Challenges and Key points for Maintenance Managers in the journey to reliability in Asset management.

Challenges and Key points for Maintenance Managers in the journey to reliability in Asset management amid a disruption factor in technology. Can we ?improve (and how) the business process ?with the use of the new versions of SAP PM? (Intelligent Asset Management)

Summary of the evolution of Enterprise Asset management (EAM)

To begin talking about this topic , I must start saying? that, in my point of view, one of the main objectives of Maintenance Managers is to keep the maintenance activities in a constant process of continuous improvement, in order to the assets meet the reliability and availability requirements, established by the company to satisfy the production at the lowest risk and cost possible. In other words, it is required to manage cost, risk, and performance in a holistic way. This could be basically one statement among many of what EAM refers to. (Enterprise Asset Management)

Most of us, who work in the SAP world, are aware that the way of SAP EAM module is supporting the maintenance management in the recent years, has evolved enormously, due mainly to technological factors and management culture.

More and more companies are evolving from reactive maintenance to reliability-focused maintenance and prescriptive maintenance. Calendar-based maintenance strategies result in over-maintained assets at high costs and less availability.

The source of philosophical information taken from methodologies such as RCM, and the understanding of this as a “cross function” with other departments, has penetrated or has grown enormously within companies.

My vision of what would be? a good Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), begin for the basis of ?an asset management, where all the information of the different divisions of the company be crossed , so basically, we can act based on facts and in a proactive way, eliminating the Silo effect that exists in the different departments of the company. The processes of all divisions within the company's value chain must be discussed and analyzed and have accurate information of how the maintenance activities impact the indicators of the company. Without this vision, it is difficult to ensure the success of the future state that we envision for the assurance of high asset reliability levels through the implementation of more advanced tools that have been generated with the new versions of SAP.

The common understanding of the asset life cycle and its relevance in the company's value chain is at the heart of the digital transformation of asset management. It is relevant to eliminate the silo behavior that exists in the company. Even in the new business models that are proposed in SAP projects, one of the proposals is to have a single source of reliable information, where information is shared among the manufacturers of the asset, engineering, contractors or service providers and the operator of the asset.

A vital first step is to find common or patterned processes across departments or divisions and compare them in fit to standard workshops against standard SAP best practices.

Moving on to the specifics of asset management that concern us, which is maintenance, the implementation of RCM methods is a vital part of this journey. Talking about failure modes, is the heart when it comes to creating relevant (effective) maintenance plans for the asset.

The better and more detailed the information gathering of failure analysis be (for example, through FMEA) the outcome will be a technically viable and economically justifiable maintenance strategy, therefore, the maintenance plan will most likely be more effective and efficient in the fulfillment of the function of increasing the availability of the asset and adding value to the management.

In this way, we will be able to quantify the benefits of the execution of the maintenance plan in the asset management indicators (reliability, availability, OEE, etc.) which is the key to verify the success of the management in the role that we are playing as Maintenance ?Manager.

What are some of ?the problems presented by companies and have been challenges from the perspective of SAP to generate more accurate information in the asset management module?

Deep culture of reaction and missing proactive actions.

Lack of digitalization and easily accessible information. The representation of physical assets in the system is a key to the digital transformation.

The assets hierarchical is not accurate.

Missing mapping of physical object and information transparency.

Ineffective maintenance plans or lack of information in the process of creating effective and efficient maintenance plans. There is not any feedback process.

High fluctuation on employees and requested skillset.

What are some of the new solutions for SAP Asset management.

S/4Hana version suite, without doubt, has brought incredible improvements to the management of the assets . One simple answer I give to the companies to the one million questions: what are my benefits if we go on S4? SAP S/4HANA can provide you at the core, speed, flexibility, simplicity, faster analytics due to the HANA in-memory database, and ?better and fun UX with Fiori.

Step by step the new versions have come with new things that have a positive impact in the maintenance business process.

The new SAP S/4Hana best practices process in asset management , the SAP Intelligent asset management (IAM) tools, bring to the maintenance teams a strong ERP system support to improve the outcomes of the maintenance management. For instance, following some on the more important topics that I consider powerful to cause a positive impact on the asset management:

SAP Fiori UX

SAP Fiori is the new front-end UI of S4 , and in my opinion helps the users gain access to the information they need to do their jobs faster and easier than the traditional Gui. SAP Fiori can reduce the amount of time employees spend on data input and maintenance work to free up employee time to focus on more important tasks. Fiori delivers a user interface that puts the focus on employee workflows instead of functions. This approach supports engaging the workforce efficiently and building an adaptable ecosystem for business activities through cloud-based offerings, mobile apps, and social media interfaces. SAP uses this user experience as the standard platform for future enterprise applications. These new applications managed on the SAP Fiori interface offer an intuitive and role-based experience (specifically for the maintenance planner) that improves both productivity and satisfaction in the use of SAP.

Planning & maintenance resource scheduling

The New applications part of the S/4Hana Suite that supports the maintenance planners to proactively monitor important and urgent maintenance tasks, as well as the inventory of spare components. Apps like Maintenance Planning Overview and Maintenance backlog overview, ?supports the planners in the planning and execution of the maintenance work and allow effective monitoring of important, time-sensitive process steps. You can plan, schedule, and execute maintenance activities more efficiently with SAP S/4HANA Asset Management for resource scheduling. Real-time visibility of the maintenance workload, running simulations and building the schedule are some of the tasks that have been improved with this application. With these new applications managed by Fiori Apps, the programming process and decision making in it is quite facilitated. In previous versions, to handle planning and scheduling, the planners had to go through several transactions to have all the information necessary to schedule effectively.

SAP Intelligent Asset management (IAM)

supports data driven proactive strategies with the execution and optimization based on reliability and other goals. This achieves the delicate balancing of profitability, asset health and availability.

In my perspective, some of the more real benefits that SAP IAM has provided with this suite for cloud or premise to solve some of the problems that the clients are provides with this new solution are:

Innovative and collaborative business processes,

Real time and connected assets.

Shared asset information among all those involved, allowing a single version of reliable information.

Collaborative Asset network.

Integrate or close the loop between important RCM processes and maintenance planning and execution strategies throughout the company.

Asset intelligence network.

It is part of the SAP clou-based business network, ?that allows Collaboration between Operator and Service Provider with Equipment sharing, for optimizing asset performance and effective management, by collecting and tracking equipment usage information in a central repository. Network members can connect with asset owners, manufacturers, operators, or service providers to share performance analytics.

Asset strategy performance management (ASPM) (based cloud application) The ASPM tool is a cloud-based application that allows developing maintenance plans according to RCM evaluations with direct information from ERP and allows segmenting assets based on risk and criticality.

With ASPM, we have within SAP a tool to perform criticality analysis on equipment / assets, adopt maintenance processes based on RCM assessment with direct information from the system, considering failure modes. This application allows us to manage the asset performance to optimize the return during its life cycle, improve decision making and prevent incidents through a holistic view of the asset. This is what PM consultants and managers asked for 10 years ago.

With this application it is possible to close a loop with the execution processes, achieving within the ERP itself having the execution tasks updated through the recommendations produced by the RCM application.

Asset health Analytics, Prediction in Predictive asset Insights.

With this application we can optimize the availability of the asset through the implementation of predictive maintenance, service capacity and internet of things, that allows take corrective actions on time. Other advanced capabilities are the monitoring of operation sensor of the asset, apply advanced analysis through predictive algorithm, optimize asset performance thanks to maintenance attached to monitoring variables in real time.

Execution Reporting (Fiori apps)

It enables to complete planned and unplanned maintenance tasks efficiently. It optimizes operations and allows technicians to detect, report and resolve failures, address emergencies quickly and effectively. These new applications managed on the SAP Fiori interface offer an intuitive and role-based experience (specifically for the maintenance planner) that improves both productivity and satisfaction in the use of SAP.

Asset Manager mobile solution.

Field crews can be connected to all operational data for efficient execution anywhere and anytime, with reduced resources. The asset manager can sync with ECC and S4 / HANA.

Identify the potential.

Propose initiative.

High level Roadmap.

Final thoughts and keys take away.????????

Regardless of version of SAP that we have in the company, whether we have 4.6C ECC 6.0 in HANA database, or the most advanced version of SAP a key piece for the maintenance management success is that the company must have at least a basic asset maintenance management model that rule the maintenance organization operations. Furthermore,? the strategy we choose to maintain the asset, and to select an adequate strategy is another very important part of the asset management. And, to select the right strategy,? it is vital to work directly based on the failure and risk analysis that we do on the equipment.

Create a right design ?of the asset structure, assigning criticality to the equipment, , ranking the failure modes, quantifying the risk of each failure mode (Apply RCM techniques) are steps that lead us to select an appropriate asset maintenance strategy and therefore develop strong Maintenance Plans in the SAP PM regardless of the version we are running.

The more advanced the SAP PM version we have in the Company (S/4 HANA and its analytical applications SAP IAM) the more we can use applications and tools that help us to improve the asset efficiency ?by creating more accurate scenarios of condition-based maintenance, predictive maintenance and ?monitoring operational variables in real time. If the company is already on S4 / HANA or is considering a conversion to S4 / HANA the panorama changes enormously since this Suite opens the doors to the digital world with a huge number of capabilities that allow us to technologically manage even better the information of the scenario Predictive (Fiori Apps, Intelligence Asset Management, ?Machine Learning, etc.)

On the other hand, if we currently have old versions prior to S/4HANA, we might not have problem handling corrective and Preventive scenarios (Replacement, Inspection, Calibration) based on time or activity, but if we want to implement predictive scenarios, the system on those versions is more limited because there is no component or application to ?easily model a robust predictive scenario, with accurate information for analysis of the variables or monitoring the condition of the asset in real time.

If we talk about the fact that the company at least has already implemented ECC 6.0 on ?database, it is already an advantage because we could still work with SAP IAM ant tools such as SAP Predictive Analytics Desktop, ?but without the Fiori interface , which make to lose a lot of integration and collaboration capabilities.

Key Principles for a successful SAP Intelligence Asset management project.

Define Asset Management strategy and vision.

Know the majority of Maintenance department.

Enforce action by scope leverage of the project.

Ensure your management sponsor.

Iterative program method.

Ensure the capacity of project members.

Key points for starting the journey.

Assessment of the maturity. Where is the company right now? The company must have at least a basic maintenance management model.

Gather the pain points or deficiency points.