An End-to-End Approach to Asset Lifecycle Management

Organizations invest heavily every year in the infrastructure critical to both their own business operations as well as to society at large. Across industry segments, the objective is essentially the same: to maximize asset life and achieve strategic objectives in the most cost effective way possible. Capital has become expensive again, and increasing macro-economic headwinds have made cost management more important than ever. In a changing world where organizations are faced with multiple competing priorities (operational resilience, financial performance, environmental respect, etc.), asset investment decision making becomes increasingly complex. Even so, organizations must make asset investment decisions that yield the highest possible value. 

In order to maximize value while optimizing costs, it is important to gain complete visibility into the entire asset lifecycle, breaking down silos between O&M and capital teams such that maintenance strategies are managed in light of planned capital interventions and vice versa. This end-to-end approach to decision making can be accomplished through integrating both Asset Investment Planning (AIP) and Asset Performance Management (APM) solutions. 

In this article, we’ll discuss the key objectives of both AIP and APM solutions, summarize the capabilities of each, and discuss how an integrated approach ensures the most efficient and effective asset investment strategy possible. 

What are the Objectives of AIP and APM Solutions?

Asset Investment Planning solutions like Copperleaf^® leverage the best practice of value-based decision making to optimize a portfolio of capital investments in assets, such as equipment, infrastructure, and facilities, in order to create the most value and meet an organization’s strategic objectives. AIP involves evaluating the costs and benefits of various investment options, or “alternatives”, and proposing a portfolio of investments which maximize stakeholder value based on factors such as financial return, mitigated risk, and impact on operations, amongst other measures. AIP is generally focused on a mid- to long-term outlook and aims to be the “single source of truth” for capital planning, delivering increased capital efficiency, improved asset performance and the achievement of strategic outcomes.  

Asset Performance Management solutions focus on improving the performance of assets over their lifecycle. This includes developing optimal asset maintenance strategies based on asset criticality and failure modes and monitoring and predicting asset health/condition. APM leverages sensor data with analytics and rules to track key performance indicators (for example such as oil health, temperature, etc.) to detect and predict asset degradation and make informed maintenance interventions which aim to maximize asset life while reducing O&M  costs. Leading APM systems also incorporate a rules engine that can combine many indicators with user-defined equations and Boolean logic  to automatically generate the maintenance demand backlog to be  issued to field resources via an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system. 

In short, the Copperleaf AIP solution helps organizations decide where and when to invest in their business to manage risk, achieve their strategic goals, and maximize their capital efficiency. Copperleaf helps you determine which work to do to achieve maximum value when you don’t have the resources to do it all. On the other hand, APM systems help organizations optimize their O&M spend by developing and executing asset maintenance strategies which maximize an asset’s performance and value throughout its life. 

Key Capabilities of AIP

• Value-based decision making 

• • Assesses the value of every potential asset investment on a common economic scale; any number of value measures can be added, including all types of risk, financial and non-financial benefits, service measures, and KPIs. 

• Portfolio optimization 

• • Multi-constraint portfolio optimization identifies the combination of investment start dates and alternatives which maximize portfolio value. 
  • Considers funding, resource, and service level requirements in the analysis, resulting in an actionable investment plan that can be accomplished with available resources. 

• Asset-linked investments 

• • Impacted assets are directly linked to projects, allowing investments to properly value the intervention on an asset as its condition changes over time. 

• Multi-alternative project valuation 

• • Copperleaf Portfolio captures multiple project alternatives and then leverages optimization to select the appropriate option given organizational constraints and targets​. 

• What-if scenario analysis and comparison 

• • Automatically generate what-if scenarios based on different constraints to ensure you select the investment plan which best suits your organization’s strategic objectives. 

Key Capabilities of APM

• Asset Criticality Assessment 

• • Estimates risk based on a risk matrix. Users perform a questionnaire-based criticality assessment, and while future risk may not be precisely forecasted, an estimation can be produced. 

• Maintenance strategy development and management 

• • Identifies the best maintenance approach for individual assets. There are generally two key approaches to maintaining assets: fixing something when it breaks or fixing something before it breaks. APM solutions can apply a risk-based asset management methodology to develop a short-term maintenance strategy that minimizes asset failures. These strategies maximize the uptime and performance of individual assets without consideration of program-level resource and budgetary constraints. 
  • APM-developed maintenance strategies are also used for scheduling equipment downtime. 

• Asset health monitoring 

• • APM solutions leverage IoT sensors to collect real-time condition data to determine the health of the organization’s assets. This data usually comes from sensors attached to the asset or through field-based inspections. 

• Asset failure prediction 

• • Performs analytics to predict when assets will fail. A virtual representation that serves as the digital counterpart of a physical object, or digital twin, is employed to model how the asset’s condition will degrade through utilization, and over time, so that it can be intervened on before failure. 
  • Real-time asset data from IoT devices can be used in conjunction with Machine Learning (ML) applications to detect performance anomalies. Historical information on a variety of asset types can be compared against real-time sensor data to detect deviations, predict probability of failure, and schedule appropriate interventions. 

• Maintenance demand generation 

• • Configured indicators and rules about asset condition automatically trigger actions, such as generating work orders to an EAM system to undertake specific maintenance activities. 

Benefits of an Integrated Approach

By integrating both AIP and APM systems, organizations can create a comprehensive asset management strategy which maximizes capital efficiency while minimizing risks and costs, taking a true TOTEX view of their asset investments.

These are key benefits of an integrated approach: 

1. Aligning investment decisions with strategic objectives. Since APM systems are capable of both fitting failure curves based on real, live asset data, as well as calculating and aggregating asset health based on complex indicators and rules, this data can be leveraged by AIP systems to make better long term investment decisions. This ensures that the work you’re doing on asset maintenance is taken into account when planning for the inevitable capital replacement or overhaul, and that ultimately those investments will be aligned with strategic objectives and performance goals. 
2. Evaluating the effectiveness of investments. APM can track the impact of AIP investments on asset performance. By comparing KPI data before and after an investment, APM can determine if the investment is delivering the expected benefits. For instance, what impact did an overhaul have on the cost of the optimal maintenance strategy? This information can help organizations evaluate the effectiveness of their asset investment strategy. 
3. Optimizing maintenance schedules. APM relies on user input for asset criticality, which then drives the maintenance strategy recommendation. By leveraging the probability of failure as it changes over time from as well as the real business impact of failure from AIP, APM can fine tune the maintenance strategy to better reflect the operational reality of a given asset. This means improved asset uptime and can help organizations avoid unexpected disruptions to operations while reducing maintenance costs. 
4. Managing risk. AIP and APM can work together to manage asset risk. By considering performance data, AIP can prioritize investments in assets that are critical to operations or have a high risk of failure. APM can then monitor those assets closely to ensure they are performing as expected. By managing risk proactively, organizations can avoid costly disruptions to operations and reduce the likelihood of major equipment failures. 
5. Eliminating “stranded” O&M spend. Often we see O&M and capital planning teams operating in silos. In terms of process, the activities of reliability engineering, maintenance scheduling, asset management, and capital planning are simply different roles operating in segmented systems. This leads to inefficient outcomes whereby proactive maintenance activities are carried out against assets for which a capital intervention is planned in the very near term, “stranding” the OPEX spend in an asset where it won’t deliver its full intended value. By integrating APM and AIP systems, you can gain full visibility to the asset lifecycle and ensure alignment between your O&M and capital teams. 

In conclusion, Asset Investment Planning and Asset Performance Management systems are complementary solutions that work to solve specific asset management challenges. When used together, they lead to a more integrated and effective asset management strategy. By aligning investment decisions with strategic objectives, evaluating the effectiveness of investments, optimizing maintenance schedules, and managing risk proactively, organizations can deliver real business benefits in the form of improved capital efficiency, reduced O&M costs, and reduced service disruptions.  

Learn more about how AIP and APM complement one another by downloading this white paper.

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