Realize The Benefits Of Design, Operate, Maintain Thinking Today

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Realize the benefits of Design,
Operate, Maintain thinking today
By Christian Klingspoor Senior Asset Lifecycle Management Advisor, IFS AB
Design, Operate, Maintain (DOM), the term coined by industry analysts ARCAdvisory Group, gives us a vocabulary to talk about some of the key concepts inasset management and in industrial maintenance, repair and, operation. Indeed, industrial facility designers and those who operate and maintain thosefacilities need to work together closely if plant efficiency and business profitabilityare to improve over time. Communication between these various entities has beenlacking, however. Modern enterprise resource planning tools (ERP), computerizedmaintenance management systems (CMMS), and CAD design packages are movingtoward a point of integration that could facilitate greater communication betweenthese disciplines. Interestingly, many industries were in a better position to implement DOM con-cepts years ago than they are today. As early as the 1980s, growth in the number ofprocess control and systems engineering firms indicated that more and more indus-tries were outsourcing their plant engineering. Although in-house plant engineeringdepartments gave an organization greater control over design and information stan-dards, corporate "rightsizing" and a growing movement toward open standards andinteroperable components made it possible to involve numerous outside vendors,ranging from industrial engineering firms, manufacturer representatives, and systemintegrators in plant design. The in-house data created by a captive engineeringdepartment may not have been leveraged fully, but lack of communication betweendesigners and the industries they serve seems only to have grown as outsourcing hasbecome the trend. According to the Control System Integrators Association, theindependent control systems integration market has grown to $12 billion by the turnof the millennium from a fraction of that 20 years before. More and more, technicaldata, drawings, and specifications once developed and maintained in-house comefrom outside an industrial organization. As gaps in communication between design and operations/maintenance havewidened, consulting engineers often have been free to design simply to meet a partic-ular capacity increase outcome. Design data is developed separately, often on differentplatforms, from those used by manufacturing operations and maintenance personnelwho will live with the industrial design into the future. Currently, an ISO data standard
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for this information is being developed, and that standardization should at least allowin-house staff and outside design consultants to more seamlessly communicate andshare data that leads to greater industrial efficiency. But even before this ISO 15926standard is finalized, there is plenty that maintenance and plant operations profes-sionals can do to make DOM a reality today.
The challenge The switch has just been thrown on a renovated production line at your processmanufacturing facility. As pressures and temperatures start to come up to spec andproduct begins flowing, a head pressure problem develops in a critical compressorunit. Maintenance is dispatched to the site but quickly finds that it lacks the informa-tion to diagnose the problem. The necessary data, it turns out, is buried in a stack of CDs and binders left bythe consulting design engineers. The lack of communication leads to unplanneddown time as the necessary information is located and the problem diagnosed. Or what about the maintenance engineer who finds that a new production linesuffers from unplanned stoppages caused by the same design features as the line itreplaced? Although data contained in years of maintenance records could haverevealed that design changes that are necessary, the system engineers did not have theability to milk that data for meaningful information.
Figure 1: By giving engineers access to the maintenance history, repeated production problems caused bydesign errors can be avoided.
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But not every problem is the fault of the industrial engineer. Imagine logging hundredsof hours on a design for a new mix-and-fill line, only to find ou... [download for more]