The Role of Asset Management System in PMMS

Some companies regard preservation administration as an essential portion of invention actions. Proper conservation helps to boost the company to a higher level through planned maintenance. Investigation proves that computerized maintenance management system is applied to assist in managing the upstream operation for various companies like oil and gas companies. This system is reinforced through the classification application management system which is integrated for order entry, preparation, industrial, record, and the fiscal software.

Today business environment has been categorized as global. Corporations in all trades find, it relevant to raise its competitive advantage. Businesses in oil and gas are observing to improving their lowest position by enhancing their functioning productivity and dipping fixed cost. However, attaining this can be difficult since there are many challenges notably an increase in the complication of isolated and extreme working environments. Oil and gas firms employ a strategy of a complete combination of all properties and methods into a sole managing system. By undertaking this, the companies achieve a possibility to grow its operational efficiency and appreciate the importance of reduction in fixed costs (Tang et al. 81).

Oil and gas corporations work in severe environments helping them to utilize highly hazardous processes. The industries came together to create a responsible community to assist in reducing the dangerous procedures. This society consisted of creators, chemical manufacturers and oil and gas establishments (Tang et al. 54).

Achieving operational therefore goes beyond the box. It dwells on the ideas of continuous improvement mindset. Continuous improvement creates an environment for employee engagement. The aim is to allow employers and business leaders to change their perspectives, behaviors and support decent practices to be habits. Oil and gas companies have emulated the characteristic, and many companies have come to learn from another (Al-Naumani & Rossiter 47).

Maintenance Process

Maintenance combines all the mechanical, directorial and executive action in the lifespan cycle of a product with the intentions of keeping it to a state that can perform its intended purpose. The managers, however, strive at maximizing every opening to advance on viability as perform while saving costs for the organization. Poor maintains leads to financial value to each organization (van der Weshuizen, Johannes & Martin West 28).

Industrial maintenance comprises of two primary goals which are the high accessibility of creation apparatus and squat upkeep. The primary objective to carry out maintenance is to help in preventing failure. The motivation of practicing maintenance process arises from the challenges that the gas and oil face on a daily basis. Some of the problems include intense international competition and market globalization. The trials have obligated the management to adopt tools, devices, and ideas that help in facilitating the performance growth, reduction of errors and utilize the available resources. The purpose of the motivating the process is to make the companies a higher-performing manufacturing plant (Baaziz, Abdelkader & Quoniam 102).

Challenges

The business process tends to optimize operation and maintain processes for the operators, but they are faced with severe challenges. The first challenge is lack of confidence by the personnel to adhere to core procedures and processes across regions, shifts, and assets. The second problem is based on the SAP computerized maintenance management system where they do not reflect on the operating procedures and many times miss the essential data for compliance. Thirdly, there is structural issues and gaps by the asset registers with the concert of the real assets. Many personnel strives to maintain consistency, accuracy and essential data. Lastly, there is an overreliance on the Excel to acquire vital information to be recorded and reported in the SAP CMMS (Al-Naumani & Rossiter 39).

PMMS

The main function of PMMS is a control strategy that dwells with continuous reuse to enable the drilling tools to be in a perfect situation providing effective performance. It works on numerous complex installation which most are located in the remote areas. Managing and supervising of the functional activities entails a stream of information manageable with the presence of consistency. PMMS deals on asset management system, work management, and performance management.

Asset Management System

The role of asset management in PMMS is to make sure that full information is ordained in the system. It covers two bodies that is the Pant asset structure (PAS) and Planned Preventive Maintenance (PPM). Plant Asset Structure allows the user to control the system control as per the operational location. It also manages the people list control possession by enabling the planning, implementation, and examination of the preservation work via the system.

Planned Preventive Maintenance Plan

This plan also stands for planned inspections, repairs and preventive control work. There are various business aim when dealing with the planned preventive measure. The first goal is to provide an effective arrangement of the planned schedule. It also focuses on ensuring that good resources are done on a recurring basis. Besides, plan strives to increase the integrity and reliability of the equipment by reducing the uneconomical maintenance schedule and human-induced failures resulting from dismantling.

Work management

Work management aims at producing efficient work order processes by the standardize maintenance business procedures within all operating units. It safeguards the execution of correct control in work practices to reduce the sum period lost throughout maintenance order arrangement. The following are the six steps of work management.

1. Work identification

The purpose of work identification is to finish and scan facts in the notification. For the process to be considered entirely done, the users must use the best type of statement, outline the best priority level, avoiding the utilization of generic equipment tag. An important document should be attached as required. There is need to create the landscape of work done on the tools so that the control can identify the improved areas. To keep historical record about the equipment for future use.

2. Pre-Planning

This is the second stage of work management which is used to strategized and accept maintenance order. There is screening for the purpose of verifying that information is correctly entered into the notification. After screening, the notifications with the status of SCRN is converted to control orders. The created maintenance contains order types purposely used to distinguish kind of maintenance execution. Maintenance orders, on the other hand, have Activity type showing detailed duty to be done.

3. Planning

Most successful oil and gas companies across the world have good planning processes that ensure that the organization does not exceed the time provided for maintenance purpose. Primarily, planning gives the organization an opportunity to carry out cost-efficient maintenance work practices. Organizations that have a plan for maintenance processes enjoy elevated success since the estimated planning cost improves the maintenance work development and help as a testimonial in future. For instance, proper planning will act as a reference whenever the organization plans future maintenance processes especially if the current process was cost friendly and effective in that the plants and other types of machinery improved their production and registered minimal downfalls. In this respect, planning will enable the management to estimate the future resources they will need to carry out maintenance processes. Some of the common resources for firms in the industry include internal workforce, external human resources, and the spare parts. The last step in planning is for the relevant departments to send orders based on the estimated or planned costs to the technical approval before the final stage, which will be to release them for execution.

4. Scheduling

Scheduling is an essential aspect that oil and gas companies should consider after putting in place the necessary plans. A common process that occurs during scheduling is where the organization or the relevant team checks the availability of materials that the maintenance process will utilize. The other important aspect of planning is that it allows the management or planning team to set a specific date when the relevant team will work on the job.

5. Work Execution

At this stage, the concerned team prints the maintenance order and produce the material slip. The team also monitor the status of the order, which for instance include to inspect the material, operational, workforce constraint or check to determine if the team approved a temporary repair or a long-lasting repair. Under this category, the team may also choose and point out the status of maintenance. The step is also critical given that it allows the maintenance team to monitor the planned, estimated, and the actual order cost. Lastly, the team will use the step to perform full, partial, or joint time authorization for the order.

6. Reporting and Feedback

It is the last step in maintenance process where the relevant team prepares a report about the whole process. Some of the common processes that take place under the step include providing a maintenance report, confirmation of the counter reading, measurement confirmation, checking the damage specifications and the cause codes, confirmation, if any, of any malfunctions that may continue for some time after the maintenance process, comes to an end. The team will then set the status to TECO, which means that the whole maintenance process is technically complete, which marks the end of the maintenance work.

Solutions to Challenges

Technology

For successful delivery of solutions to this process, it requires changes in the program primarily upstream of oil and gas. Most successful companies address the use of technology. Technology serves to support the process so that people can easily understand that the data is part of the ERP system. Technology, however, is not the solution but the dimension to ensure that the resolution will be adopted, frequently used and to provide the value of the business organization. Technology assists in improving the accuracy of the analysis improving the recovery reservoirs. The application of advanced digital signals, there has been identification and isolation of challenges in the wells and drilling process that would destroy the equipment and delay of operations (van der Weshuizen, Johannes & Martin West 28).

Many enterprises have empress the use of technologies like data analytics and in-memory database to deconstruct their performing levels. The use of technologies helps to advance and provide future analysis to the line of big businesses by handling the massive volume of data. The application of GPU and in-memory database is an assurance to deliver satisfying performance and price.

People

Through technology, people have placed aside since there are not skilled. To deal with this change, upstream SAP operations and maintenance provides training courses that can be connected to the organization’s requirement. There is competence, and training needs analysis services to eradicate the initial training program and establish a new regime (Baaziz, Abdelkader & Quoniam 61).

Data

Oil and gas companies use data to improve with drilling practices. Equipment’s like the rig that is used for drilling provide a large amount of data to assist in optimizing performance to reduce cost. The objective to use data is to make better decisions via accurate, readily available information that is of higher quality (Baaziz, Abdelkader & Quoniam 61).

SAP Solutions.

The essential functions of SAP solution in these operations are to comply with performance standards management. This deal with the performance level of the organization. There is the risk mitigation management which focuses on managing all the risks. SAP solution complies with compliance data monitoring to deliver the products at the required date. It also complies with the critical equipment management and report to provide data on the equipment and the progress of the operations organization (van der Weshuizen, Johannes & Martin West 28).

Key Performing Indicators

When constructing efficient maintenance systems, measurable key performance indicators must be defined concerning the performing standards and the outcome should be seen for internal and external planning reporting for industry compliance (Al-Naumani & Rossiter 72).They are numerous items of key performance indicators. Most of the things deal with the efficiency of the work orders. The use of symbols is of high importance as it informs on the current status of maintenance in the organization’s gauges includes replacement of the rate profit per usual segment, effective cash movement, gearing, reported damage incidence loss of key restraint and oil falls.

Key performance indicators help the companies to answer questions. The questions include some breakdowns, the accessibility, and inaccessibility of equipment. The delivery of human possessions and connected costs request as of the many departments. The supplies feasting and the list managing. Need changes in the substructure, period to change equipment and requests for services from the external entities.

Research Methods

Research that was conducted focused on the productivity improvement activities of the company researched. The ways that information was obtained is through observation. They were also discussion method with the group that collected the data. The view focused on the upstream procedures and the PMMS while the assembly debate conducted among the conservation controller system engineers. This conversation was not held to the only dwell on the previous application but also to focus on the strategies and progresses through the use of internet and mobile conferences. For the validation of the PMMS imitation of SAP software was achieved with main data group (Al-Naumani & Rossiter 64).

Importance of Business Process

Business process improvement in upstream maintenance within oil and gas companies helps to increase the performance by the process redesign. It is a process-oriented perspective of upkeep actions that incorporate the partnership and direction to become a serious factor. The relevance of this effort is to deliver appropriate means to achieve the corporate process with the help of info expertise. The essential tool in this process is the maintenance management procedure since it supports in planners, managers in conclusion making based on the pointers (Tang et al. 18).

In the past, the local and corporate organization analysis was founded on sound maintenance practice and the knowledge of the technicians. For this, numerous results were based on the lifespan and the methodological review of the equipment. As per now, the employment of care management system has developed through a fountain of the same data structure in all the oil and gas companies permitting both upstream and downstream ideas of all the procedures.

Information Technology in Business Process

Information technology in business processes applies to the infrastructure, operation, and maintenance of products and services. The real information technology is based on customer orientation, provision of product/service quality standards of excellence achievement. Importance of IT in the business process is that information used is classified base on two dimensions. The information domain and the information level. IT enables business processes to provide information processing, information management, and communication support (Baaziz, Abdelkader & Quoniam 75).

Introduction of the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is also a way of improving maintenance process in oil and gas companies. The objectives of CMMS are to measure and maximize maintenance program efficiently. The specific areas the percent of the network, the percentage of intentional preservation work, the percentage of unintended maintenance work. There should be morals that will define the real expenses for the equipment downtime and the path planned and unplanned downtime.

CMMS Stages

Report by the CMMS provides preventive maintenance which should contain flexible set up which allows each asset to define maintenance profile. It entails specific periods, trade required, the procedure required, the estimated job times and the availability of the equipment. The operator desires a system that permits countless resources to be associated with a solitary method which is convenient to be used. If the process requires modification, it is done once, and all the related asset use the modified version (Baaziz, Abdelkader & Quoniam 39).

Unplanned work reporting

Unplanned work reporting in maintenance process is done when a defect occurs. The employer from the production notifies the targeted people. It is done when there are no option by placing a short-term detail of the responsibility, the asset number or description and the name of that writer. Once all this has been done, the software offers a choice of printers to the reporter. After selection, the work order is printed in the relevant workshop. The work order is routinely additional to the list of the unresolved work (Al-Naumani & Rossiter 46).

Scheduling planned maintenance

Scheduling planned maintenance follows after the work done has been identified. At this stage, there is the preservation scheduler. After the scheduler scores, it examines all the resources try, and checks the time when the maintenance is needed. After it identifies the latest maintenance time for an individual period and if time is limited it generates a strategic maintenance work instruction for the asset. The machine is rolled forward weekly making work commands and find the total to the list provided in the outstanding record. Users are given decisions to choose either for the scheduler to run continuously or set it at intervals depending on the expected output. In most cases, intervention can occur at specific times in a week.

In addition to providing unplanned work orders, computerized maintenance management system should have a way of outputting copies of orders expected after a duration of time. It should separate the planned work orders into different trades, assets groups and location before it is printed. The system should also separate the expected work into categories, which include trades, and assets groups before making the final copies.

Possibilities of Using New Technologies

Oil and gas exploration companies have to deal with challenging and complex geographic and geologic conditions under ice, on land and far out at the sea. In this regard, oil and gas exploration companies have to consider numerous factors before deciding to dig wells due to the high cost that comes with the ground conditions until the drillers find the commodity. Some of the common things to consider include to determine the amount of oil and gas present in the reservoir, so that they determine if it is worth to explore the commodity. The other aspect that the organization has to consider is the rate at which they can produce the oil and gas in reservoirs. These determinations require proper analysis and characterization of the oil, gas, and the water in the porous rocks or reservoir core. For a long time, companies have been using traditional methods to analyze the possible presence of oil and gas in the areas that specialists suspect contains some oil and gas. These traditional methods presented uncertainties that result from the loss of fluids and gases that escape the hole during the process of ascending the hole, which end up leaving a data gap that the technicians and other specialists should account for mathematically.

The first technology concerning maintenance process is an in-memory database, which is a management system that relies on a computer data storage’s main memory. In-memory database are faster than the use of disk-optimized database given that the disk access is much slower compared to memory access. The other advancement is that the process of accessing data in the memory is faster and eliminates seek time when querying the data, which makes it faster and offer predictable performance compared to the disk.

Across the world, there are numerous oil and gas exploration companies who always strive to maintain their market share as a result of the high competition that currently characterizes the oil and gas industry. Most of them have been facing challenges to do with maintenance since they have to keep the machinery intact for exploration and other upstream related processes to continue efficiently. In most cases, maintenance is expensive and require planning so that the company can assemble its resources and workforce in preparation for maintenance depending on the scheduled date provided. Currently, most of the companies use the traditional maintenance options which are slow, expensive and inefficient. A few of the leading companies in the industry have replaced the traditional maintenance processes with modern technology that takes a short while to maintain and can last for longer periods compared with the traditional maintenance processes that could easily break down. An advantage of using technology maintenance is that the organization and maintenance experts can approximate the exact amount of time that the machinery will be in use without breaking down. The other advantage is that the organization can use technological maintenance process to monitor machinery and quickly respond to preempted breakdowns before they occur.

Summary

Maintenance process at an upstream oil and gas company is faced with many challenges including lack of confidence by the personnel to adhere core procedures and process, structural issues, and gaps by the asset registers. Whereby the personnel finds it difficult to maintain consistency, data and accuracy and over-dependence on excel to acquire vital information to be reported and recorded in SAP and CMMS. To ensure efficiency and effectiveness in oil and Gas Company in implementing the maintenance process various approaches has to be adopted to enable the company being among the highest performing manufacturing plant. Planning is an essential factor when carrying out maintenance process since it enables the company to cost-efficient maintenance work practices that will ensure the company meets the target within the stipulated set limit as well as act as a reference in future when the same work is carried out. Scheduling keeps the company maintenance process on check in that the team and the organization will be able to know the materials to be utilized during the process, hence, no wastage of resources. In addition, the SAP ensures that risk mitigation strategies are available during the maintenance process by ensuring that the data monitoring and equipment comply with the set standard.

Key performance indicators must be placed for the maintenance process to be successful. The most significant key indicator during the maintenance is the use of the sign to ensure that the public and monitors are aware of the progress status. Besides, the effort of the people, data and technology are of great importance in resolving the challenges that the company maintenance process faces, since, they assist the company in decision making regarding the actions to be taken or alternative procedure to be followed.

Works Cited

Al-Naumani, Y. H., and J. A. Rossiter. “Gas phase train in upstream oil & gas fields: Part-II disturbances impact study.” Control (CONTROL), 2016 UKACC 11th International Conference on. IEEE, 2016.

Baaziz, Abdelkader, and Luc Quoniam. ”How to use Big Data technologies to optimize operations in Upstream Petroleum Industry.” (2015).

Tang, Yang, et al. ”A framework for making maintenance decisions for oil and gas drilling and production equipment.” Journal of natural gas science and engineering 26 (2015): 1050- 1058.

Van der Weshuizen, Johannes P., and Martin West. ”Cross-Functional Maintenance And Logistics Business Process Integration: Lessons From A Large Oil And Gas Company.” Journal of Applied Business Research 32.2 (2016): 401.