Part 1: Q&A on maintenance planning and scheduling
Suzane Greeman, president and principal asset management advisor of Greeman Asset Management, discussed in a recent webinar 6 steps to establish an effective maintenance planning and scheduling process. Several attendees submitted questions to Greeman during the webinar, and Part 1 of her answers focus on asset master data management.
The asset master data management includes the asset data record, asset configuration, inventory data (Bill of Materials), maintenance strategy information and the asset specification record.
Part 1 of Q&A: Asset Master Data Management
How do we keep the Bill of Materials (BOM) from being neglected in this process?
Greeman: It needs to be automated. The planner will use the BOM if it is user-friendly. The planner needs to have the authority to modify it, but the CMMS should automatically add parts and consumables from a work order to the BOM when the work order closes and the parts were not returned. After a job, the planner could run a report of actual vs. planned and check with the field as a part of a review process to ensure that the BOM stays up to date.
Asset template is only as good as a vendor that advises you when the “model/component number” changes (revisions to component). How can we hold our vendors accountable for model and component number changes?
Greeman: Since the asset owner is not initiating the changes, it must partner with the organizations that do: OEMs and vendors. This level of support requires partnership. Much of this partnership needs to be established and documented. At the asset acquisition stage of the asset’s life, we can ask the vendors whether they could issue service letters to make us aware whenever anything changes on the asset. Many of the OEMs do this either directly or through their dealers. However, most will not voluntarily do so, but we can begin to ask more of our suppliers.
This is a relationship that your supply chain team should manage. In a perfect world, the organization should also have a mechanism to audit how their suppliers are performing including communicating changes to them as asset owner. I have spent a lot of time in organizations chasing parts that no one knows what they are. This is also a part of the reason that the organization needs to invest in asset management to look beyond individual assets and focus on all types of risks. Extending the life of an asset into perpetuity, for example, may be momentarily advantageous, however, it often creates other problems that the supply chain cannot resolve.
Read Part 2 of this Q&A here.
