The most important challenge presented to those who are in charge of producing materials and products today is plant performance . At the level closest to the action, there are two main areas of responsibility—operations and maintenance. Another way of stating these areas is utilization and availability. One group is responsible for getting maximum utilization from plant assets. The other is responsible for assuring that plant assets are available for production.

These are often contradictory responsibilities. As Peter Martin, author and vice president of automation supplier Invensys Operations Management, in Foxborough, Mass., is fond of saying, “If you car is in the garage, it is available, but not used. If you are driving it, it is used but not available.” If maintenance wants to shut down an asset to perform some sort of upgrade work, then that asset is not utilized for production. It’s like two vectors pulling in directions that potentially reduce overall plant performance. So how do we combine those vectors in order to achieve maximum overall plant performance?

Coordination needed

Sid Snitkin is vice president of supply chain and asset lifecycle strategies at ARC Advisory Group Inc., in Dedham, Mass., and has been studying these phenomena. “Everyone can do maintenance, and everyone knows operations,” he says. “But, can they coordinate? I’ve seen people change the way they view asset performance management (APM) as they now look to optimize performance.”

Barry Lynch, global Proficy product manager at automation supplier GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms, in Charlottesville, Va., states, “We’ve seen a gap for real-time information sharing between operations and maintenance, which we call latency. Customers have been building their own point solutions between their production systems and their computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) or enterprise asset management (EAM) systems, but these can be costly for them to build, implement and maintain. So we have introduced a product that flows into the production systems, allows them to plug into data with a rules engine that can then plug into the CMMS or EAM system. In fact, we’re seeing this trend toward gathering and using real-time information gaining momentum. A complementary trend is the adoption of server-based, centralized EAM. The biggest issue software developers face is the number and cost of interfaces.”

A longer discussion of how some visionary people and companies are dealing with these interfaces is below in the description of the Open O&M Initiative group’s demonstration at ISA Expo 2009 on Oct. 6. First, some context for the discussion. Snitkin notes, “Research shows that organizations pay incredible costs for poor management of their processes that create, use and care for assets. ARC’s own research indicates that traditional approaches to Asset Lifecycle Management actually encourage this dysfunctional behavior. I have released a report that continues our effort to rectify this situation by offering a new, richer vision for Asset Performance Management that integrates key people, processes, technology and information.”

Groups of engineers, information technology (IT) professionals and other manufacturing experts have been thinking about how to put all of this together for years. One result is the ISA95 standard for the integration of enterprise and control systems promulgated by the International Society of Automation. Another group that focuses on maintenance areas is the Machinery Information Management Open Systems Alliance (MIMOSA). Then there is the Open O&M Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development and use of a harmonized set of standards for the exchange of Operations & Maintenance (O&M) data.

Some expect the results of these efforts to be a “shrink-wrapped” set of software tools that can be incorporated into a sort of nirvana of data interoperability. But Snitkin explains these “are more a method of thinking than a slap-in piece of software.” But putting all this data together is more than just an exercise in software creativity. Adds Snitkin, “It’s about the information you need to do your work. When the plant goes down and you don’t have information about how things work, it’s not good.”

There is a need for something to help close this performance loop, and analysts and suppliers are quick to pick up the moniker “Asset Performance Management.” The question remains: Just what is APM? Snitkin says, “APM has become a popular catchphrase for strategies to help asset-intensive organizations get more value out of their costly equipment investments. But it is rare to find two cases where APM means the same thing. So it is difficult to compare approaches and evaluate solutions. ARC’s vision for APM follows the spirit of those with the ...