Q&A with 3 Industry Leaders on ISO55000

Scott Morris	Terry Wireman	Ramesh Gulati
Associate Director, Genzyme, A Sanofi Company. Mr. Morris is the Vice Chairman of the U.S. delegation for the development of the ISO55000 series documents on Asset Management.	Senior VP of Strategic Development, Vesta Partners. Mr. Wireman is a member of the US Technical Advisory Group to ISO PC251.	Asset Mgmt & Reliability Planning Mgr, Aerospace Testing Alliance, Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC). Mr. Gulati is a member of the US TAG PC251/ ASTM/ANSI Committtee which is supporting development of ISO55000. Member of the U.S. Technical Advisory Group to ISO PC251.

How would you describe the new ISO55000 - Asset management systems standard to maintenance reliability leaders?

ISO55000 is a holistic approach to enable assets to provide maximum value to an organization. The standard specifies that an organization have transparency and accountability, from top management through to the operator level. This means that the entire organization is responsible for doing their part for asset care, not just the maintenance reliability functions.

The asset management systems standard focuses on setting up a management system to manage the assets of a company. While that sounds like double-talk, let me explain. Asset management focuses on maximizing the value that an organization can realize from its assets. An asset management system assures that the company puts the “management” structure in place to ensure the business objective of maximizing the value received from the asset can be realized.

“If we can’t describe what we are doing as a process, we don’t know what we are doing.” Some wise man said that. This is true in every sense. In fact, this is what a standard does for us. Asset management standard ISO55000 is a disciplined approach to do asset management.

First, we need to understand the term “asset management.” Most of us have come from a maintenance background and are more concerned with repairs and fixes. Asset management is a much broader term and deals with the whole life of an asset, not just repairing assets when they fail. It’s a proactive approach of managing assets through concept, design, build, install/commission, operations and end of life-disposal phases to reduce total cost of ownership. This ISO standard 55000 helps us set up the process to do that.

Can you explain the BIG concepts of how this new standard will help organizations deliver value from their assets?

This standard makes organizations ‘think’ about their assets and how these assets affect organizational objectives. This may sound obvious, but a majority of organizations take their assets for granted and look at keeping them in optimum condition as a cost. By changing the perspective to how assets provide value to the organization, the cost conversation is looked at in context. This also requires organizations to review their asset management strategy, with associated risks, when changes in organization context occur (e.g., customer demand changes, new market opportunities, etc.).

One key element is that this standard is for an asset management system. This means it is not a performance or technical standard. It will tell you what elements or processes you need in place, but not the details.

The two largest impacts for most companies will be the true lifecycle approach to managing assets and the alignment of the organization to maximize the value received from the assets.

Many companies talk about lifecycle management of assets, but few have the “management system” and/or integrated asset data to achieve this. Most companies are still in organizational silos where the engineering organization does not share asset design information with the operations organization and neither shares the asset information with the maintenance organization. In addition, finance has information (such as the expected value delivery of the asset) that is not shared with any of these three organizations. Achieving ISO55000 certification will require these silos and the information they contain to be integrated.

Value delivery, what does it mean? It means that assets are producing or providing services as designed, cost effectively. It cannot be achieved without a proper system – well designed processes with the right culture. A standard, such as ISO55000, helps to achieve that. This standard requires us to set up a process that uses strategic, as well as tactical, approaches to manage our assets. It also forces us to have a third eye, an outside view of our progress or improvements that we need to make via external audits.

In the past, most of us did our best to perform maintenance to ensure that assets worked when they were needed. We use all kinds of tools to perform those tasks effectively. But usually, we are working in isolation or silos to do our job. There are several other stakeholders in managing assets effectively, such as operations, capital projects managers, design, etc., and they need to be involved. I believe a good asset management process implemented with ISO55000 principles would be an excellent approach.

What "next steps" would you recommend?

I feel this standard can be transformational if embraced by an organization. Educate personnel throughout the organization, including employees, peers and management. Be an advocate by breaking down institutional silos. Unlocking and aligning the knowledge within your organization benefits all parties.

Also, compare existing processes to the standard. You will be surprised at how much you already have in place that aligns to the management system.

This answer is easy – education. Every maintenance reliability leader should educate themselves about asset management. There is a considerable body of knowledge that currently exists about asset management. It is simply a matter of collecting this information, much of which can be found at the Institute of Asset Management (http://uptime4.me/assetman-org). In addition to reading documents, it is also important for maintenance reliability leaders to attend conferences where asset management is a discussion topic. This will allow for open dialogue with other maintenance reliability leaders who are pursuing asset management and thought leaders in the asset management field.

Once maintenance reliability leaders feel comfortable with their knowledge of asset management, they should begin to share that information with peers and executives in their respective companies. Once there is a common understanding of asset management, the organization will be ready for their journey.

I suggest a three-pronged approach.

First, we need to find organizations, such as Motorola, GE, etc., and look at what they did with the Six Sigma initiative back in the 90s. They adopted and really and truly implemented the Six Sigma approach at every level of the organization. We have to find these organizations who can lead the ISO 55000 implementation and show others the benefits. My personal experience in implementing a tailored ISO9001 for quality management since 2003 at Arnold Engineering Development Complex (AEDC), U.S. Air Force’s aerospace R&D facility, is that a standard approach can truly benefit a lot in creating the right culture and reducing operating costs.

Second, let us find some champions at “C” level for this cause, similar to what Jack Welch did with Six Sigma. He became the sole champion and the driver for implementation across industry, not just GE.

Third, we need to get media support. We need the continued support of Terrence O’Hanlon, CEO/Publisher of Uptime Magazine and Reliabilityweb. com, to help us spread the gospel. We need our other media friends to help us. We may need a campaign to get others, such as Industry Week and the Wall Street Journal, to get on board with this initiative.