The sustainability of assets at the service of a responsible economy: APM+

In short - what is an APM+

A platform based on asset integrity and reliability engineering practices that can help plan capital investments for an organization taking into account asset health, maintenance and growth budgets in addition to environmental aspects.

An APM+ is thus a platform for managing data across the entire lifecycle of an organization's assets, maximizing their use and minimizing their total cost of ownership. It makes it possible to collect, centralize and structure relevant data for high-value analyses and simulations. An APM+ helps to make well-documented decisions at all organizational levels and serves as a tool for inter-level communication.

‍

Introduction

Sustainable asset management is an essential maintenance practice so that infrastructure or equipment can perform its functions safely and effectively. This intelligent intervention practice ensures rigorous monitoring of assets in order to repair and maintain their components as required. This has the effect of limiting their deterioration and optimizing their use in order to extend their lifespan and reduce their environmental impact.

For organizations, sustainable asset management is a logical choice for organizational performance. It makes it possible to postpone replacement investments, minimize downtime, mitigate risks for employees and avoid operational disorganization in addition to improving environmental performance. Managing an organization's assets is essential for the production and generation of value. Without a sustainable practice that takes into account all environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects, it could find itself in serious financial and reputational difficulties.

It is known that 80% of the infrastructures such as docks or industrial buildings that will exist in 2050 are already built today. Extending the life cycle and performance of these assets in the most efficient way possible will be an important lever for organizations.

Intelligent asset sustainability management requires a holistic approach involving a multitude of factors. In particular, it must take into account the health of the assets, the associated risk, their performance, their residual life, maintenance costs, carbon emissions or any other impact on the environment and the community. It is in line with the outline of the ISO 55,000 standard provided by the Institute of Asset Management (IAM).

As indicated by IAM asset management best practices, sustainable asset management must be based on a solid foundation of centralized and structured information. Even today, most organizations can boast of collecting a lot of data, but there is still untapped data analysis potential in a large proportion of them. It is absolutely necessary, from an environmental and economic point of view, to maximize the potential for the valorization of the data collected.

Sustainability

The term sustainability is a conscious choice that characterizes asset management practice. In a context where climate change is already leaving visible traces and does not promise anything enviable for the future if nothing changes, we must act beyond raising awareness. We need a framework, a method and a working structure in order to take concrete action. In this sense, the linear economy focused on rapid consumption and early decisions on asset disposition are no longer enviable. It is imperative that we move towards a sustainable and smart economy.

Obviously, the evolution of the social behaviors of companies must be imposed, because their sustainability will inevitably be impacted. They must become agents of change through their daily decisions, especially in terms of asset sustainability. We are already seeing beneficial efforts in this direction. However, they cannot be experts in all fields and especially knowledgeable in terms of innovative decarbonization practices or the management of natural assets, for example.

Administrative decision-making is becoming more and more complex given the multiplication of specific parameters to be taken into account. Sustainable asset management is a way to fulfill this responsibility by limiting the impact of organizations' activities on the environment and by adopting practices that respect human rights, health and safety. More specifically, organizations will need to pay particular attention to energy consumption, waste generation, water management and greenhouse gas emissions when making decisions. Critical decision-making for organizations must be assisted by a decision support platform that takes into account important parameters.

In this context, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools will quickly decide between the next organizations that may or may not come out on top. If an organization properly structures its data for analysis by machine learning engines, it will undoubtedly be in the lead group. The sustainability of organizations requires the rapid integration of new tools offering business intelligence. An APM+ offers the necessary structure and relevant AI tools for sustainable asset management.

‍

Pillars of an APM+

While traditional Asset Performance Management (APM) is a type of software used to maximize the performance and reliability of a company's assets by employing real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and risk management techniques to minimize downtime, APM+ has the advantage of broadening its analytical framework. In order to constitute a real decision-making tool in asset management, an APM+ platform includes functions for knowing the real state of health of assets, measuring environmental performance and designing a capital plan for asset management. To these three pillars is added the preparation of data for machine learning in order to make it a modern platform.

Taken individually, there is nothing revolutionary about each pillar. However, its originality and relevance are embodied in the combination of the pillars. These four main pillars are essential to assist organizations in their business decisions.

Health status of assets

A thorough understanding of the true health of an organization's assets is at the root of any informed decision tree. An organization should therefore be in a position to easily consult basic information, relevant documentation, performance, severity of defects and obviously the risk (probability x consequences) associated with all assets. Risk management is an imperative part of sustainable asset management. It allows organizations to mitigate the risk associated with asset degradation, maintenance costs, regulatory non-compliance, accidents, etc. A failure can have major impacts on the environment, reputation and finances of an organization in addition to the safety of workers and surrounding citizens. Without this centralized and structured risk knowledge, an organization navigates without a map or compass.

Environmental data

Measuring environmental performance in terms of energy management, waste management, water management and carbon emissions management is now an essential indicator for the good management of organizations. Every business decision includes an environmental cost that must be taken into consideration. Financial institutions, government authorities and civil society expect that the economic performance of an organization will no longer be achieved at the expense of environmental and societal aspects. What were formulated as main principles are now embedded in an increasingly restrictive framework under the term ESG.

In addition, taking climate change resilience into account in sustainable asset management has become essential in order to minimize the risks associated with extreme climate events and ensure their functioning in the event of disturbances. To do this, asset managers must identify and measure variables that can have an impact on infrastructure and equipment. These variables will then make it possible to simulate the risks and plan an adapted maintenance.

Thus, measuring environmental performance and resilience to climate change in all these aspects is the first step towards improving practices for setting measurable and resolutely ambitious targets. ADM is the first type of system capable of adding environmental components for sustainable and intelligent asset management.

Investment planning

An ADM tool must offer the functions necessary for the responsible, dynamic and planned management of an organization's budgets. By combining risk and environmental variables with financial aspects, decision-makers should be able to simulate, according to economic parameters, scenarios that will allow them to make better decisions. They will thus be able to manage the entire lifecycle of their assets, in order to maximize their use and minimize their total cost of ownership. Managers will therefore have evidence that transforms their intuitive decision-making practice into the confirmation or documented information of working hypotheses.

For their part, professionals in integrity, reliability or maintenance, not to mention the various departments, will greatly accelerate their strategic planning work in asset management. The accumulation of recommended interventions, quantified and recorded over time according to their risk matrix in one and the same place, will continuously inform their strategic plan. They should be able to articulate a plan that couples investment, growth, or maintenance budgets that separate them from current operational budgets.

Centralization of data

It is essential that these three pillars be supported by a database that centralizes, structures and categorizes all asset data. This organization of data makes comparing information much easier and more effective. This way of doing things is an essential step in preparing data prior to the use of AI tools. An organization will take advantage of AI tools to make truly informed and well-documented decisions.

This database should also include the history of asset evolution, tracking all asset events. For reliability specialists or integrity experts, planning the actions to be taken to mitigate the risk of asset failure will be much easier if they know the behaviors and interventions of the past.

This common base on the health of assets, their costs and their environmental performance, ensured better multi-level organizational collaboration. It will unify dashboards providing a clear vision. The various departments and levels will have a simple and effective communication tool justifying difficult decisions based on known and viewable parameters.

‍

The ecosystem of asset management software solutions

It is true that there are several tools on the market that claim to help make asset management decisions. It's understandable that managers get lost. Especially since the majority of tools have a specialty, whether for the management of one or more types of assets or for the exploitation of part of the asset life cycle.

So how does the little + in APM+ prove to be an important addition for intelligent and effective asset management?

To answer this question, it is first essential to clearly identify the types of asset management systems in an industrial environment. Briefly, the main ones are: Computer-Assisted Maintenance Management (CMMS), Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), Asset Investment Planning (AIP), Enterprise Sustainability Reporting Software Solutions (ESRS) and of course traditional Asset Performance Management (APM). All of these types of systems play their role in assisting engineers, reliabilists, integrity specialists, technicians, maintenance superintendent, asset manager, and executives responsible for maintaining physical assets.

There are other software such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Asset Integrity Management Systems, GIS systems, IoT platforms, data historians or SCADAs. All of them can play a more or less important role in the asset management IT ecosystem.

This software coverage may seem complete, but there are still significant gaps.

First, none of these systems is dedicated to centralizing information from a health check for an entire asset fleet capable of monitoring the complete life cycle over time.

On the one hand, GMAO and EAM systems are essentially computer systems that make it possible to manage all of a company's maintenance activities and the monitoring of maintenance work, the management of spare parts stocks and the management of maintenance service providers. On the other hand, traditional APMs can provide performance data for rotating or production assets (manufacturing machines). By the strength of its calculations, the latter optimizes the availability and reliability of assets. This combination, although popular, makes it difficult to take into account the fixed assets such as chimneys, tanks, pressure vessels or pipes that are part of the process. Above all, it does not take into account important assets such as buildings, docks, cranes or other critical assets.

In addition, the AIP is used to plan investments in a company's assets. This practice is essential, but this software is dependent on the data provided to it. The same goes for ESRS systems, which are attracting more and more attention. It is a software that allows businesses to analyze and report information on their environmental performance. If this software is not coupled with a centralized and structured database capable of offering the real health status of the assets, it cannot offer adequate decision support.

Specialized software is very important for decision support for organizations and it is here to stay. For these reasons, all software must be open to interconnection and interoperability. These two criteria should be included in an organization's analysis grid when buying asset management software.

In this sense, an APM+ is first and foremost a data centralization platform communicating with all the data sources of an organization, in order to ensure knowledge of the health status as well as the operational and environmental performance of an entire asset park. The centralization of information allows APM+ to offer this +, i.e.: capital planning to maintain or replace assets; asset integrity management; environmental performance management (carbon equivalent, energy efficiency, drinking water, waste); visualization of relevant indicators via a dynamic dashboard; inclusion of ESG indicator data; asset lifecycle management and risk management. This information will allow organizations to extend the life of assets and focus on real priorities.

‍

For a sustainable economic future

An APM+ system integrated into a sustainable asset management practice is necessary for informed, rapid and documented decisions that take into account all ESG aspects. No decision should be made without a holistic view of social, environmental, and economic parameters. APM+ can make a difference for organizations concerned with a sustainable economic future in harmony with its environment and the population. Responsible organizations will certainly be the most resilient to change, as they will adapt to current and future challenges. An APM+ system can become a first-class tool in the toolbox of forward-looking organizations.

‍

‍