Without proper asset criticality ranking, all other programs based on this data will potentially fail. Before starting the ranking process, completing particular prerequisites discussed in this blog post is essential.
First, ask yourself these questions: Is my asset catalog current? How can ranking information be used for other processes? Understanding how to leverage asset ranking across other areas is a powerful tool to gain buy-in from your organization and to get the most out of this exercise.
The numerical “criticality value” assigned to each asset can be used to prioritize the following, depending on what drives your needs:
Criticality Analysis is part of an overall reliability improvement process called Asset Health Assurance (AHA). A graphical representation of the AHA process is shown below.
The first step is to verify and update your site’s asset list or catalog. Investing the time to do this ensures sufficient data is available to support subsequent reliability processes and for purchasing replacement parts. Once the asset catalog is corrected, you can begin the actual ranking process to determine asset importance—assets whose failure more immediately and/or more severely impacts the desired state. “Criticality” is the name for this combination of importance plus failure rate.
The next step is ensuring your asset hierarchy complies with ISO 14224, as shown in the pyramid diagram below. An asset hierarchy with the appropriate parent-child relationships enables a criticality assessment of each component’s effect on its assigned system or functional location. Learn more about the hidden costs of a poor asset hierarchy.
Successful asset ranking requires a team of people from various areas of your plant environment. Below is a high-level process flow depicting criticality ranking steps performed by this team, followed by more detailed descriptions.
When defining the roles and responsibilities of your criticality team, reach beyond the maintenance organization alone. Commonly, craftsmen, operators, maintenance supervisors, and operation supervisors are included, along with other stakeholders—representing safety, environmental, purchasing, maintenance, repair, and materials operations.
The following roles and responsibilities support the asset criticality process:
Take the completed asset list, including asset hierarchy, and put this information into your site’s preferred format. Common formats include a text document, spreadsheet, or database program. This is the list of equipment used for the criticality analysis.
Assembling a criticality assessment team is vital to accurate equipment ranking and, therefore, should include experienced department representatives who know the areas to be assessed. They should be able to speak for the department when answering assessment questions. It will be a challenge to get the most experienced people's time, but their knowledge will yield the desired results.
The project manager conducts an awareness session on the criticality analysis process. This includes information on the process itself, resources required, customization, what to expect, intended output, and opportunities to incorporate the results into other workstreams. He/she communicates in a coordinated manner across all levels of the organization to promote awareness, understanding, acceptance, commitment, and advocacy. The engagement curve below illustrates how commitment is developed through the execution of the strategies outlined in each stage.
Decide the level at which the criticality analysis will be performed—system, equipment, or failure mode. Then, develop your assessment criteria by asking specific questions under main category groupings. To ensure your entire organization’s needs are met, include categories such as safety, environmental, maintenance, operations, purchasing, and customer/facility impact.
System criticality is often performed at plants that have not conducted a criticality assessment or may have outdated ones. Going through a system-level criticality assessment helps you identify which systems are most critical to the process or facility. It can be a great starting point because: 1) the number of systems is less than the number of pieces of equipment, and 2) the team can begin to form and gain knowledge of the facilitated process.
However, system-level criticality is not sufficient for making machine-level decisions for resource allocation. The asset-level criticality assessment provides the granularity required to compare almost any asset to the
next, yielding a clearer path as to where resources should be allocated.
Another level of refinement should be applied to the most critical assets, ideally the top 5-20%. Because of their importance and their failure rate, these assets pose the greatest risk to the plant if they fail. So, the next crucial area of focus needs to be at the failure-mode level. This is also known as the Failure Mode, Effects, and Criticality Assessment (FMECA). Reviewing the specifics of how a given machine fails will lead to a better understanding of which maintenance techniques are needed to eliminate, or at least prevent, the failure from occurring. The FMECA is an essential part of developing an effective and efficient Equipment Maintenance Plan (EMP).
An often-overlooked member of the criticality team is the facilitator, who assists the team in understanding the common objective of the criticality process and enables them to reach consensus, while remaining neutral. A seasoned facilitator uses an adaptive leadership style to guide the team through inevitable conflicts. This “referee” should also challenge team members when questions are not consistently evaluated from one piece of equipment to the next.
The first step is to document the assumptions for the analysis. An assumption is used as a frame of reference and a source of consistency during the analysis. Start with a few easy ones to get the group moving in the right direction. Then, begin the equipment analysis process, reminding team members to focus on the question being asked, and provide their input as to the best answer to select. The goal is to randomly select approximately 100 machines to rank, so an initial quality assurance check can be done.
One example would be to gain consensus that the most reasonable work case scenario will be used. The point of the analysis is not to select the catastrophic failures that may only occur once in the site’s operation. If the site experienced such a failure in the past, then it is reasonable, particularly if no root cause analysis was conducted and mitigating actions implemented.
Conduct a review of the answer distribution and overall machine ranking to verify the rationale behind a question, or group of answers, is sound. A good place to begin is with those questions where the answers are a range of values. For example, the answers to maintenance downtime may be given in a range of hours that should be checked to make sure one or two answers are not being selected routinely. In this case, pull the team together and ask for their input on refining the range of hours available for selection. These types of adjustments are common in the beginning and demonstrate to the criticality team that the process is not merely an academic exercise.
Another area to review is the ranking distribution. Evaluate the histogram to see if you notice any tendencies, high or low, in the scoring. It is possible that the initial group of equipment selected is similar in ranking, so verify this with the team. You may find it necessary to select another group of 30-40 machines to rank, and then reevaluate the distribution. The facilitator is responsible for this ongoing quality assurance process.
Once the ranking is completed and results approved, add the data to your organization’s Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). This means migrating each machine’s criticality value from the system used to develop the score into your daily work management system to support your original intentions—to prioritize a repair backlog for planning and/or a ready backlog for scheduling, determine where to focus BOM optimization, develop a spare parts plan, or decide which assets are to receive scheduled maintenance, both preventive- and condition-based.
We have covered the key success factors to effectively and efficiently conduct an asset criticality analysis. It starts with having a governance structure in place for managing the entire project. It also requires a logical process for the analysis, carried out by an experienced team, including a knowledgeable facilitator to ensure good ROI from the effort put forth during the process. But completing the analysis is only part of the job; you must follow through with adding each machine’s rank to your CMMS. After a few weeks of incorporating criticality ranking into daily work processes, you will have a full appreciation of the value it provides.
A database of accurately ranked assets is the foundation of almost any preventive, predictive, or condition-based asset management program. Without accuracy in this process, any program that has its basis in this data will fail.
Allied Reliability provides asset management consulting and predictive maintenance solutions across the lifecycle of your production assets to deliver required throughput at lowest operating cost while managing asset risk. We do this by partnering with our clients, applying our proven asset management methodology, and leveraging decades of practitioner experience across more verticals than any other provider. Our asset management solutions include Consulting & Training, Condition-based Maintenance, Industrial Staffing, Electrical Services, and Machine Reliability.
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