Asset-intensive Organisations Research Articles

An ontology for maintenance activities and its application to data quality

Maintenance of assets is a multi-million dollar cost each year for asset intensive organisations in the defence, manufacturing, resource and infrastructure sectors. These costs are tracked though maintenance work order (MWO) records. MWO records contain structured data for dates, costs, and asset identification and unstructured text describing the work required, for example ‘replace leaking pump’. Our focus in this paper is on data quality for maintenance activity terms in MWO records (e.g. replace, repair, adjust and inspect). We present two contributions in this paper. First, we propose a reference ontology for maintenance activity terms. We use natural language processing to identify seven core maintenance activity terms and their synonyms from 800,000 MWOs. We provide elucidations for these seven terms. Second, we demonstrate use of the reference ontology in an application-level ontology using an industrial use case. The end-to-end NLP-ontology pipeline identifies data quality issues with 55% of the MWO records for a centrifugal pump over 8 years. For the 33% of records where a verb was not provided in the unstructured text, the ontology can infer a relevant activity class. The selection of the maintenance activity terms is informed by the ISO 14224 and ISO 15926-4 standards and conforms to ISO/IEC 21838-2 Basic Formal Ontology (BFO). The reference and application ontologies presented here provide an example for how industrial organisations can augment their maintenance work management processes with ontological workflows to improve data quality.

Digital transformation in asset-intensive organisations: The light and the dark side

Digital transformation has far-reaching effects on business and society. While the literature to date has mainly considered the positive opportunities associated with digital innovations at the consumer interface in terms of products and services, the impact on asset-intensive organisations has not yet been examined in detail. Because asset-intensive organisations have unique requirements, a focused approach is essential. This study provided an in-depth analysis of digital transformation efforts in asset-intensive organisations by interviewing elite informants in the field. Our results provide an explanatory model for the digital transformation of asset-intensive organisations from a dynamic process perspective. Our results also allowed us to uncover the dark side of digital transformation, and we theorise on its implications.

Assessing the level of application of physical asset management core practices at water boards in Malawi

This study assesses the level of application of Physical Asset Management (PAM) core practices in Water Boards (WBs) in Malawi. A questionnaire was applied to 141 water supply experts drawn from all WBs in Malawi, and data was analyzed using SPSS V 20.0. The results show that WBs dismally apply PAM core practices in the study area. This study will assist in the development of an asset management framework for WBs in Malawi as ongoing research work. The study raises awareness and provides insights to top management across the globe on areas they need to prioritize to develop or maintain a high level of excellence in PAM. There is a need to identify more PAM practices in the study area which could have a bearing on the discipline. Also, a study is proposed which could link these PAM practices and how they affect the performance of asset-intensive organizations.

A conceptual construct on value for infrastructure asset management

Understanding the meaning of value to asset-intensive organizations and their stakeholders has been a long-standing goal of researchers and managers of the asset management community. These issues have become particularly prominent with the publication of the ISO 5500x series of standards on asset management. These standards are intended to guide asset-intensive organizations of different types towards realising value from their asset base. However, value can be defined and shaped in various ways, and a high-level conceptual construct to frame these differences is needed. Because such a construct has not yet been established, organizations have no standard guidance to systematically achieve and demonstrate that value is derived from their assets. The paper also discusses the impact of cognitive and motivational biases as well as the complexity of operational and business context while determining the meaning of value. This article presents an overview of theories on value and proposes an original high-level conceptual construct to be used by decision-makers in infrastructure organizations. This holistic proposal provides a structured understanding of the value concept and intends to assist infrastructure asset managers in establishing or developing their decision making processes at all levels of the organization. It enables decision-makers to factor in the benefits and impacts of competing decision options in organizational objectives and stakeholders’ needs and expectations and promotes the grasping of opportunities and an enhanced balancing of costs, risks and performance throughout the life cycle of infrastructures.

Understanding motives for and barriers to implementing asset management system: an empirical study for engineered physical assets

This study contributes to the literature by exploring, from a multidisciplinary viewpoint, the emerging discipline of asset management, and by providing a better understanding of the motives for and barriers to asset-intensive organisations’ adoption of asset management systems (AMS). To this end, the authors conceptualise and explore the core themes of AMS, and link this novel body of knowledge to organisational motives for and barriers to the formal introduction of AMS. The study collects and analyses empirical data from 93 middle/senior managers in Slovenian organisations dealing with engineered assets. The results, obtained by applying partial least squares path modelling, show that internal motives, such as better control of operational processes and continuous improvement, are the main drivers of the introduction of AMS. The potential increase in documentation and bureaucracy, and lack of resources, were identified as the main barriers to AMS implementation. By assessing the factors that facilitate and inhibit formal AMS implementation, the study provides important insights into developing strategies to promote the novel and important discipline of asset management.

Reliable introduction of critical assets: an explorative case study in railways

PurposeAsset-intensive organizations rely heavily on physical assets that are often expensive, complex and have a significant impact on organizational performance. Past introductions of critical assets in various industries showed that despite many preparations in maintenance and operations, shortcomings were identified after deployment resulting in unreliable performance. The main purpose of this qualitative study is to explore the factors that determine how asset-intensive organizations can achieve reliable outcomes in critical asset introductions despite random failures as a result of increasing complexity and infant mortalities.Design/methodology/approachTo gain a detailed understanding of the issues and challenges of critical asset introductions, a case study in railways (rolling stock introductions) was conducted and analyzed using qualitative analysis.FindingsThe case showed that organizational factors were perceived as decisive factors for a reliable performance of the introduction, while the main focus of the introduction was on the asset and its technical systems. This suggests that more consideration toward organizational factors is needed. Therefore, a critical asset introduction framework was proposed based on 15 identified factors.Originality/valueReliable performance is often associated with technical systems only. This empirical study emphasizes the need for a more holistic perspective and the inclusion of organizational factors when introducing critical assets seeking reliable performance. This study demonstrated the application of the affinity diagramming technique in collectively analyzing the data adopting a multidisciplinary orientation.

An Analysis of Physical Asset Management Core Practices and Their Influence on Operational Performance

The commitment of organisations to physical assets management (PAM) has recently received considerable attention in theory and practice. Indeed, PAM plays a key role in asset-intensive organizations and is also considered as a principal actor within Industry 4.0. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the PAM core practices and the performance implications of integrating these practices into business, in particular by assessing their impact on operational performance. Survey data were collected from managers in 138 international and local organisations. The data was analysed using Partial Least Squares Path Modeling (PLS-PM). The study validates the second-order construct consisting of PAM latent variables, namely Strategy and Planning, Risk management, Lifecycle Delivery, Asset Information, and Asset Review. The results have shown that PAM core practices directly influence operational performance. This paper is a response to recent calls for empirical studies on the organisational approaches that can increase the success of organisations.

Establishing the relationship between asset management and business performance

Recognising the relevance of asset management (AM) benefits in improving organisational performance by asset-intensive organisations is no longer sufficient. It is necessary to deepen and control how this truly happens so that organisations have confidence in AM investments that bring better returns to the business. This paper presents a theoretical model, AMBP Model, which offers enablers supporting the organisations to make better decisions in infrastructure investments, through the construction of a relationship map between AM key-processes, asset performance indicators (API) and business performance indicators (KPI). The relationship between these three elements is a result of the analysis of case studies in different sectors of the economy, publicly available on AM specialized sites or AM conference proceedings. Knowing ‘how AM process relates to Business Performance’, the aim of this paper, is a fundamental and helpful path to understand ‘how AM maturity impacts on business performance’, an issue that remains up to date in both the academic and business environments.

Relationally integrated value networks for total asset management in project portfolios

Relationally integrated value networks for total asset management (Rivans-Tam) have been recommended by scholars as a vehicle to integrate the stakeholders of project management (PM) and of asset management (Am), covering the entire life cycle of a built asset. This paper presents a scoping and exploratory pilot study to test a further proposition that expands the basic Rivans-Tam concept to encompass portfolio management, to benefit asset-intensive organisations holding a large portfolio of ongoing construction projects and operational built assets. Accordingly, it establishes a strong theoretical underpinning based on previously validated research exercises on Rivans-Tam and previous applications of social network analysis (SNA) for Rivans-Tam and developed from in-depth high-level semi-structured interviews with six industry professionals with relevant expertise and experience. The outcomes broaden the theoretical base of Rivans-Tam, also highlighting its practical potential to empower total portfolio management (TPM). This TPM perspective expands the hitherto ‘single asset’-focused Rivans-Tam concept and related SNA methods to a wider portfolio of both ongoing construction projects and operational built assets. Moreover, the consolidated findings contribute substantially to practice by providing a basis to overcome the main challenges and unlock the potential synergies from ‘overall best value’-focused relational integration of hitherto disconnected diverse stakeholders.

Novel methodology for efficiency-based long-term investment planning in water infrastructures

Uncertainties are a key issue for long-term capital investment planning in asset intensive organizations. Amongst the sources of uncertainty are the quality and accuracy of readily available data and the assumptions underlying the several estimations involved in capital investment plans, namely those related to renewals, replacements and expansion costs and the useful lives of the assets. This article proposes a novel methodology for efficiency-based long-term investment planning in water infrastructures and discusses the effect of uncertainties in the investment strategies. An industrial water supply system of the Industrial and Logistics Zone of Sines (ILZS), installed in the Portuguese seacoast around 40 years ago, is used as a case study to demonstrate the proposed methodology. The study includes stochastic and deterministic approaches to an asset management key-performance indicator (KPI) that is currently being tested in the Portuguese water sector—the Infrastructure Value Index (IVI).

Reliable performance in critical asset introductions: A comparative study on collective mindfulness

Asset-intensive organizations heavily rely on physical assets that are often expensive, complex and have a significant impact on performance. Introducing new critical assets is characterized by a strong need for reliable performance despite typical teething problems. New asset introductions raise (obvious) questions about the reliability of technical systems, but often neglected or overlooked, also about the reliability of organizational systems. The concept of collective mindfulness may support asset-intensive organizations to recognize and manage organizational reliability, but empirical research on its application in the context of physical asset management seems to be missing. This study addresses this gap through an empirical exploration by assessing collective mindfulness in critical asset introductions at three asset-intensive organizations. This research contributes by providing detailed insights into what practices of asset-intensive organizations can be seen as mindful and supports reliability seeking organizations when introducing new critical assets. An explorative multiple case study revealed distinctive operationalizations for the five processes of collective mindfulness for critical asset introductions. In addition, limited evidence was found of organizational mechanisms influencing these processes of collective mindfulness. This can be considered an opportunity to increase reliable performance in complex asset introductions. Therefore, future research should be aimed at how asset-intensive organizations can implement collective mindfulness principles to adopt a more mindful organizational infrastructure.

Using Machine Learning Algorithms on data residing in SAP ERP Application to predict equipment failures

Asset intensive Organizations have searched long for a framework model that would timely predict equipment failure. Timely prediction of equipment failure substantially reduces direct and indirect costs, unexpected equipment shut-downs, accidents, and unwarranted emission risk. In this paper, the author proposes a model that can predict equipment failure by using data from SAP Plant Maintenance module. To achieve that author has applied data extraction algorithm and numerous data manipulations to prepare a classification data model consisting of maintenance records parameters such as spare parts usage, time elapsed since last completed maintenance and the period to the next scheduled maintained and so on. By using unsupervised learning technique of clustering, the author observed a class to cluster evaluation of 80% accuracy. After that classifier model was trained using various machine language (ML) algorithms and subsequently tested on mutually exclusive data sets with an objective to predict equipment breakdown. The classifier model using ML algorithms such as Support Vector Machine (SVM) and Decision Tree (DT) returned an accuracy and true positive rate (TPR) of greater than 95% to predict equipment failure. The proposed model acts as an Advanced Intelligent Control system contributing to the Cyber-Physical Systems for asset intensive organizations.

Towards Dynamic Criticality-Based Maintenance Strategy for Industrial Assets

Abstract: An asset’s risk is a useful indicator for determining optimal time of repair/replacement for assets in order to yield minimal operational cost of maintenance. For a successful asset management practice, asset-intensive organisations must understand the risk profile associated with their asset portfolio and how this will change over time. Unfortunately, in many risk-based asset management approaches, the only thing that is known to change in the risk profile of the asset is the likelihood (or probability) of failure. The criticality (or consequences of failure) of asset is assumed to be fixed and has considered as more or less a static quantity that is not updated with sufficient frequency as the operating environment changes. This paper proposes a dynamic criticality-based maintenance approach where asset criticality is modeled as a dynamic quantity and changes in asset’s criticality is used to optimize maintenance plans (e.g. determining the optimal repair time/replacement age for an asset over it life cycle period) to have a better risk management and cost savings. An illustrative example is used to demonstrate the effect of implementing dynamic criticality in determining the optimal time of repair for a bridge infrastructure. It is shown that capturing changes in the criticality of the bridge over time and using this understanding in the risk analysis of the bridge provided the opportunity for better maintenance planning resulting to reduction of the total risk.

Preventive and corrective maintenance – cost comparison and cost–benefit analysis

Maintenance can represent a significant portion of the cost in asset intensive organisations, as breakdowns have an impact on the capacity, quality and cost of operation. However, the formulation of a maintenance strategy depends on a number of factors, including the cost of down time, reliability characteristics and redundancy of assets. Consequently, the balance between preventive maintenance (PM) and corrective maintenance (CM) for minimising costs varies between organisations and assets. Nevertheless, there are some rules of thumb on the balance between PM and CM, such as the 80/20 rule. Studies on the relationship between PM and CM in practice are rare. Therefore, PM and CM costs are studied in this article by analysing historical maintenance data. A case study of rail infrastructure historical data is carried out to determine the shares of PM and CM, together with a cost–benefit analysis (CBA) to assess the value of PM. The results show that the PM represents 10% to 30% of the total maintenance cost when user costs, i.e. train delays, are included as a CM cost. The CBA shows the benefit of PM is positive with a benefit–cost ratio at 3.3. However, the results depend on the inclusion/exclusion of user costs, besides individual organisational parameters.

A comparative study on asset management capability maturity models

Asset service organisations often recognise asset management as a core competence to deliver benefits to their business; however, it is less clear about how organisations know whether their asset management processes are adequate. This paper contends that asset management maturity models, which combine best practices with identified competencies, may provide a useful approach to test the capacity of organisations to manage assets. Existing capability maturity models are subject to wide variations in their implementation and sophistication. Drawing on five dimensions of effective asset management - spatial, temporal, organisational, statistical and evaluation - as identified by Amadi-Echendu et al. (2010), this paper undertakes a comprehensive comparative analysis of six existing maturity models to identify the gaps in key process areas. Results suggest incorporating these dimensions into an integrated approach to assess the maturity of asset-intensive organisations would provide a comprehensive approach towards assessing capabilities of asset service organisations.

The policy delphi method: contribution to policy and strategy within energy organisations: a 2013 Malaysian case study with global implications

The policy delphi method is a process that seeks to generate the strongest possible opposing views on the potential resolutions of a major policy issue, such as strategy and policy for infrastructure and engineering asset management within asset-intensive organisations. The objectives of the policy delphi method are to: ensure that all possible options have been tabled for consideration, estimate the impact and consequences of any particular option, and to examine and estimate the acceptability of all the individual options. The committee process is commonly used to address a wide range of issues and decisions within organisations at management and operational levels. Committees dominate governance and management within nearly all types of organisations, however, it has been argued that the committee approach no longer functions as effectively in the realm of policy formulation as it once may have due to a lack of adequate structure for discussion. Due to the disadvantages of the Committee process, this research investigated the relevance and effectiveness of the policy delphi method in 2013 within the leading Malaysian energy organisation, with the provision of this practical case study of a policy delphi to elaborate the efficacy of this method for asset intensive organisations to develop strategy and policy.

Sustainable performance of industrial assets: the role of PAS 55-1&2 and human factors

Asset-intensive organisations are under rising pressure from their stakeholders to realise the optimum level of exploiting assets to achieve a balanced and sustainable performance (SP) over their life cycle. However, industrial organisational structures delineated along traditional disciplines fail to provide an asset-centric focus. Accomplishing SP in an asset-intensive organisation depends on the ability of the human authority in an organisational hierarchy to maintain different asset operations align with sustainable considerations. The level of physical assets' integrity in a particular industrial setting depends on the personnel ability for acquisition, exploitation (includes design and operation), maintenance, modification and disposal of critical assets and properties within the limits of universally accepted norms. Thus, human factor (HF) is a central measure to evaluate the ‘integrity’ of physical assets in asset management as the ‘integrity’ is a characteristic that human beings can have. The publically available specification (PAS) which is published by British Standards Institution (BSI) provides specification (PAS-1) and guidelines (PAS-2) for managing integrity of physical assets towards SP. This manuscript demonstrates the role of PAS 5-1&2 and HFs achieving SP. It also proposes a framework and its implementation methodology to mitigate unwanted events due to human errors leading to organisational weaknesses.

Asset management maturity in public infrastructure: the case of Rijkswaterstaat

In times of restructuring governmental policies and resources, the need for strategic asset management is growing. Maturity models offer organisations a structure to assist them in improving their asset management performance. We present the results of a repeated maturity measurement based on the infrastructure management maturity matrix (IM3) in Rijkswaterstaat, a Dutch public infrastructure organisation. The IM3 distinguishes five maturity levels from ad hoc to optimised, and seven asset management dimensions: information management, internal coordination, external coordination, market approach, risk management, processes and roles, and culture and leadership. The results show significant progress on all dimensions, and continued learning and widespread awareness of asset management in the organisation. In the discussion, we reflect on the findings and possible future developments for the organisation. We also discuss the potential impact of infrastructure maturity models for the professionalisation of other asset intensive organisations

Decision Making for Predictive Maintenance in Asset Information Management

Asset management is a process of identification, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of physical assets (Wenzler, 2005). An asset-centric approach is vital for the success of an asset intensive organisation as the effective management of assets is a major determinant of organisational success. One key issue in asset information management is the availability of information at the right time, in the right format, before the right person, against the right query, and at the right level. This paper provides a comprehensive and in-depth critical analysis from literature which fulfils an identified need of fusing asset information for predictive maintenance so that decision making can be improved. The critical literature review included also highlights the need for an expert system which integrates reliable information with effective decision-support, under the umbrella of Asset Management. Various elements of asset management were critically reviewed, highlighting the need for more robust Predictive maintenance management for assets. We argue that this is best achieved by a system that, in particular, incorporates Expert System to enhance the quality of predictive maintenance through accurate decision analysis. In addition, it should have fuzzy logic reasoning ability that assists in the decision-making process. Our analysis leads us to propose that Expert System when combined with fuzzy logic provides a better way of decision making in predictive maintenance management of assets.