The key to any successful asset performance management (APM) program is the concept of developing and implementing intelligent asset strategies. These strategies are a plan for how to manage manufacturing and production assets in a way that is focused on the goal of meeting business objectives and creating a continuous loop of improvement.

The first step to implementing intelligent asset strategies is aligning your APM program to achieving those business objectives, but once you've done that many organizations wonder what's next? We consider the second step in a five-part implementation plan to be assessing the risk of your assets and then prioritizing those assets by criticality.

Your assets generate an enormous amount a data each day, so it can be hard to prioritize which assets pose the most risk to your operations. Whether it's a single asset or a fleet of assets, if not monitored properly, the consequences to your organization's operations, finances, and environmental impact could be catastrophic. Having a comprehensive understanding of which assets and systems are the riskiest allow you to determine which assets should have an intelligent asset strategy in place to prevent negative impact on your business.

Organizations start by conducting criticality assessments on their assets. These assessments factor an asset's impact to the business around safety, environmental, operational and financial risk if the asset were to fail. As we know, risk can appear in many different forms, and because of that, it can be difficult to define. With APM solutions, these measurements are standardized, creating a clear view of the risk for the business.

So, You Know Which Assets Are the Riskiest. Now What?

Next, analyses such as reliability centered maintenance (RCM) and failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), risk-based inspection (RBI) and hazard analysis can be conducted on your most critical assets and systems to identify failure risks and corresponding mitigation activities. By understanding which assets are most critical first, further analyses can be prioritized to ensure you're not wasting time and money on assets that may not greatly impact your business bottom line and assuring that you have invested appropriately to protect people and the environment. This is the first step to enabling your team to work smarter and more efficiently to optimize asset strategies moving forward.

Intelligent Asset Strategies in Action

TASNEE, Saudi Arabia's second largest industrial company with a wide-range of interests in petrochemicals, chemicals, plastics, and metals and manufacturing, rolled out our APM solution in 2014 with the goal of achieving a clearer picture of which assets posed the most risk to their business.

At one of TASNEEs low-density polyethylene plants, it was discovered that 26 percent of their equipment represented 72 percent of the overall risk at that plant. Furthermore, it was also revealed that 85 percent of their equipment was posing risk in three major categories: Health and Safety, Production Loss (Time), Production Loss (financial)/Property Damage. This information not only validated how important an APM solution was to their business but provided a quantifiable model to prioritize efforts.

After completing asset criticality assessments and developing risk optimized strategies, TASNEE was able to identify areas where significant changes could be made to better align strategy execution with business objectives. 

TASNEE was able to deactivate 196 PMs in SAP that didnt provide value on highly critical equipment. If the company had not implemented intelligent asset strategies they would have continued to do costly and unnecessary scheduled maintenance on these assets.

Intelligent asset strategies bridge the gap between systems and transform the information into valuable insights and perspectives not possible with various point solutions. This can provide a true picture of your assets overall health, while helping reduce downtime and equipment failures. It's time to put your asset data to work. Learn about the next step in the process of implementing intelligent asset strategies: mitigating risk.