Enterprise Asset Management – Right from the Start by Stephen A. Mislan, Maintenance Support Technician, Charleston Water System, Environmental Resources Department, Charleston, South Carolina 

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.” - Colin Powell, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (1989-93)

In the last thirty years of working in the maintenance and operations fields, I have come to realize that the success or failure of any endeavor is almost always dependent on the attitudes and capabilities of the people involved. I don’t expect this to be big news to many people. After all, we have probably heard these kinds of statements from many sources whether it is in books, speeches or at conferences like this. What makes this statement different this time is that you are hearing it from someone who had to learn this lesson on the road of experience. For most of the time it’s been a toll road. Often I didn’t have the exact change either.

Today I want to share with you some of that journey. I hope that by sharing with you some of these experiences that together we can learn what it takes to ensure a successful implementation of an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) program or Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) and how to do it “right from the start”.

Who am I?

That may sound a little strange at first but I think it is important that I establish this before I go further. I am you. Or I might be the person you’ve assigned to be the key individual responsible for the day to day operation of an EAM or CMMS. I am the person who sits down at a desk or work station five days a week and actually uses the computer application that stores the information and data we hope will provide us with the means to improve our maintenance and operations programs. I am the person who is expected to provide management and supervision with a clear concise picture of the status of our assets and how we are maintaining them.  So, if you are a CMMS or EAM specialist, technician or operator, or the person who assigned someone to be one, as the commercial says “this one’s for you”.

Where I am coming from.

I work for the Charleston Water System in Charleston, South Carolina. We are a public water and wastewater utility governed by a Board of Commissioners. We provide water and wastewater services to not only the city of Charleston, but to a large portion of the South Carolina Low Country.  Our water services provide safe drinking water to approximately 400,000 people and wastewater treatment for 170,000. Water treatment services are provided at our Hanahan Water Treatment Plant and wastewater treatment is performed at our Plum Island Treatment Plant and another smaller facility on Daniel Island.  Our average daily flow at our water treatment plant is 65 MGD (million gallons per day) and 19.6 MGD from our two wastewater treatment plants.

We employ some 430 people and a wide variety of assets and procedures to accomplish our goal of protecting the health and environment of the population we serve and we are very proud of the job we do. 

I work at the Plum Island Wastewater Treatment Plant as a Maintenance Support Technician. My duties primarily center on the daily operation and maintenance of our CMMS. We use an enterprise version and it has been in use for approximately 10 years. We have plans to upgrade in the near future and are already taking steps to insure that the transition will be accomplished smoothly and with very little difficulty. Today I want to talk with you about the experiences I have had with our present application and some of the issues I have had to deal with over the past 5 years. 

Learning to walk all over again

I came to Charleston Water System in February of 2002 after serving in the USAF for 26 years. In the Air Force I served as an Aircrew Life Support Supervisor and also as a Crew Chief for FB-111A bombers and F-16 fighters. After I retired from active military service I worked for a chemical processing plant and a pre-delivery inspection facility for foreign cars in Charleston. In the two jobs after the Air Force both involved using computers to provide maintenance support, inventory control or data storage. They were not being specifically used as a CMMS or EAM system. Essentially they were electronic file cabinets with no practical applications.  So it was a welcome relief when I was hired by Charleston Water System to actually be a CMMS technician. I found a CMMS application that was being used to provide a variety of work related tasks, equipment history and the start of inventory and spares management. It was far from being fully functional and completely integrated across all sites, but it was definitely on the right path.

I also found an established process for furthering EAM quality and CMMS integrity. There was already a user’s group meeting that had representatives from all company sites and a written standardized procedure for the operation of the CMMS.  This was far from being the last word in EAM development but it was a step in the right direction. Like many companies, we at Charleston Water System are on a continual improvement journey and we will never stop. Our maintenance culture and environment is the environment and it is constantly changing right before our eyes so we must always be ready to accept the challenges of being in the front line in the fight.

In many instances I had to rethink many of my ideas and assumptions about maintenance procedures, documentation and the need for data integrity and completeness. It has been a rewarding journey, but not without a few bends in the road and some obstacles.

The Name Game

One of my first problems was just to learn what some equipment and the related spare parts were called. I had come from a military culture where all that all this had been done for me over the past two hundred years or so. For those of you who have ever served in the military you know that when it comes to naming a piece of equipment that the US military leaves nothing to chance. I found that while Charleston Water System had a procedure for naming equipment and spares that it was in need of updating and in some cases clarification. Here are a few examples of one of the most popular requests for parts that I get. “I need a coupling”.

So which one is the coupling? The answer is that all of them are referred to as a “coupling”.  There function as a coupling and what they are applied to is different and needs to be specified in our spares inventory, but yes they are all a “coupling”. I realize that this is a very simple example but it serves to illustrate a potentially larger problem. A popular saying is that we all need to be on the same “page of music”.  When it’s important to get a system or piece of equipment back in service as soon as possible, it is vital that the CMMS or EAM operator be able to locate the correct coupling in the shortest time possible. To be completely honest, more than once I have returned to the technician with a coupling, just not the right one. 

So what are some of the problems with our Naming Conventions? 

-          Incomplete Description  

-          Use of local or “technician based” descriptions 

-          Using brand name titles as a description 

-          Lack of continuity across EAM sites 

What are some possible solutions? And why is this important to the “big picture” of implementing an EAM right from the start. It’s important because it will be the little things that we first have to be good at before we can expect to see a broader improvement across the board. Here is where the foundations for good EAM system or CMMS lie. At the technician level and out on the shop floor where the action is. Upper management support and supervisory encouragement are essential, but if you want to do it right from the start, it will take everyone who has a stake in the program to make it work. And work well. How did I solve the problem? By enlisting the support of my maintenance co-workers and their years of experience and using industry standards for nomenclatures.  

-          Standardize and formalize item descriptions 

-          Inform the technicians about what is being done and why 

-          Determine the end use or uses for the part or item 

-          Build formal and accurate equipment spares lists 

-          Get the maintenance technicians involved  

Maybe this sounds simplistic or obvious but in over 30 years of working in maintenance or operations I have seen a great many maintenance initiatives and other “let’s do it better” programs fall flat because nobody in a position of responsibility took the time to even explain what was happening to the front line technicians. 

Who says it’s important?

Another area of importance to the implementation or transformation of an EAM system or CMMS is work order types and priorities. Again, this is one of those aspects of a maintenance program that is often overlooked.  It seems pretty simple at first. We all know what’s important to our plant or facilities process. But who determined what was important and critical? How were those findings arrived at? What processes or methods were used to support our conclusions?

In the popular movie “Men in Black” the character played by Will Smith is asked to try out for a position on the MIB team. In one scene he is placed in a room with other candidates. They are all given firearms and told to start shooting and to use their best judgment as to which threat should be eliminated first. The scene shows a darkly lit city street filled with an array of alien creatures and strange monsters. All the other candidates begin blasting away at the various creatures and nightmarish visions that they see and they don’t stop until they run out of ammunition. All except Smith! He stares at the targets and finally shoots the image of a little girl carrying a textbook. When the official conducting the test questions him about what happened, Smith responds by saying “hesitated sir”. The official is not all that interested as to why he hesitated but instead is more curious as to why he decided the little girl posed the most serious threat. Smith explains that the rest of the creatures looked as if they had some kind of reason for being there at that time of the night and that the little girl carrying the textbook was obviously out of place and was the most logical target to be eliminated.

So what creatures are we shooting at and how do we arrive at those conclusions? Are we using objective and clearly defined strategies for prioritizing and classifying our work orders? Here are some of the most common ways people identify work order types and priorities. 

-          Bad Actors. These are the equipment items or assets that we constantly have to attend to.  They are on the service request list regularly 

-          High Value. If it cost a lot, it must be a priority. It may also be expensive in terms of man-hours to repair and spare parts required to maintain in stock 

-          Personal Bias. I think it’s important because I think it’s important! This is not necessarily wrong but we do need to know why they think it’s important

-          Crew Bias. The maintenance team hates to work on this thing. It gives them fits. It’s a struggle from start to finish and it would be better just to throw the darn thing into the nearest Black Hole 

These are only a few of the methods that are used to determine the way we identify and prioritize our work orders. I’m sure you can add to the list, but remember, this is how in the past I’ve seen it from the viewpoint of a CMMS operator. It’s also important to realize that not all of these methods are wrong. What is wrong is when they are used without the benefit of critical and objective analysis. These four methods can often be invaluable in leading us to examine or take a hard look at some of the problems we face with our assets but they can never alone take us where we want to go. 

“If you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else”.  Sidney Heyward 

Many of the ways to address these problems will be familiar to you already. There are exceptional authors and other maintenance professionals who have produced outstanding books, papers and other material that can help you start your journey to a more productive and efficient EAM system or CMMS. If you are a supervisor or manager, you probably need to look at more comprehensive solutions to make sure that your investment in an EAM system or CMMS is going to be prepared to provide you with the results you expect. If you are the EAM or CMMS technician, here are some practical ways you can be sure that you are ready to meet the demands that are surely going to come your way. 

            -     Develop and maintain a systematic coding and typing system. One size doesn’t fit all. I have seen work order coding systems that use numeric or alphabetical designators with simple descriptions that are quite effective. Sometimes the number 1 is the highest priority and sometimes the letter A. I’ve also seen it reversed with a higher number being the greatest priority and a different letter altogether used for indicating the same thing. I’ve seen combinations of the two also. Some examples are as follows:

This is obviously a very simple example but I use it to show you where I had to start. The most important thing to remember is that your descriptions may change over time but never change the emphasis on the code. As you move forward into more comprehensive maintenance reliability programs, these codes will have to go with you. What you want to do now at the start is to build sound equipment history tracking procedures. Asset reliability issues are going to be dependent on the processes you introduce today. You don’t want to have to back track and try to find out what’s been going on with your equipment and have no way to do it. It is even more important with your Work Priority codes.

Again, I realize that these are very simple but they serve to illustrate the point I am trying to make. What we do at the start must be the “way we do business”. Even more importantly, all our people need to know what the priorities are and what the codes stand for. They need to be in on the design and understand that their contributions are vital. Almost all EAM systems or the CMMS contain methods for preparing reports. These codes along with tracking and maintaining comprehensive equipment and repair histories are going to be the building blocks needed to move ahead in reliability, asset management, financial optimization and other improvement processes. 

-          Fight for Details. If you aren’t getting the information you need to help you determine the priority or type of work order you need to generate, get out of the office or from behind the desk and go get it!  Let your co-workers in on the process. Help them to understand why it’s important. Make them part of the accountability team. 

-          Go to the Top. Seek advice and expertise from management and supervision. Find out where they want to go and how they want to get there. Let them explain to you their vision and where they see your place in it. Don’t wait until the requests for information and elaboration arrive at your desk unexpectedly. At Charleston Water System we have always had a corporate culture and climate that encourages openness and availability by all levels of management and supervision to questions and concerns from anyone. We continue.

-          to foster that climate and it has proven to be invaluable to me as a CMMS technician.

First Contact

A popular “Star Trek” movie a few years ago centered on the human race coming in contact with extraterrestrials for the first time. It showed the problems and pitfalls you would expect to be associated with such an event and how the different characters dealt with it. It may be that your company, corporation, department or unit has just begun this exciting journey to maintenance excellence. Or maybe you have been at it for awhile and are now attempting to improve or upgrade your capabilities. Whatever the case I want to take a few minutes to share with you some steps that I had to take and how they can benefit you.

EAM system or CMMS Integrity

I stated that Charleston Water System had a CMMS users group in place when I arrived. If you don’t have such a group, take the lead and get one started. Once you have it going, keep it going. Too many times we start programs, recurring meetings or projects that fall too easily by the wayside when other concerns or activities begin to increase their demands on us. This is another one you may have to really fight to keep going. But unless you and the other technicians, operators, and don’t forget the IT folks stay with it, problems of database integrity and cohesiveness may soon become a bigger problem than you expected. This is where you will make sure you are all “on the same page”.

People You Need to Know

Too often we also neglect to get to know the other people or departments that we will need to get information from or share with them. Your company may be just starting out and may not be trying to use every part of the EAM system or CMMS at first. Don’t assume you won’t need them later. Make contact now even if you aren’t using that particular facet of your system. Even informal contact or communication at this point can be invaluable for when you do begin to expand. Make a list of the people or departments you will need in the future. Let them know that you will value their assistance and that they are an important part of an EAM system or CMMS implementation or upgrade program. This will prevent you from going to them later and have them respond to you requests or inquiries as if you just asked them for the keys to “Area 51”.

Education and Training

If you haven’t already attended a formal course of instruction covering the system you are going to be using, do everything in your power to get to one. If that’s not possible, make sure you have an up to date operating manual for the application you will be using. Whenever you can attend training seminars, web seminars, conferences such as this, and any other workshops that you might be able to learn from. There is a wealth of information out there and a lot of it is here right now. Make use of it. As the popular cruise line says “Get out there”.

Summary

If you are a manager or supervisor or a member of a team tasked with implementing or upgrading your EAM system or CMMS, here is a valuable key point to remember. You assigned this person to this job. Make sure he or she has your full support. Make sure they have the necessary tools such as proper training and access to other pertinent information that will help them do the job you want them to do. As they say, “Empower them”. Most importantly, expect and demand excellence.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity. George S. Patton, American General

Maybe as a manager or supervisor you aren’t comfortable with going that far, but you may want to give it a try and see what happens.

You the EAM system or CMMS operator have been assigned a crucial role in the development and implementation of your company’s journey towards excellence. As was noted at the start in the quote from Colin Powell, it will be in developing excellence in the little things that is going to make the difference. Demand excellence from yourself. Don’t just settle in at the computer terminal and wait to see what happens. You make it happen! Don’t stand alone and don’t be worried about asking for help. The greatest reward I have had in over 30 years of maintenance is just to know the wonderful men and women I have had the pleasure to serve with. They have been my greatest source for advice, expertise, wisdom and most importantly, friendship. “Right from the start” they have been with me on the path and often times have carried me on their shoulders. Let them help you and on your path to maintenance excellence, you will never walk alone.