able to complete their work efficiently,” Buckbee says. With Expertune’s Control System Asset Management product in place, automated diagnostics and performance KPIs are automatically prioritized, he relates. Further, as asset management tools are integrated more directly, plant personnel can move quickly and efficiently into troubleshooting and issue resolution. Often, issues are identified, prioritized and reported directly to the user, with drill-down, analysis and issue resolution available directly from the user’s computer desktop, according to Buckbee.

One example of leveraging people is the use of Expertune’s Active Model Capture Technology. Using this technology, dynamic process models are captured automatically, based on regular control changes by operators. Using Active Model Capture, some users have reported a five-fold increase in their ability to optimize controller tuning and process dynamic studies, Buckbee says.

Change metrics perspective

Peter Martin, vice president at automation products and services provider Invensys Process Systems, Foxboro, Mass., sees a simplification of the meaning of asset management into just equipment maintenance. But, he says, “To business managers responsible for process manufacturing operations, asset management implies the effective deployment of all assets within their operational domain to meet business objectives.”

Martin also sees that both operations teams and maintenance teams provide the most impact on the efficient operation of industrial plants and the resulting economic value generated, while engineering departments apply technology to support the effectiveness of operations, maintenance and other plant organizations. “The traditional primary measure of the maintenance organization is asset availability,” states Martin. “The traditional primary measure of operations is asset utilization.”

The most effective way to manage assets from a business perspective is to manage both asset utilization and asset availability together in a holistic manner to drive business value, according to Martin. “This has not historically been the case,” he says. “In most manufacturing operations, operations management drives improved asset utilization and maintenance management drives improved availability, and the two have typically approached each independently.”

For asset utilization improvements, engineering has applied technologies such as advanced control, multivariable control, recipe management and process optimization, Martin observes. For asset availability improvements, engineering has applied strategies such as preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance and reliability-centered maintenance. Most of the maintenance strategies are still at the individual equipment level and many are merely focused on instruments and valves, Martin continues.

This approach, according to Martin, has severely limited the value generated from industrial asset sets. “These technologies and strategies have been applied independently of each other, and it has not been clear as to whether improved business value is the result.”

Martin believes that asset performance management is the balancing of asset availability and asset utilization. And, because they are inverse functions, maximizing them independently will seldom result in maximum business value. “To make these decisions optimally requires an effective business measurement system that can provide business value insight into the desired operational balance between effective availability and effective utilization,” says Martin.

Invensys has a patented approach to real-time business measurement that does exactly this—dynamic performance measures (DPMs). DPMs measure the business value of base assets, asset sets or groups of asset sets as a real-time vector that represents the true value that they generate. The real-time business performance data that results from the use of DPMs enables a much more effective approach to true asset management than do traditional methods, Martin says. Rather than merely managing the availability of some instrumentation, plant personnel can drive business performance from asset sets, up to and including the entire plant, he asserts.

Changing asset optimization perspective from equipment level to strategic, changing people perspective from a focus on budget line items to a broader, connected and committed workforce point of view, and changing metrics perspective from sometimes conflicting differences between operations and maintenance to a holistic business approach… These are all steps that will push a company far along the path to best-in-class.

For an example of how Shanghai Petrochemical improved its asset management strategy using Lifecycle Management methodology from Honeywell Process Solutions, visit www.automationworld.com/feature-5014