

I could have added to my little story. Engineers who manage the construction of a plant learn a lot of the details as it comes together. In the late 1960s, as I crawled around underneath a 200MW generator trying to figure out the cooling gas flow path, I wondered why they who had seen it in pieces as it came together did not stay to run the plant, rather than depart for the next new plant. After some years, I figured that they did not stay because they are fundamentally a different type of person.

Waxing literature-wise, the English engineer-author Neville Shute said in his biography "Slide Rule" that he left his company Airspeed in the 1930s because he "was a starter not a runner". His best selling books no doubt helped him decide. (As a kid, I remember the filming of “On the Beach” in Melbourne, Australia with Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck. Ava is supposed to have said that Melbourne was the perfect place to make a movie about the end of the world!” It came out later that she did not say that at all- it was made up by a journalist).

The then State Electricity Commission of Victoria, Australia (incidentally, Sir John Monash was its founding General Manager from 1921) had many good practices as a government-owned business. The SEC mined the brown coal (some of it up to 69% water content), then generated, transmitted and distributed electricity. Since privatisation from the mid-1990s, there are now several companies involved.

In the 1970s, for the building of the Loy Yang power stations (now 3000+MW), some 20 or so engineers from the production group of departments were assigned to the spec writing/tender review teams. The two on the boilers and turbines were full-time, the rest of us part-time. We had to ensure that field experience was included, and I think the results show in the excellent reliability of the plants since. Would a private company do the same? How would today's short-term focus on building "shareholder value" fit?That Loy Yang work sounds like asset management to me. I too would be interested to know of any such organisations.

So, whatever terminology we use, the key issue is surely that engineering is required with a focus on the business. Has that changed? I think not.

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.

Due to the success of our previous surveys we are continuing with our drive to uncover some of the leading practices throughout the world in the area of physical asset management.

Our latest survey is looking at some of the behind the scenes events and actions and will be open until November of 2007. It is called "Asset Data Research and Benchmarking Survey".

The central hypothesis of this survey is "Asset intensive industries need to pursue asset-data initiatives as this area represents one of the largest potential long-term value areas of physical asset management".

The goal is to prove or disprove the hypothesis based on international responses, and to try to gauge the depth of asset data initiatives in reality throughout the world.

I hope it is of interest to you all. If so please feel free to get involved here.

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.

Guest columnist Ron Doucet is a reliability professional with a long career of driving companies towards operational excellence. He is an Aladon trained RCM practitioner, frequent conference speaker, and currently holds a senior asset management position in the mining industry of North America.

Welcome to the inaugural launch of The Strategic View column. This monthly column will explore the topic of asset management improvement by examining causes of unreliability, and the realities of addressing the underlying issues in an operating environment that most of us experience each and every day.

The causes of unreliability are almost endless starting at the procurement/engineering stages right on through to how maintenance is performed, how the equipment is operated and eventually disposed. Some issues are organizational, behavioural and cultural.

With the safety performance and profitability of so many companies being dependent on the performance of their assets, it may be surprising to some that asset management principles for the most part have not been anchored into companies’ governance policies. For those that have adopted clear asset management principles, the realities of making the transition are more often that not misunderstood, thus making the implementation of good asset management strategies and the associated benefits less likely to succeed and be realized.

Making successful improvements in an operating site requires good change management and practices. This applies to all changes including changes to the maintenance tasks, operating practices, change in roles, changes in SOP’s, mission statements, procurement policies, organizational changes, spares policies etc.

Early in my asset management career, the late John Moubray once told me that the secret to change management is “to change the way people think and then apply the changed thinking to doing something different”. Circumnavigating the world is unfathomable if the world is thought to be flat. Likewise, implementing maintenance improvements at all level will be unsuccessful if the accepted truth is that the function of maintenance is to “fix things”.

We procure assets for what they do, not what they are. Yet too often, the focus of maintenance right after the acquisition is focused on maintaining what the asset is as opposed to maintain what the asset does.

Maintain means to “cause to continue” or “to keep going”. As it pertains to assets. The primary function of maintenance is to cause any asset to continue to do what its users wants it to do. In other words the function of maintenance is to preserve the function of the asset, not to “fix’ the asset.

It is this changed thinking from preserving the asset to preserving the function of the asset that will allow real bottom up and top down maintenance improvements to take hold. How to get everyone to understand this will be the subject of another article.

As mentioned earlier, this column will focus on the implementation of sustainable asset management improvements and I will refer often to the concept of maintaining the function of assets and the need for this to be a common understanding at the level at which the maintenance improvement is sought.

With your feedback, comments, suggestions and questions I hope to be able to address some of the main issues affecting equipment performance and generate some real world solutions.

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.

Just above the posts you will notice a new feature on the Blog. Over the past year or so I have been working to put together a customized search engine using the Google functionality.

Through careful checking of each site for the rigor of their articles, and through checking and double checking all of my normal Internet sites that I review, I think we have assembled a pretty good collection of the webs most relevant information and articles regarding asset management, reliability and risk.

These are not just the sites that come up at the top of the list when you search for common terms in our area, but they include some of the best information that I have been able to find over the years.

I hope it is of use to you all. Under the search engine is a button so that you can add it to your own Google web page and be able to perform asset-specific searches from your standard home page.

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.

After only a few short months running online surveys we have already been able to get some pretty interesting interim results on the environment of modern asset management, its business drivers and some of the leading practices that have helped companies to become Leading performance in the area.

Our second survey on Asset Performance Management can be found here and is scheduled for completion in late October. All respondents will receive a copy of the survey results.

So far we have around 160 respondents representing 93 different companies.

Geographically these come from mainly the USA, Australia, the UK and the Middle East. By sector they range from petroleum refiners, mining companies, transport companies, rail land water utilities.

Overwhelmingly all Leading Performers have indicated that the primary drivers for their asset performance management initiatives is one of increased profitability. And the strategies they employ show this to be the case.

Interestingly the second driver among all of those completing the survey is the need for regulatory compliance in asset management. Reasons included financially regulated markets (such as the UK utilities industry), Contractual constraints (such as in large outsourced maintenance companies) and changes in water and electricity regulations in the USA.

The third most influential driver for businesses throughout the world has been that of reducing the risk of safety incidents from asset management. Key reasons for this driver were stated as including recent explosions at the BP refinery and the Buncefield refinery in the UK (40%), changes to laws around the world (30%) and other high profile cases such as Westray in Canada and the Hatfield Train Disaster in the UK. (27%)

One of the criteria we have identified for the Leading Performers is a level of asset availability exceeding 95%. Our studies so far have shown that of all initiatives those of RCM and Planning and Scheduling.

As can be seen 40% of the Leading Performers consider their companies to have fully integrated the RCM approach, while 33% of the Lagging Performers (<85%) are not even planning to implement RCM.

This is further supported by Mid Performance companies. All of whom are either planning to implement, in the process of implementing, or in the early stages of managing the process of RCM.

Other results are equally compelling with Leading Performers demonstrating consistent downward trends in operational budgets in direct correlation to their maturity with planning and scheduling processes along with other useful insights into what leading performers are doing to control risk, maximize profitability and sustain momentum in their change programs.

There are also some interesting trends in terms of technology providers among our survey group.

If you are interested in participating the Asset Performance Management survey can be found here and is scheduled for completion in late October. All respondents will receive a copy of the survey results.

During October we will be running a series of Deep Methodology Surveys for RCM, RBI and RCA in particular.

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.

Today I had a heard an old chestnut that I haven't heard a reliability professional say for almost five years.

He made the outright statement (attributed to a global consultancy that he had recently engaged) that "If we do not have any data for us to begin our reliability analysis with, then it is a waste of time starting!"

He went on to inform the seminar group that I was teaching that they should not waste their time thinking about starting without data because it will be incorrect and they would risk creating problems rather than solving them.

Where do these people keep coming from and who is feeding this garbage into their heads? I often wonder if they are victims of over-zealous E.R.P consultants, or if they have just lived in a cave for the past ten years.

I have to admit to being confused about this issue myself a long time ago prior to meeting and working with John Moubray. But that was a long time ago and the entire discipline has moved on...

So why is this such a mistaken view to be holding in 2007? A quick recap...

1. Before we get to have a lot of failure data for reliability analyses we need (Guess what) failures! These cost a lot of money, they kill people and they damage the environment.

So if the plan is to drive up the levels of failures prior to starting a reliability program then you will enjoy the discussions with the lawyers once it all goes pear shaped.

2. Some of the failures that you need to manage may not yet have occurred.

3. If any failure is serious, then we will never have a statistically significant quantity of data.

Why? Because serious failures get attention, they get designed out, maintained out or some other activity.

This does not even take into account the fact that many companies still have poor data capture technologies, they failure mode and equipment register taxonomies are often not the best designed for capturing data, and work processes are often not the best for capturing good failure data.

Unfortunately this grates with the judgment of many engineers because without data they are unable to perform a high confidence analysis and they find themselves relying on qualitative information. Not good for people used to certainties and engineered solutions.

Obviously this area is fraught with problems. Commercial databases provide some solutions. Particularly those that are able to validate the taxonomy that has been used in the collection of their data and its integrity.

But there are issues here also. Differing operating contexts, differing equipment types and errors in data capture are just some of the potential issues.

if companies wish to start out along the path to high confidence decisions regarding asset reliability then the following steps may be of use.

1. Do the analysis.

2. Use the resulting failure modes uncovered to populate the ERP coding systems

3. Implement the work processes and technologies to make sure that data captured against the equipment that has been analyzed will be of high integrity and quality.

This will provide companies with a structure that will deliver continually improving asset data over time. Driving them forward along the road to higher confidence decisions regarding asset management.

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) 2007.

As part of our ongoing commitment to uncovering emerging trends and new techniques we have recently started a program of surveys and detailed analysis.

Over time this is intended to become a stand alone website focusing on delivering advice and information to the hands of people who have to manage assets throughout the world.

Our first survey is on Asset Performance Management.

The survey link is here if you are interested. The survey should take around 10 minutes and is twelve questions long. All respondents will receive a copy of the report when it is published in October.

Not to be confused with the larger area of Asset Management, APM is focused on the operational and uptime aspects of managing assets.

Over the coming months we will be posting the results of this survey and others here. Other planned programs include Asset Data Management, Planning and Scheduling, Reliability Centered Maintenance, and Asset Planning.

Equipment, Maintenance and Technology is part of the Lassiter Group. (C) Lassiter 2007.