Improving the Bottom Line By Implementing an

Integrated Plant Asset Management (PAM) System

Kenneth D. Bever
Strategic Project Manager
Entek

INTRODUCTION

Asset-intensive companies in industrial enterprises today are under intensive pressure. Investors
demand high rates of return and competitive issues continue to grow. Successful companies are
finding effective ways of adapting the enterprise to meet these challenges.

Some of the most important issues that must be addressed are:

¾ Globalized operations and competition

Worldwide economic growth offers many new opportunities for selling

products and services in countries previously inaccessible because of
geography. Success in capturing these emerging markets will depend
on a company's ability to lower costs through improving logistics and
management of supply chains in order to support the needs of
customers globally.

¾ Asset replacement costs

Although there is often a strong need to replace a manufacturing plant, it

is normally a very difficult investment to justify. In some industries, the
relatively low level of return on investment in major capital assets has
forced these companies to find other ways of gaining access to these
assets, such as by leasing or outsourcing. The highest priority is to
squeeze the most out of existing assets with minimum costs.

¾ Increased customer expectations

From "just-in-time" delivery to higher quality and increased

technical support, customers are requiring more from their
suppliers. Not only must the product be of high quality, and at the
lowest possible price, but deliveries must be on time. This is very
difficult to achieve without a clear view of industrial risks and tools
to predict future asset performance.

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 Improving the Bottom Line By Implementing an Integrated Plant Asset Management System

¾ Environmental and safety factors

Compliance with strict environmental requirements puts a greater

demand than ever on an industrial enterprise. Production failures not
only carry the risk of losing valuable production time, but also of
causing environmental or safety code violations that can prove
extremely expensive. Increased monitoring has a major role to play in
avoiding such incidents, both by detecting possible faults before they
become serious, and in providing protection monitoring of critical
assets.

PLANT ASSET MANAGEMENT

In all four of these areas, plant asset management programs are now seen as an essential
ingredient for companies that want to succeed. Industrial manufacturers are increasingly turning
to plant asset management as an optimization strategy to improve their process efficiency and
reduce maintenance, thus enhancing their return on assets (ROA). According to a June 1999
study by ARC, companies are reporting as much as a 30 percent reduction in maintenance
budgets and up to a 20 percent reduction in production downtime as a result of implementing a
plant asset management strategy. Since as much as 40 percent of manufacturing revenues are
budgeted for maintenance, these savings contribute significantly to the bottom line of a
company.

A critical factor in the optimization of assets is the ability to monitor, in real-time, the health of
plant assets. This ability allows plant personnel to assess the risk of premature production
outages and the ability to schedule and plan future maintenance activities. Knowledge of asset
health is also critical at the business systems level. Without such knowledge it is difficult, if not
impossible, for a company to make production guarantees and meet customers' delivery
requirements.

Manufacturers are now moving to develop plant asset management strategies. Industries such as
petrochemicals and utilities are aggressively moving ahead in adopting asset optimization
principles. Maintenance strategies which were once "run-to-failure" are now "condition-based".
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems are implemented to perform maintenance
scheduling, workflow, inventory, purchasing and integration with automation, production
scheduling, and manufacturing systems.

PURPOSE OF A PLANT ASSET MANAGEMENT (PAM) SYSTEM

The purpose of a Plant Asset Management (PAM) system is to provide timely information to
operations and maintenance (O&M) personnel in order to safely increase the total production
output of a plant at a reduced cost per unit of output. The following figure illustrates the role of

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 Improving the Bottom Line By Implementing an Integrated Plant Asset Management System

the PAM systems as it communicates advisories to both maintenance and operation systems by
synthesizing asset measurements it has obtained.

Plant Asset Management

Process Maintenance
System Advisories
Advisories
Gather Condition Data
Determine Asset Health
Provide Diagnoses and Prognoses
Send Advisories

Distributed Control System /

Process Data Historian Maintenance Management System /
Manufacturing Execution System Enterprise Asset Maintenance System
Control Current Process
Process Work Plan & Schedule Work & Resources
Improve Efficiencies
Parameters Histories Track Material & Labor Costs
Plan Production Downtimes
Manage Inventories
Optimize Process Utilization
Document Results

Optimized
Optimized
Plant
Plant
Operations
Maintenance

PAM systems direct maintenance by answering the following questions:

“What equipment may fail if it does not receive maintenance intervention?”

“What intervention should we take and how soon?

“Where can I reduce my routine preventive maintenance activities?”

PAM systems assist operations and production planning in answering the questions:

“Should I make any adjustments to the process to prolong the life of critical plant
assets?”

“At what level can I continue to produce my product without incurring an unacceptably
high risk of unexpected process slowtime, downtime, quality problems, or safety
shutdowns?”

“What is the risk of successfully producing X amount of product next week?”

These benefits occur as the manufacturing facility makes optimum operating and maintenance
decisions through the application of a PAM system's information solution.

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 Improving the Bottom Line By Implementing an Integrated Plant Asset Management System

COMPONENTS OF A PLANT ASSET MANAGEMENT (PAM) SYSTEM

The following illustration diagrams the basic modules of a PAM system along with its inputs and
outputs:

Portable
Plant Asset Management Enterprise
Asset
Data Collectors (PAM) System
Maintenance
Plant Configuration, Asset/Model,
On-line Configuration, Reliability Study, Financial,
Manufacturing
Future Maintenance, & Failure History Data
Surveillance Execution
Systems Integrated Asset Risk, System Enterprise
Asset Health
Condition Cost Analysis Resource
and Prognosis
On-line Monitoring & Rec. Actions Process Planning
Transient Automation
Systems Systems

On-line
Process
Protection
Historians
Systems

A PAM system’s first function is to integrate data from multiple equipment condition
monitoring, process devices, and protection systems and search for abnormal exceptions to the
normal “baseline” developed for the current process state. Stand-alone condition monitoring
systems (CM), shown in green blocks in the diagram above, have been used successfully in
military and government applications for decades. The premise of CM is that carefully selected
measurements made on a regular basis can accurately show machine condition. The CM domain
has evolved in a fairly technical fashion wrapped around the measurement technology. The
measurements of interest can range from simple parameters such as temperature and oil particle
count to complex data such as vibration spectra or infrared images. In all of these cases, the
objective is to determine what is normal for the machine and identify the equipment in various
abnormal “alarm” states.

Advanced PAM systems include inputs from process control data historians and include
sophisticated statistical smart alarm technology – automatically setting multiple “baselines” for
equipment based on variable operating loads, speeds, and other process conditions. This allows
the system to be sensitive to the current operational "state" so as not to over-alarm or under-
alarm. The following screen capture shows a condition monitoring view of equipment in various
abnormal alarm states and the underlying vibration and thermographic data in alarm from the
equipment sensors.

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If exceptions are found, the second function of a PAM system is required -- an enterprise asset
health (EAH) system. The EAH module facilitates an analyst’s evaluation of the current health
of the asset in question. This process is assisted by integrating all relevant data into information
displays which allow multi-disciplinary data (lubrication, vibration, thermographic, ultra-sonic,
process data, etc.) to be visually compared in multi-parameter plots and graphs. This asset health
analysis is also aided through the use of automated diagnostic tools. The analyst or diagnostic
system records the following for each piece of equipment in an abnormal state:

What data is truly abnormal for the process conditions? (symptoms)

What could be causing the abnormality? (diagnosis)
How might the asset fail in the future if no action is taken? (prognosis)

The following screen illustrates this capability:

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 Improving the Bottom Line By Implementing an Integrated Plant Asset Management System

A nalysis ?

A n a ly s is D at e: 0 5 /2 0 /1 99 8 1 2 :0 0 p .m . by S u pe rv is o r P re v iou s
H iera rc h y I te m : P A FA N # 1
N ext
D ia g no s e s
A ctive Com ponent D iagnosi s D iag. Sev. Lik el ihood Sy m pt.
Ne w
Yes M otor Unbalanc e Ex trem e 100
Yes G earbox Loos eness M inor 75 Co p y

S a ve

D e le te
A dv is o rie s
Sequence D es cription Priority S tat e
1 W ash rotor High N ot Sent
2 Re-take v ibrati on readings M edium Not S ent

S et A s D e fa u lt

S en d C a nc e l

The third job of the PAM system is to evaluate current production and maintenance impacts
based on the present health of the asset and then estimate future impacts to operations and
maintenance should the troubled asset fail. This function of a PAM system is sometimes referred
to as an Enterprise Asset Risk (EAR) system. The analyst can store the risk of future failures,
the estimated times to failure, and all resulting consequences of these future failures. This step is
aided by tools allowing easy review of the asset failure database, criticality analysis, failure
modes and effects analysis, risk-based monitoring data, reliability-centered maintenance studies,
and other reliability data.

The final step of the PAM system is the ability to help people make effective decisions quickly.
It performs this function by communicating real-time operational changes and work advisories
based on current asset health and risk evaluations to Plant Automation Systems/Distributed
Control Systems (PAS/DCS), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), Enterprise Asset
Maintenance (EAM/CMMS) systems, and E-mail and paging systems.

Open, XML-based integration standards from industry alliances such as MIMOSA (Machinery
Information Management Open Systems Alliance at www.mimosa.org) and OAGI (Open
Applications Group, Inc. at www.openapplications.org) allow bi-directional gateways to be built
using universally, open systems. Integration of a PAM system with external PAS, MES, and
EAM systems allow for the PAM system to be constantly queried for equipment health data and
posted on operator consoles and on maintenance screens. The PAM system responds with the
current and future equipment asset health, allowing optimization of maintenance efforts and
manufacturing execution.

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 Improving the Bottom Line By Implementing an Integrated Plant Asset Management System

Gateways allow a PAM system to submit work requests directly into an EAM system, monitor
the progress of the work order, and view equipment work histories in a table format or in a
graphical Gantt chart. This allows the analyst to make better diagnostic decisions and to see the
impact of maintenance on the condition of a piece of equipment. The following screens show an
example of a work request being created and sent by a PAM system.

Send Advisory

H ie ra rc hy Item : P A F AN #1
Oation
MA XIMO Work R equest I nform K ?

A nalys is M A X I M O V 4 .0 L o c a tio n C o m p o n en t : < P A FA N # 1 > , C

M aontoc re l ? OK
e m a il
D ia g n os is : U n ba la n c e C a nce l
A n a ly s is D at e: 0 5 /2 0 /1 99 8 1 2 :0 0 p .m . by S u pe rv is o r
A d v is o r y D e s c rip ti o n : W asShuP
R re v iou s
momtoarr y > In fo rm a tio n
H iera rc h y I te m : P A FA N # 1
F ail ur e C l a s s
N e xt
P r o b l em Co de
D ia g no s e s
M ot or Ba d Be ar in gs
A ctive Com pon ent D iagnosis D iag. Sev. Lik eliho od Sy m pt.
Ne w
Yes M otor Unbalan c e Ex trem e 100J o b P la n P rio ri ty T a r ge t C o m p l et io n D a te

Yes G earbo x Loos en ess M inor 75 10 01 2 7 C6/o28

p /y1 9 9 8 1 0 :0 0 :0 0 A M

R e p o rte d B y W o rk O rd e r P re fx
S a ve
W ils o n PM

D e le te
A dv is o rie s
Sequen ce D es crip tion Priority S tat e
1 W ash ro tor High N ot Sen t
2 Re-take v ibration read ings M edium Not S ent

S et A s D e fa u lt

S en d C a nc e l

CONCLUSION

Manufacturing and production enterprises are under intense pressure to achieve maximum
efficiency. The winners will be those that maximize their investment in people and equipment
assets to achieve highest profitability. For physical assets, the objective is to optimize the
utilization of all plant assets -- from entire process lines to individual pressure vessels, piping,
process machinery, and vital machine components. The use of Plant Asset Management (PAM)
systems are now making this a reality for state-of-the-art plants today.

REFERENCES

1. Moubray, John. Reliability-Centred Maintenance

2. Wilmott, Peter. Total Productive Maintenance –The Western Way

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3. Cambell, John Dixon. Uptime – Strategies for Excellence in Maintenance Management

4. Kakajima, Seiichi, Introduction to TPM

5. Piggott, Neal. ARC Automation News, 1999 (www.ARCweb.com)

6. Wetzel, Rick. Entek's Enshare™ Enterprise Asset Health System, 2000 (www.entek.com)

7. American Chemical Society, Technology Vision 2020 Report, Dec. 1996 (www.acs.org /
http://membership.acs.org:80/I/IEC/docs/chemvision2020.pdf

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