WHAT'S ALL THE BUZZ ABOUT

By: Paul B. Elkins

Georgetown Utility Systems
Some of us use an Big
Chief Tablet or something
similar to document our
maintenance activities.

But what if these written

records are lost or
illegible?
Others may rely on our
staffs memories to
document what, where
and how our maintenance
is performed.

But what if they are

unavailable when key
decisions or questions
arise?
You need a Maintenance
Management System
Basically there are two types:

 Computerized Maintenance Management Systems

(CMMS)

 Enterprise Asset Management Systems (EAMS)

Both systems are similar in operational characteristics and

both provide a realistic way to reduce expenses and
increase revenues.

These systems provide for and assist with:

 Maintaining an adequate inventory level of
repair and service parts based on forecasted
equipment usage.

 They can help prevent already limited funds

from being over-allocated just to achieve a
false sense of security.
 They can provide for an effective preventive
maintenance program to improve equipment
utilization and availability thereby limiting the
replacement of expensive equipment when
finances restrict.

 They provide companies an operational

savings that are real and tangible.
 They can provide for a return on investment
(ROI) that is often quickly achieved and easily
quantified.
Many regard EAMS as a CMMS on steroids.

A CMMS typically deals strictly within the

confines of the work order and the preventive
maintenance activity.

Both systems include:

 Both systems include:

 Scheduling preventive maintenance based on

triggers

 Ensure probability-based availability repair

and spare parts

 Serial number and warranty tracking

 Suggesting and originating the purchase of
needed repair parts

 Ensuring manpower availability with skills and

training to perform activity

 Maintaining an asset registry and repair parts

database
 Tracking costs of maintaining individual
pieces of equipment

 Recording unexpected events for further

analysis

 Statistical analysis of equipment

 Providing a variety of reports, such as:

 equipment utilization
 equipment downtime
 MTBF—equipment mean time between failure
 MTTR—equipment mean time to repair
 Both types of systems usually include purchasing,
procurement, inventory management, as well as
equipment, parts, and asset tracking. They also can
schedule preventive maintenance and manage these
activities as well as unplanned maintenance. These
products are designed to plan production work around any
maintenance issues to optimize production.

 EAM systems encompass these functions and most often

extend their capabilities, with many features that can
provide value added functionality, and savings to your
company. They have features such as financial,
accounting and human resource management capabilities
that are typically integrated with an EAM that normally are
not with a CMMS.
EAM systems are also designed to scale to
larger numbers of users and facilitate running
at multiple sites from a single central database,
thereby catering better to entire enterprises,
rather than departmental or individual location
needs.
 EAM systems offer a more robust
methodology for documenting equipment
and their parts to include warranties,
schematics, and computer aided design
drawings.
 EAM systems, once your data is entered into
the common database, it immediately
becomes available to the other modules. As a
result, information can be recycled, remain
consistent, and updated, and never has to be
entered twice.
 EAM systems provide better and more
conclusive analysis of the maintenance,
repairs and material replacement alternatives.
 EAM systems can be used to provide
functionality to calculate the cost of failure
based on the downtime costs multiplied by
the downtime plus any additional repair.
 EAM systems also provide an additional
analysis with cost prevention, which is based
on the cost of the maintenance service,
including labor and parts, over the same
period of time as the mean time between
failures.
1. Is having a system available to your
company to perform financial analysis on
equipment based on historical trends and a
preventive maintenance schedule?

2. Is maintaining equipment costing your

company more than the value it is
providing?
With a EAM System you will have the ability to
consider the financial impacts of a major
system equipment overhaul using interfaces
with fixed asset modules for determining if the
activity will significantly extend the useful life
and/or generate depreciable expense to
warrant the activity.
 Description Typically found in
SN Functions and features EAMS CMMS
1 Data base structure and Hierarchy  
2 Rapier parts availability  
3 Manpower resource Availability  
4 Purchase requisition  
5 Preventive Maintenance scheduling  
6 Cost accumulation and tracking  
7 Inception record and tracking  
8 Standard and exception reports  
9 Whole life asset care 
10 Maintenance administration 
11 Predictive Maintenance analyses 
12 Maintenance alternative analyses 
13 Physical asset risk management 
14 Reliability-centered maintenance 
15 Root cause analyses 
16 Financial cost/life analyses 

17 Technical document change management 

18 Strategic usage analyses 

19 Strategic planning for asset Management 
 A CMMS focus is on the work order history
for maintenance and operation of equipment.
Enterprise – Is ***management across multiple
departments, organizations, locations and
business units.***

Asset Management – Is the whole life optimal

management of physical assets to maximize
their value, life expectancy and performance.
A EAM Systems focus on the entire equipment life cycle from
purchase and installation to decommissioning and
removal/replacement.
To create a level of management of assets
across multiple business units, where
organizations can improve equipment
utilization and performance for the reduction
of capital and operational costs for providing
the extension of life and to improve the return
on investment for assets.
 Management of
Assets across
entire
organization

 Maximize
infrastructure
useful life and
return on assets
 Asset Not typically an Asset
Assemblies or parts of classified Run to fail assemblies – non
as critical to systems critical to systems

ID by unique or serialized No unique ID number

number
Requires regular or prescribed Run to fail – no maintenance or
maintenance & inspections inspection required

Commissioning cost is tracked Low replacement value that is not

for capitalization or depreciation tracked

Has intrinsic value No value just a part

Re-usable, repairable Buy – Use – Dispose
EAM systems allow you to execute work orders for
preventive or scheduled maintenance of a piece of
equipment; document all activities performed by
action types including parts replaced, labor
associated and types of maintenance performed to
keep equipment in good order.

EAM system stores this information for equipment

within the equipment records of a defined
hierarchy structure for systematic rollup of all
actions.
Just like a family tree, a EAM System is set up
through a hierarchical structure of
organizations, systems, positions and assets.

In the hierarchy structure the costs of parts,

labor, equipment and tools are tracked to a
position within the hierarchy for installations,
replacement and de-commissioning of assets.
The hierarchy structure allows the tracking of asset history
at the assigned position with ability of cost rollup all the way
to the top of the organization.

Equipment status’s and performance history can be

monitored, and can even be transferred within or between
departments in the systems hierarchy.

This approach allows users and management to evaluate

condition of assets and life cost.

Through performance tracking and root failure analysis,

changes to equipment type or equipment maintenance
strategy can be applied to equipment with repeat failure or
reoccurring needs for additional maintenance.
 In addition, EAM users will need to:
 Develop organizational structure
 Develop systematic plan for cost roll up
Service Lifecycle Management
◦ Minimize total cost of assets through use of life
cycle cost analysis
◦ Minimize expensive replacement of assets where
regular maintenance would have extended life and
increased utility revenues
◦ Decreasing customer downtime from premature
failures and overtime labor cost for restoration of
service following failures
◦ Minimize customer losses in production,
unfavorable publicity and increase retention
 Management of inventory, parts and labor
allocations for preventive maintenance.

 Providing risk registers and work order

planning/scheduling.

 Systematic methods of problem identification,

root cause analysis and continuous
improvement of equipment utilized on utility
systems.
 EAM provides a holistic view of an
organization's asset base, enabling managers
to control and optimize their utility
operations and choices of equipment used
for quality and efficiency. It also provides
platform for connecting people, processes,
assets and industry-based knowledge.
There are four 4 basic types of maintenance
procedures.

Each types can be used in maintaining power

distribution equipment.

The challenge is to optimize the balance

between the types for maximum reliability.
Corrective Maintenance – is maintenance that
is carried out following detection of an
anomaly and aimed at restoring normal
operating conditions. The belief here is costs
sustained for the downtime and repair are
lower than the investment of a maintenance
program.
Preventive Maintenance – is maintenance
carried out at pre-determined intervals or
according to prescribed criteria, aimed at
reducing the failure risk or performance
degradation of the equipment.
Risk-based Maintenance – is maintenance
carried out by integrating analysis,
measurement and periodic test activities to
standard preventive maintenance. The aim is
to perform the asset condition and risk
assessment to define the appropriate
maintenance program.
Condition-based Maintenance – is
maintenance based on the equipment's
performance through monitoring and the
control of the corrective actions taken. The
equipment is continuously assessed by
comparing working device parameters and
average values and performance. Maintenance
is performed when indicators give the signals
that the equipment is deteriorating and the
failure probability is increasing.
 When implementing a EAM system,
considerations for integrating with other
systems to reduce manual transfers of
information and procedures.

Some to consider are:

Normally the base of EAM systems is a GIS
system that serves as a spatial reference
location map. These spatial systems allow for
graphic representation of your assets, ease of
work order creation at the levels desired and
ability through natural integration to push
features of new or edited asset information into
your EAM system.
Generally work orders for new or changes to a
utilities customers begin with their CIS. In most
cases it is official record in most utilities for the
necessary customer information such as address,
name, contact information, meter identification
and previous read information. In addition to
this information some utilities have meter data
management systems and AMI metering
information that may need to be conveyed to the
work orders.
Work orders generally require parts, and most
utilities have systems in place to handle the
purchasing, stocking and issuing of parts. The
ability to integrate these systems gives EAM users
the ability to reserve or pre-order parts for
scheduled work orders on a just in time basis to
keep part quantities and purchase cost at a
minimum.
Some work orders may require parts that are long
lead or require special order processes. The ability
to integrate the two systems allows users to
schedule work orders in accordance with
availability and issuance of parts for a positive
work flow.
Other integrations to consider depending on
your utility include:

◦ (OMS - order Management Systems) – for potential

work order creation and processing as OMS predicts
outages from customer calls or (AMI Advanced
Metering Infrastructure) reporting.

◦ Design Systems – for interaction of designed assets

into your EAM system for tracking of new
installation work orders
 Define your current work flow processes and
identify desired changes to these processes from
manual to manual or manual to automated.
 Define compatibility restrictions between
proposed integrations of systems like the
versions of software's.
 Even if you desire to keep some work processes
manual, the EAM implementation may alter these
existing manual processes and you need to
identify all aspects of these too.
 Tables containing employees labor rates
 Trade classes and categories
 User restrictions
 Equipment classes and categories
 Adaptability of hierarchy for future
 Work order screen set up and process flow
 Preventive maintenance processes and frequency
 System accessibility and mobility
 Change management plan for deployment
 Communications plan for deployment
 From the integrations side consider all systems
impacted. Remember these integrations are not
trivial in design or construction. One system has
to be official location of data and other systems
use the data. So determining exact locations for
official records is also a requirement. You need
to determine frequency of data syncing and what
to do if they go out of sync.

 Review and identify the roles and responsibilities

of both users and management
 Allow for all time commitments and resources
when designing and construction interfaces even
if some of your planned functions seem to be
overkill or only half are desired.

 Be careful in purchasing a stand-alone solutions

that sometimes oversimplify interface issues by
suggesting the availability application
programming interfaces or software-based
integration services. They may also pressure you
into buying more modules than you need.
 It can always a wise approach to be a
“Doubting Thomas” in making these
decisions. Also, it is always a clear case to do
your homework beforehand and not rely
solely on claims from the providing vendors.
Check out references:
◦ On installation vendors
◦ Installations of systems
◦ End users of these systems
◦ Performance issues pre and post installation