| Open O & M - A CALM Enabler |
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| Written by AIA |
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Managing the Operate & Maintain (O&M) asset life-cycle phase remains a major challenge for manufacturers and other asset intensive organisations. Assets are expected to generate their returns and justify the investment decision during this phase. Disruptions to effective asset use limit returns, extend payback periods and, in many cases, impact corporate bottom lines and customer/supplier relations. Despite the importance of high asset performance, maintenance budgets are frequent targets of cost-cutting initiatives. Balancing performance requirements against budget constraints is a daily challenge for asset managers that demands close coordination between operating and maintenance organisations.
High asset performance demands close collaboration between all groups within an asset-intensive organisation. Open O&M is an emerging information integration standard focused on the collaboration needs of operations and maintenance. Asset management strategies like Preventive Maintenance (PM), Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) and Total Productive maintenance (TPM) have contributed significantly to higher asset availability in recent years. Predictive Maintenance (PdM) or Condition-based Maintenance (CBM), using on-line condition monitoring and other asset health sensors, is the next step in improving overall asset performance. Recognising problems before they becomefunctional failures allowsorganisations to use scheduleddowntime for the most important repairs, reduces parts inventories, and optimise use of limited labour. But the inability to share information between multi-vendor products and between operating and maintenance departments continues to hamper implementation of these newer strategies.
MIMOSA, the OPC Foundation and ISA-SP95 recently formed ajoint working group to address this very challenging issue. They are collaborating on a new standard, Open O&M, for integrating diagnostic, prognostic control and maintenance applications within an enterprise. ARC applauds this effort and sees this as a key step towards enabling the many benefits we have discussed in our Collaborative Asset Life-cycle Management (CALM) and Multisite CALM strategies. Analysis A variety of control systems, maintenance management, condition monitoring and enterprise applications are involved in the management of complex, asset-intensive Mimosa's OSA-EAI, OPC and ISA-95 have all made significant progress as standards in their own right. OpenO&M recognises that a combination of these standards is necessary to address the full breadth of collaboration challenges in asset management operations. Standards for information exchange have evolved independently for each of these areas. OPC has gained considerable acceptance as a standard for sharing information between control systems and associated manufacturing applications. MIMOSA's OSA-EAI standard for sharing condition monitoring and asset health information with maintenance, operations, and enterprise systems is likewise being widely supported. The Instrumentation, Systems & Automation Society ISA-95 standard for integration between enterprise and production management systems in continuous, batch and discrete industries is also already being adopted by a broad range of suppliers and users in those industries. Each of these efforts addresses an important issue and has clearly made significant progress in its own right. Open O&M recognises that the combination of these standards provides an excellent basis for addressing many of the challenges in asset management. Open O&M is being developed through a joint working group of professionals with support from MIMOSA, OPC and ISA-95 standards. The goal of Open O&M is to enable optimal asset performance through collaborative decision-making across operating and maintenance organisations. While the standards being used for Open O&M have their origin in process manufacturing, the joint working group is also charged with addressing the needs of the broader asset management community, including facilities and fleets in both the public and private sectors. The importance of these other areas is reflected in the involvement of several elements of the U.S. military services and the National Institute of Building Sciences Facility Maintenance and Operation Committee (NIBS FMOC). Open O&M Integration Model Open O&M is focused on information integration between four disparate technology arenas. Advancements in asset status assessment, through condition monitoring, specialised sensors and analysis tools, have been significant over the last decade. We are clearly at the point where Condition-based Maintenance (CBM) and Condition-based Operations (CBO) are becoming realisable strategies. But in many organisations this information is still only being used by local technicians who maintain the equipment. Integration of asset Condition Monitoring (CM)information with control systems and operations (OPS), enterprise asset management (EAM) and other decision support systems (DSS) has now become imperative. Open O&M exploits the benefits of MIMOSA's common Asset Registry model to eliminate asset identification issues across multivendor systems and across different enterprise organisation solutions. Integrating this with the standard object models of OPC provides a recognised interface with automation systems and all supporting solutions, including in many cases, EAM. Working within the context defined by ISA-95 further ensures that this same information can be used by higher level enterprise applications. The OpenO&M Concept The emerging standard is specifically focused on providing value to end-users by creating plug and play capabilities for faster implementation and by allowing them to pick and choose the best solutions from suppliers that comply. An extensible, open architecture based on XML and service oriented interfaces that leverage best of breed technology and support practical interoperability and compliance is implicit in Open O&M. Collaborative Asset Life-cycle Management Open O&M is consistent with the requirements identified in ARC's CALM and Multisite CALM strategies. CALM focuses on optimisation of all classes of assets across all life-cycle stages, from sourcing and installation, to operations, maintenance and retirement. CALM recognises the needs of multiple stakeholders in the asset management process and the value of cross-functional, collaborative decision-making. Cross-functional collaboration enables disparate departments such as operations, maintenance and procurement to work together in achieving better return on assets, reduced parts' inventories and more optimal asset deployment. Multisite CALM (M-CALM) addresses the additional opportunities of cross-facility collaboration for organisations with geographically distributed assets. In this case information is shared across the same groups located at different sites in order to collaborate on best practices, maintenance knowledge, performance standards, resource sharing and asset performance measurement and improvement. Open O&M has the potential to support both forms of collaborative asset management. Open O&M within a single site enables different functional groups to share information and work together. Organisations that implement Open O&M at all sites will also have a platform for standardisation which is mandatory for sharing information across sites and with external service providers. Recommendations - Implementing new standards requires a concerted, cooperative effort froms uppliers, end-users, and service providers. Everyone must first agree on the Open O&M standard. Suppliers must then develop products based on the new standard, end-users must deploy the new products and service providers must support and recommend them. - ARC believes that Open O&M has the potential for addressing a vital issue in asset management. All end-users and suppliers should investigate this initiative by contacting MIMOSA, OPC Foundation or ISA-SP95.
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