Building a Sys-tem for Asset Maintenance Management (AMM)
If you are a physical asset-rich company within an asset-intensive industry then the central nervous system of your operation, your customer-service reputation and your profitability is your enterprise asset management (EAM) program and the instrument under constant pressure is your computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).
Let’s start by defusing and putting acronyms aside – we can agree to drop the E for Enterprise and C for computerized leaving us with Asset Maintenance Management (AMM). In this discussion we look at what a solution of the past looks like today and how it should be re-imagined for the AMM future.
In this age of cool technology branding terms like Digital Twins (DT), Internet of Things (IOT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR) have cluttered our focus on AMM. The only reality, the only intelligence and the only thing that should be important to you, as we peel-back-the onion within your AMM, is the System (sys-tem).
Let’s explore AMM(s) beginning with a definition of SYSTEM, I quite like Merriam-Webster’s
Sys-tem
i. : a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole
ii. : an organized set of doctrines, ideas, or principles usually intended to explain the arrangement or working of a systematic whole
iii. : an organized or established procedure
iv. : a manner of classifying, symbolizing, or schematizing
v. : harmonious arrangement or pattern
vi. : an organized society or social situation
For decades of patches and generations of legacy EAM / CMMS solution implementations[i] the focus has always been on the CMM side of the equation in the singular; with little or light focus on the system as a whole. During times of fiscal constraint, years of doing more with less and bargain-basement investment in disconnected EAM /CMMS tools and toys, now is the time to look at the ‘SYS-TEM’ of the future and now is the time to re-write a program charter, re-Gantt a schedule and simulate an investment plan to define and build a stable platform for the next-generation AMM sys-tem.
In reference to an AMM solution architecture, I use the term architecture purposely to encourage a structural design, build, sustain approach to your next AMM sys-tem that is built for maintenance workforce – those people out there, spending the money on parts, doing the work described in the sys-tem.
This definition of ‘sys-tem’ provides much wisdom and hints at how and why asset-rich companies find themselves updating, upgrading and augmenting their AMM programs and solution architectures with bolt-ons, with disconnected things with the promise of an ‘intelligent enterprise’ but for me (and the 25 years of EAM / CMMS bumps and bruises) [ii]each definition above holds water, has merit and can be pointed to when questioning where to spend your next technology dollar; where to find efficiencies in our maintenance workforce and how to make asset maintenance management a profit factor, a customer-service factor.
Living with disconnected components of the enterprise architecture, cleverly sewn together was an acceptable way to provision, enable and deploy our maintenance workers - yesterday but really, today these enterprise ready technologies that give us DT, IoT, AI, AR and the like, claim to provide business value predicated on the false reality that ‘things’ are connected; that intelligence is accurate, and that in reality we deal with multiple single sources of truth – so distributed sources of truth.
For me definition one is the most critical:
- a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole.
In context to AMM, definition one prescribes; i. the ‘interacting and interdependent’ AMM bits to be unified whole – so let’s call that a Platform. Better still let’s call that a Connected Workforce Platform (CWP)[iii].
What we need to design, build and sustain a high performance AMM system is a CWP that connects our workforce with a distributed source of truth; one that fosters a working environment within an organized set of doctrines, ideas, or principles usually intended to explain the arrangement or working of a systematic whole with an organized or established procedure; acting in a manner of classifying, symbolizing, or schematizing providing in a harmonious arrangement or pattern provisioning for an organized society or social situation to further Asset Maintenance Management as a Sys-tem.
What we have learned today is that when implementing a CMMS such as IBM Maximo, standing up SAP Leonardo, SAP EAM/ ASPM, moving the a Cloud or upgrading to S4/HANA, you will want purposely build the Sys-tem into your Asset Maintenance Management (AMM) - you need a Connected Workforce Platform? (CWP) by Innovapptive.
Ask #bluehatman about AMM programs enablement and Connected Workforce Platform business case development, solution design, implementation and value realization.
AMM(s) = CWP?
[i] https://www.reliableplant.com/Read/28838/CMMS-implementation-keys
[ii] https://www.reliableplant.com/Read/20218/11-tips-on-how-to-get-more-out-of-your-eam-system
[iii] https://www.innovapptive.com/products/connected-workforce-platform