Uptime: Time To Sort Out Some Terminology

Can you get your maintenance department ISO55001 certified? After all, you are part of the operations-excellence program in your company. You have maintenance excellence in place, have a great asset-management system, and are responsible for the maintenance and reliability program.

In answering the above question, we first need to sort through a few terms. To start, maintenance does not mean the same thing as reliability. Nor do maintenance or reliability mean the same thing as an asset-management system. Operations excellence and maintenance excellence are not asset-management systems. Finally, an ISO55001 asset-management system is not necessarily a software program for equipment or facilities maintenance.

Unfortunately, maintenance-department ISO55001 certification is not going to happen. Here’s why. First, the ISO55001:2014 Asset Management Standard is not about maintenance excellence or reliability programs. Second, it’s not about certifying a department’s compliance to an asset-management standard. Third, while a maintenance department has a role in improving or sustaining reliability, it is only one of many organizations responsible for life-cycle reliability of physical assets.

At this point, it is most important to reinforce—and remember—the fact that the ISO55001 Asset Management Standard does not establish criteria for asset-management practices. ISO55001 specifies the criteria for a life-cycle asset-management “management system.” In other words, this standard is about a system for managing assets throughout their entire life cycle, from concept through decommissioning/disposal or renewal.

But take heart: When a business pursues ISO55001 compliance, maintenance plays a vital role in a life-cycle-based, asset-management system.

Asset management, though, is just one example of terminology that invades maintenance. One of the huge challenges we have to deal with in the maintenance arena is our terminology.

Maintenance-department ISO55001 certification is not going to happen. The ISO55001:2014 Asset Management Standard is not about maintenance excellence or reliability programs, or about certifying a department’s compliance to an Asset Management Standard. Moreover, while a maintenance department has a role in improving or sustaining reliability, it is only one of many organizations responsible for life-cycle reliability of physical assets.

Maintenance and reliability confusion

It is important to remember that the reliability of equipment (or system) is determined long before maintenance comes into play. The ultimate equipment (or system) reliability is determined in the design, engineering, procurement, and build phases, well before it goes into operation. This is why the entire life-cycle of asset management is important.

As I’ve said for decades, “maintenance is the least defined of all industrial activities.” There is no common set of standards that defines maintenance standards, practices, methods, or job descriptions. Yet, there are some industry-specific standards and regulatory requirements. There are even some maintenance best practices. But, no universal definition exists.

In the past 30 years or so, we have merged common terminology, adapted terms, even created buzz words to define or label what we do in the scope of maintenance. I credit the term Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM) for much of the morphing of our traditional maintenance vernacular.

For example, we are adding to the confusion across industry when we join the words maintenance and reliability into a single term to describe something that actually has two completely different meanings:

• Maintenance is an action or set of actions aimed at preserving a desired state. The word also refers to an organization or group of people that maintains equipment and facilities.
• Reliability is a goal and an end-state or condition, i.e., the probability that the equipment will do what it’s supposed to do. Reliability is not an action or set of actions.

Thus, when we join these terms together as in maintenance and reliability (M&R) in our plants and facilities, we confuse the two meanings.

As an example, let’s look at the term maintenance excellence. While there is not a common set of criteria defining maintenance excellence, there are numerous common-sense principles/best practices that it embraces. Proponents frame their “maintenance excellence” programs with a variety of those best practices. These often include preventive and predictive maintenance, precision maintenance, standard work, equipment and work documentation, root-cause analysis, engineering, and even operations involvement. As a result, at times we hear “achieving maintenance excellence” stated as a goal or end-state rather than stated activities.

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is another example. Many times we see TPM adapted and/or renamed as maintenance excellence, or total process reliability.

Don’t take this discussion the wrong way. We know that these maintenance-improvement activities can work extremely well. Consultants, educators, and authors often determine the many and varied components of really good maintenance practices and then package them as easy-to-understand and implement strategies. With every new improvement program, however, we may get new maintenance terminology.

Asset-management confusion

Assets and asset-management terms have been used in our society and in business in reference to something of value, i.e., financial assets, property, estates, holdings. In the business world capital assets represent property, facilities, and equipment. We frequently refer to the equipment and facilities as physical assets. Historically, in the business world, asset management has referred to the process of protecting and investing financial assets such as cash, stocks, bonds.

In the past two decades, we’ve heard the term asset management used in the context of equipment and facilities maintenance. Maintenance-management systems morphed into computerized maintenance-management software (CMMS) systems and later into enterprise-asset-management (EAM) software. This is another example of vendors adapting the way they describe their products to suit the times—and give us new terminology in the field of industrial and facilities maintenance.

In 2014, asset management took on yet another meaning in the global business community with the release of the ISO55000:2014 Asset Management Standard. This Standard defines an asset in very broad terms:

“An asset is an item, thing, or entity that has potential or actual value to an organization. The value will vary between different organizations and their stakeholders, and can be tangible or intangible, financial or non-financial.”

Asset-management “system” confusion

Beware: ISO55000 is not about managing assets as we have come to understand and practice over time. Because of the way we think about maintenance and the physical assets we care for, it is in our nature to believe that ISO55000 is all about the management of such assets. It isn’t.

According to the ISO55000:2014 Asset Management Standard, “This International Standard specifies the requirements for the establishment, implementation, maintenance, and improvement of a management system for asset management, referred to as an ‘asset management system.’”

Yes, ISO55000:2014 Asset Management is about a system for managing assets. The conundrum is that “how” we maintain said assets is not mentioned as a requirement in the Standard. To be precise, maintenance practices are not mentioned in the requirements for an asset-management system.

Navigating the terminology

See what I mean about confusion in our workplaces? Let’s all have fun continuing to figure out maintenance, reliability, and asset-management terminology in 2016. Please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts on the matter with me at the e-mail address below.