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Device Considerations for Mobile EAM with SAP PM

Posted on January 25, 2022 by Matt Sickler

Replacing your paper-based working processes and going fully digital with SAP PM requires consideration into the right software and mobile devices.First you need to identify the right mobile EAM app that will fully meet your needs. Your Second decision is to identify the mobile devices that will work for your various teams.As a leading supplier of mobile EAMapp for SAP, we have pulled together a list of mobile device features and options you may want to include in your research into mobile devices.

Feature Considerations When Selecting Mobile Devices

Rugged Mobile devices have become increasingly critical as technology, regulations,and working practicesevolve.In maintenance environments, conditions can be unpredictable, dangerous,or volatile. On top of this, there are usability, connectivity, liability, and employee safety considerations that all play a role in the types of mobile devices that are used on-site or in the field.Here’s some common features to consider:

Safety

Using electronic devices of any kind in hazardous maintenance environments creates a safety issue and violates codes and regulations, such as those set by OSHA.Hazardous areas include environments with combustible or ignitable substances, such as gasses or vapors. The hazardous designation is based on both the kind of hazard and the likelihood of the hazard being present.

Although according to Gayle Nicoll PhD, REP, ASP, CSP AECOM’s Americas Process Safety Lead, there’s been no incidents involving hazardous locations that have been directly attributed to PED(Personal Electronic Device)use”.So why the strict global regulations?Even A small risk is a risk and therefore understanding the regulations and implications for choice of mobile devices is critically important. In addition,employees must be aware, trained and adhere to the safety procedures for working in hazardous locations including use of electronic devices.

Look for devices specifically identified as“non-incendive”and are rated for the potential hazards in your work environments.Workers in the oil and gas industry, for example, are frequently exposed to risks that may include potential fires or explosions, and often complete their daily tasks in closely confined areas. Non-incendive devices are uniquely developed for these types of high risk environments to improve efficiency and safety.

Device Durability

Maintenance workers may be conducting inspections,taking measurements, servicing,or repairing equipment wherever the asset resides. This means that their devices could come into contact with liquids, grease, dust and debris, or extreme temperatures.

Often,smartphones and tablets must be durable for unusual circumstances, such as grease-coated fingers that may drop the device onto unforgiving surfaces.Devices Should be built to resist damage from drops of over a meter, submersion in water,operate within a range of temperatures,withstand vibrations and shocks,plus resistoil, dirt,or dust.Good news here is that the industry has set standards, tests, and rating scales for buyers to understand the degree of durability.For example, a smartphone rated at IP68 is “dust resistant” and can be “immersed in 1.5 meters of freshwater for up to 30 minutes.”

Battery Life

A reliable, long-lasting battery is crucial to completing a job by the end of a regular workday or supporting employees through an extended workday. In circumstances where normal battery life still isn’t sufficient, then alternative solutions should be in place to support work continuity. For example, the battery life can be supplemented with external batteries,or hot-swappable batteries.You can also provide convenient charging stations in strategic locations.

For industries that may encounter emergency repair situations without power,further backup battery plans should be considered beyond the normal day-to-day requirements.

Touchscreen Sensitivity

A versatile display is an enormous asset in any maintenance environment, which is why screen technology should be a key factor. For example, being able to clearly read the screen in poor or very bright light, such as direct sunlight, is important for field work, as is being able to navigate the screen and scroll while wearing gloves or in wet, snowy,or humid conditions.Many of today’s rugged smartphone and tablet models include integrated Corning Gorilla Glass For added durability or special screen coatings that can help resist oil and fingerprints.

Touchscreen sensitivity should be designed to readily discern human touch,even if the screen is slick from humidity, coated in dust, or the user has gloves on. This ensures that weather conditions and personal protective equipment (PPE) aren’t deterrents to job performance and productivity.Screen resolution also factor to consider depending on the content being viewed as part of your team’s work.

Device Consolidation

Maintenance workers often use multiple devices on the job for equipment inspections and testing. Switching between numerous devices can be time-consuming and inefficient. For instance, a field worker in the energy and utilities industry may have to tradeoff between two or more tools to test gauges while in a high-risk setting.

Instead of lugging around a few different devices, workers can use a single smartphone or tablet that consolidates a number of “tools”to reduce the time typically devoted towards routine tasks.Consider a rugged mobile device with a radiofrequency identification (RFID) or a barcode scanner that can simplify routines and directly integrate data into a work management app to update work orders or warehouse records. One less devices can mean at least one less step in the process.

Camera

Smartphoneand tabletcameras have been continually improving through the years. Camera resolution may not be a critical consideration, but there are many other options to consider, including the ability to capture images in low-light situations or sense and capture infrared images.

Processor, Memory and Storage

Choosing the right CPU performance, memory, and storage options will be critical for staff productivity.Working memory (RAM) must accommodate the data managed in today’s applications plus the potential for machine learning, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and analytic capabilities of apps in the near future.Consider 4GB RAM memory as a minimum.

Storage memory is critical for worker productivity in locations without connectivity.Many mobile apps will store data on the mobile device to support continuous use of the app when the user is offline.Consider 128GB as the minimum storage memory.

Operating System

Your operating system choices are likely already established within your company policies and mobile device management security software. To decide on the right operating system for your industrial maintenance or warehouse operations, consider the availability of devices with the features you need.In addition, look at the operating systems supported by your choice of mobile EAMapplications.Generally, most device vendors and application providers support bothApple and Android operating systems.

Network Connectivity

Maintenance technicians and workers need to have full access to the information and use of their mobile devices anywhere they work. Many locations, such as certain spaces within a warehouse or on an offshore oil rig, have spotty network connections or no signal at all. Workers need the capabilities to access and collect data in areas with poor or zero network connectivity regardless of the industrial environment.

Smartphones and tablets with a minimum of 4G LTE and WIFI 5GHz key for optimal connectivity. The mobile device should be equipped to support Bluetooth 5.0, which has a substantially longer range and at least twice the data transfer speeds for secure, short-distance connections.Most smartphones and tabletsinclude2.4GHz and 5GHzWiFiconnectivityto your router infrastructure. WiFi extenders can also be strategically located to support certain working environments.

Also, consider native mobile apps for free offline access.Natively designedmobileEAMappsprovide the data that workers need in areas without connectivity so they can continuously collect information, review work orders,reference equipment manuals, or verify task completion.

Understanding Feature Options

There are many options in each of the features we have outlined above.The Mobile Device manufacturers help by grouping commonly requested features into a single rugged smartphone or tablet for typical industrial use cases. Identify your critical and nice-to-have features to make the right feature/price/model decisions to support each of your different work teams.

Download our feature guide to industrial mobile device features to specify your particular requirements.

How Sigga Can Help

Sigga has 20 years of experience in digitally transforming workflows across a range of asset-intensive industries who use SAP.We offer native mobile apps for maintenance and warehouse operations that deliver the full range of benefits enabled by a native mobile app, including faster performance, better security, and more streamlined use of features of the phone, such as the camera and GPS, from within the app.Or Apps Are designed specifically for full offline access to app features and data resources to support teams in any situation with a reliable user experience.

Sigga’s Mobile EAM app keeps technicians in the field or plant with immediate access to information which results in greater productivity, real-time data visibility, and reduces maintenance costs.
Sigga’s Warehouse and Inventory app improves efficiency of warehouse resources, increases data accuracy, and reduces inventory carrying costs.
Sigga’s Planning and Scheduling solution improves maintenance effectiveness by automating many maintenance management activities from planning annual maintenance budgets to creating schedules that result in improved technician routing and increased asset uptime.

The Keys to Effective Change Management in Industrial Maintenance

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Matt Sickler

The pandemic has been a catalyst for accelerating digital transformation initiatives. Numerous organizations responded to the pandemic by trying to advance operational digitization as quickly as possible, but effective change management is going to be key for those that succeed.

“Companies are pouring millions into ‘digital transformation’ initiatives — but a high percentage of those fail to pay off.”

Harvard Business Review

For industrial maintenance operations, the issue is exacerbated by the fact that many organizations early on the digitization curve and still using paper-based processes.According to Jennifer Waldo, for Tech Target IoT Agenda, “The idea of technological speed and agility are evolving concepts in the industrial world. The industrial sector is just beginning to embrace more digital elements in order to compete successfully in the current era. Shifting the culture of an industrial company to more quickly adapt and embrace digitization will be one of the biggest factors in a successful transformation.”

The results are worth it when you effectively manage the process to not only change technologies but fully address the work processes and people impacts. “When companies get all of the requirements right, the results can be impressive. Leading players in a variety of heavy industries have used digital tools to dramatically reduce unplanned outages while boosting maintenance-labor productivity. Higher availability and a more-efficient workforce have increased profitability by 4 to 10 percent in some organizations,” according to McKinsey& Co.research.

To be on the winning end of maintenance digitization initiative, consider the advice we’ve accumulated through our 20-years of transforming EAM workflows with asset-intensive industries. Including Supporting insights from key analysts, read our whitepaper to find the keys to achieving EAM digital transformation success.

Download Sigga Whitepaper

16 pages, English

Effective Maintenance Management Strategies for 2022

Posted on December 14, 2021 by Matt Sickler

As 2021 draws to a close, we look back to the trends that have had a significant impact on maintenance operations. From the worsening labor shortage to lingering supply chain issues, we can see that many of the challenges from 2022 will continue to be a force to contend with in 2022.In this article, we’ll explore the trends and related resolutions to consider in maintenance operations planning and investments for the coming year.

EAM Challenges and Forecast for 2022

What trends and challenges do we expect to be a force in 2022?McKinsey asked majorJournalists, media executives, columnists, commentators, and media critics — from the US and around the world: What major themes will we see in global media in 2022? What should we see more of?

“The high interest we see now in global supply-chain stories will continue to grow.
This includes big-picture stories about systems under duress and global worker shortages.

– Meredith Artley, Editor in Chief and SVP, CNN Digital Worldwide

“It’s about labor. COVID-19 has exposed the long-standing divide between labor and corporations in terms of wages and working conditions… and it’s going to become more intense come 2022.

– Marsha Cooke, SVP global news and special projects, VICE MEDIA LLC

“Battles over climate change policy and implementation of agreements will dominate national and international news agendas in 2022. This, of course, encompasses so much. After so many years of discussion, we may see a revolutionary breakthrough in corporate social responsibility and the consideration of environmental, social, and governance criteria to rate companies’ performance, conduct, and future strategy.”

– Valérie Arnould, Deputy Director, digital revenue network, World Association of News Publishers

“The rolling changes to our world brought about by exponential technology developments and the disconnect with slower, linear approaches of our government and institutions will surely remain a dominant story in 2022. There are deep ramifications for these technology developments, including the continued impact of crypto on finance, the tech platforms on information and democracy,AI and automation technologies on jobs, renewable energy sources and better batteries on the environment, and synthetic biology on our health and medicine. But the flashpoints will only get messier and have greater business and financial implications.”

– Kevin Delaney, Co-founder and Editor in Chief, Charter

Certainly, these challenges are not new topics, but as the journalists noted, they are becoming more urgent or lingering requirements for 2022 planning.Is it time to revisit your current path and consider prioritizing actions to better manage and improve maintenance operations? Take a look at our articles this year that pull together proven strategies and tactics to address these challenges and more as you plan for 2022.

2022 Resolutions

1) Better Planning to Manage Through Continued Supply Chain Issues

Maintenance teams need to improve their ability to manage the inventory of parts and materials to maximize production uptime. It is challenging enough for production teams to deal with the supply chain issues for raw materials. Add the uncertainty of obtaining spare parts to quickly repair downed equipment, the situation becomes unacceptable.

Maintenance operations need to do their part to reduce unexpected downtime and preventive maintenance is the tried and true path to mitigating downtime. But committing to the execution of planned maintenance tasks can be especially challenging when corrective and emergency repairs take precedence. Given the shortage of skilled labor, the situation is only getting worse.

There are proven maintenance strategies, like reliability-centered maintenance, that can help you plan your maintenance approach to minimize expenses and optimize the use of your limited workforce.

If you don’t already utilize sensors to facilitate inspection rounds and reduce preventive maintenance frequency, consider getting started on the path towards predictive maintenance.If you are already on this path, consider the steps to further your progress to take full advantage of these technologies for predictive maintenance.Sensor technology can give you the advanced warning of a failure to enable the time needed to procure parts and materials.

Minimizing surprises and turning around a reactive maintenance department, will not only reduce downtime, but it will also improve the advanced planning of replacement parts and materials due to the visibility of requirements from creating the PM plans.

2) Improve Job Attractiveness, Hiring, and Retention of your Skilled Maintenance Workforce

Besides deploying technologies to drive efficiencies, technology can help you improve job quality to attract and retain industrial maintenance talent.In fact, modern day technologies to support work tasks such as mobile devices and equipment sensors are fully expected by the younger generations in maintenance jobs.

With what they are called the “great resignation”(employees just leaving their jobs over the latter half of2021),it is critical to deploy strategies NOW to overcome the shortage of skilled maintenance labor. Successful organizations will focus on how to “do more with less” as opposed to hoping that the situation will quickly turnaround.

And, as you look at your plans for 2022, consider how to make your maintenance department organization structure more effective in order to work with the staff you have or worse yet, with fewer skilled technicians.

3) Increase EAM Planning in Support of Environmental, Social, and Governance Evaluations

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) is gaining greater interest with investors who are evaluating how companies mitigate these risks to ensure their long-term sustainability as a business.Maintenance operations teams are no stranger to developing risk mitigation plans. ESG forces the effort beyond the usual EAM plans. If you aren’t looking at your plans with an eye towards ESG, now is a good time to start.

Part of ESG planning is the evaluation of how companies can adapt and be agile in the face of volatility, uncertainty, change and ambiguity (VUCA) in today’s business environment.To address these challenges, the International Standards Organization (ISO) developed theISO 55000 series (55000, 55001, and 55002) of international standards covering the management of assets of any kind. The ISO 55000 series describes what a company should do to maximize the value of its assets on a sustainable basis.

Social strategies to protect the workforce is an on-going and expanding consideration for advancing maintenance operations management.It is also a driver of growing compliance regulations especially for food-quality plant maintenance for food & beverage manufacturers.

4) Invest in AI and Automation Technologies to Optimize EAM

Analysts have been consistent in promoting the acceleration of adoption of digital technologies is necessary in today’s environment. Not only to manage the challenges of managing people through a pandemic, but also to provide the agility to respond to sudden changes in their operations. The side benefit is greater productivity to deal with the labor shortage situation.

As McKinsey& Co. found in their research, “When companies get all of the requirements right, the results can be impressive. Leading players in a variety of heavy industries have used digital tools in dramatically reducing unplanned outages while boosting maintenance-labor productivity. Higher availability and a more-efficient workforce have increased profitability by 4 to 10 percent in some organizations.”

Getting the “requirements right”, requires effective change management for industrial maintenance teams.

Industry 4.0 technologies are key to growing cost-effective predictive maintenance strategies.Advancing your use of these smart planet technologies will be important in 2022, as the Fifth Industrial Revolution (Industry 5.0) will take these capabilities a step further by improving the collaboration between humans and machines, allowing humans to work even more smarter and more efficiently.

Planning for a Successful 2022

Annual Maintenance Planning

As you finalize your annual maintenance plans for 2022, consider the investments in processes to improve your planning and budgeting process. Creating a bottom-up, data-driven, maintenance budget with SAP can be challenging. And if you did this recently, consider what it’s going to take to keep track of your actual spend to budget in 2022. There is a better way, with an automation solution to support the process of maintenance planning and budget management. The solution can maintain views of the department budget and spending by financial cost categories as well as by maintenance operational views.

Planning and scheduling automation tools canals help you reduce budgets with more effective maintenance planning– including annual planning, down to the monthly/weekly and daily planning and scheduling of maintenance tasks.These tools are key to turning around a reactive maintenance operation and gaining control of limited resources.

Measuring Results

Now is a good time to establish baseline measures to track the effectiveness of your maintenance operations in 2022. Here’s some common measures to consider tracking for next year:

Wrench time – when was the last time you conducted a wrench time study? Do you know what are the common time wastes for your valuable, limited technician staff? A wrench time study is a great way to uncover the low-hanging fruit of time wastes nonetheless benchmark your operations with other similar organizations.
Maintenance effectiveness – Look at your 2021 results to evaluate your percentage of planned, corrective and breakdown maintenance work. Again, compare to benchmarks and set goals for 2022 to shift towards more planned maintenance for lowering your costs and optimizing your use of resources in the long run.
Schedule compliance – and similar planning measures help you identify the root causes of low compliance issues to improve planning accuracy and staff efficiency
Downtime – MTTR, MTBF, OEE are all measures that can help drive collaborative conversations with production to optimize operations overall.

Justifying the investment in automation and mobile solutions

Building the business case to invest in solutions for the maintenance department doesn’t have to be difficult. Often a quick, back-of-the-envelope calculation can demonstrate the potential for real cost savings and productivity improvements. You can add more rigor with these cost savings analysis tools:

Mobile EAM Savings. Justify the investment in replacing paper with mobile devices for technicians to work directly with SAP PM, the most obvious impact is reducing resources due to the wrench time improvements. And if you need to justify a maintenance solution investment without cutting headcount, consider making the case from the hidden cost savings.
Planning and Scheduling Savings. Justify the investment in adding automation to the process of maintenance planning and scheduling from SAP PM data. In this whitepaper, Unleash the Power of SAP and Save, we outline the savings in terms of improving wrench time, operational effectiveness and time savings for the planners and schedulers.

20-Years of EAM Innovations

For two decades, we’ve been staying on top of the evolution of challenges for maintenance operations in asset-intensive industries.In 2021, we celebrated several milestones in our evolution as a company:

Gemspring Capital partnership –at the beginning of the year, we went into partnership with Gemspring to support our rapid global expansion to serve and expand our enterprise clients with operations around the world.
SAP Silver Partner – for over 15-years, we’ve been focusing on innovations in EAM for SAP including developing our own proprietary SAP integration technology and sustaining SAP certifications for our EAM software and mobile solutions. Few, if any companies, can say they have been focused on SAP EAM and mobility for more than a decade.
Successful Customers – we are proud of the results our customers have achieved and continue to experience as we evolve our partnerships to achieve new levels of productivity. Our current global enterprise customers are also key to our innovation roadmap, including our latest launch:
Budget Management automation – we recently launched a new innovation to further improve how companies utilize SAP PM for annual budgeting and budget tracking. This solution is another example of augmenting and optimizing SAP with today’s automation technologies.
Sigga 20-year Anniversary – Our long history of dedication to SAP and EAM is your guarantee of results.

As 2021 draws to a close, here at Sigga, we look forward to partnering with our enterprise customers to overcome current and future challenges in EAM.Our talented team are tirelessly working on new innovations to help companies get more done with fewer people, optimize maintenance metrics, and provide the agility needed to succeed in 2022 and into the future.

Choose an experienced partner to simplify your SAP EAM workflows.

Learn more about Sigga.

Advancing Failure Analysis for SAP Plant Maintenance

Posted on November 30, 2021 by Matt Sickler

SAP Plant Maintenance(PM) plans are key to reducing and minimizing the impact of unplanned events on safety, the environment, and business profitability. But creating and staying committed to the execution of PM plans is often a challenge with limited resources and data quality issues.

In this article, we will discuss how organizations can improve data collection and analysis to make informed decisions and improve preventive maintenance plans.

Making a Commitment to Increase Preventive Maintenance

When Equipment is not working properly,it is not producing capacity. A lack of production translates to lost revenue. Worse still, complete failure can result in significant costs to repair or replace equipment,idle production staff,and even loss of raw materials such as spoilage in food & beverage manufacturing. Preventive Maintenance goes a long way towards maximizing productivity and avoiding costly unplanned downtime.

Many organizations do not effectively deploy proactive maintenance strategies such as preventive, predictive,and reliability-centered maintenance. As the Marshall Institute notes, there is a heavy tendency to use the approach of “run to failure” rather than practicing preventative maintenance. And even in maintenance departments that indicate that they are committed to preventive maintenance,many do not practice it fully or effectively.

One of the reasons that these initiatives often fail is that the preventive maintenance (PM) plans are not based on the right data. Maintenance planners rely on a broad range of data sources when putting together PMtasks. For example, equipment manufacturers’ manuals, work order history,and advice from reliability experts. Since many maintenance organizations continue to rely on paper-based processes and manually input data into SAP,PM tasks are often based on incomplete and inaccurate data. Thus,data integrity plays a crucial role in creating and implementingPM plans.

Data Integrity in SAP Plant Maintenance

Maintenance leaders are often surprised to learn that even though they have powerful system to manage maintenance data in SAP PM, they may not be getting the most out of it. Such was the case in a South African-based petrochemical plant. Management began to notice that PM jobs and repairs were not being completed on their first attempt. This contributed to an increase in the work backlog, rising costs, and inefficient use of maintenance technician’s time.

As management delved further into the issue, they identified something that was both troubling and astonishing.Since Work order results were manually entered into SAP, the details on what happened and the cause of the failures were based on hand written notes. In SAP PM, these are open text fields to capture the data.As they looked into the data, they found over 300 different reason code for failure that pointed to one issue: the parts were not available to complete the work order the first time.

The open-ended responses created a database that could not be easily analyzed by stakeholders to look at failures,root causes,nor trends. A lack of standard data entry fields negatively impacted the data integrity. And poor data integrity leads to incomplete and/or ineffective maintenance planning.

Developing an Effective SAP Preventive Maintenance Plan

Failure analysis is a crucial component of a proactive maintenance culture. It involves collecting and analyzing failure data to identify the root cause of a breakdown. Failure analysis typically conducted after a failure has already occurred.Reliability engineer and maintenance managers can use what they learn to improve the planning of PM tasks as well as modify machine design or how equipment is used.

But failure analysis is only useful in the maintenance planning process if stakeholders have access to complete and accurate data. This means streamlining and standardizing the collection of maintenance data within SAPPM through the use of automation technologies. For example, through the use of mobile EAM solution technicians can identify the reasons for failure using drop-down menus of predefined reason codes. This information is automatically synced with SAP to give maintenance planners the reliable and complete data they need tocreatePM plans.

While the process of improving SAP PM plan may seem overwhelming, you can get started by following the steps outlined here:

Audit Data Resource

The first step is to compile your data resources to ensure that you will have the data that you need to engage in meaningful analysis.Then determine which assets you want to include in your preventive maintenance plans. For organizations that do not have established preventive maintenance processes, you may only want to start with a handful of your most important assets and scale up from there.

Relevant data resources will include things like manufacturer repair manuals,pastwork orders, and failure reports.If your maintenance department relies on paper-based work order management and SAP PM,this will be a time-consuming task until you better structure the data inputs into the system.Focus on pulling together the data from past work orders for each assetto determine:

What failed
When it failed
Why it failed
What Type of repair was done
Did it fail again

Conduct RCA and/or FMEA

Effective Maintenance planning encompasses two perspectives: what did happen and what could happen. RootCauseAnalysis (RCA), also called failure analysis, looks back at what has already happened. When you experience a corrective or breakdown event, an RCA involves looking at why the problem occurred and working your way down until you identify the underlying causes. For each cause, you can identify a solution. These solutionscanbecometasks in your PMplan.

Unlike RCA,Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)seeks to identify what could happen by identifying potential failure modes (FM).There are several types of FMEA analysis: Design, Process and Functional. We are going to focus onFunctional examples.The process starts with a bottoms-up approach. Each component of an asset is examined to identify all potentialFMsthat can happen and what would be the consequences of each failure. Since technicians are the most familiar with assets, they are typically the best resource for identifying these details.

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis – Pump System Example

Equipment function	Functional failure	Component	Potential failure modes	Potential effects of failure	Potential causes of failure	Current controls	Frequency Of controls
Provide process flow	Loss of process flow	Motor	Seized bearings	Total loss of capacity	Lack of lubrication	Lube motor bearings	6M
Provide process flow	Degraded process flow	Impeller	Reduced discharge pressure	Partial loss of capacity	Normal wear	Overhaul pump	2Y

Making FMEA the heart of an equipment maintenance plan

Prioritizing Risks

Using this information, maintenance department scan then set criteria for evaluating the level of risk of each identified failure and assignita Risk Priority Number (RPN). The RPN is a metric that used to prioritize maintenance tasks based the likelihood of an occurrence,ability to detect the problem, and the severity of the impact.For example– rating the severity(SEV)of the failure:

Rating	Effect	Severity of the effect
10	Hazardous without warning	Very high severity, potential effects safe system operation without warning
9	Hazardous with warning	Very high severity, potential FM effects safe system operation with warning
8	Very high	System inoperable with destructive failure without compromising safety
7	High	System inoperable with equipment damage
6	Moderate	System inoperable with minor damage
5	Low	System inoperable without damage
4	Very low	System operable with significant degradation of performance
3	Minor	System operable with some degradation of performance
2	Very minor	System operable with minimal interference
1	None	No effect

Source: Failure Mode and Effects Analysis Under Uncertainty: A Literature Review and Tutorial

Follow the same approach to identify a scale for likelihood to occur(OCC) and likelihood of detection (DET) and multiply the three risk factors to determine a RPN number.Then, working with the engineers and technicians identify recommended actions, frequency required, and forecast the end result using the sameRPN scale.

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis – Pump System ExampleContinued

Risk assessment (as is)				Recommended improvements/actions	Recommended improvement process frequency	Responsibility/ date	Risk assessment (to be)
SEV	OCC	DET	RPN				SEV	OCC	DET	RPN
6	5	3	90	Include on vibration and IR route	3M	PdMTech/ 1Q22	6	3	2	36
4	6	5	120	Monitor flow and discharge pressure	1W	Operation/ 1W22	4	6	3	72

Making FMEA the heart of an equipment maintenance plan

This type of analysis can start at a high-level,looking at the major components of a critical asset, then overtime go deeper into sub-components and materials.

The result allows maintenance engineers and managers to prioritize PM tasks and make informed decisions to improve the organization’s commitment to executingPM plans.Redo The analysis annually to evaluate the impact and further refine your plans for further optimization of your resources.

In Conclusion

Preventive Maintenance help organizations avoid unplanned downtime and improve resource allocation.While many organizations indicate that they are committed to preventive maintenance plans, initiatives are often hampered by the lack of quality data and the ability to analyze it.

Start with structuring the capture of data for analysis and then you can look at industry-proven methods like RCA and/or FMEA to prioritize and focus yourPM plans.Understanding the RPNpriorityof a planned task improves the organization’s commitment to see that it is performed on time. Plus,based on data, you can optimize the frequency of a task– possibly reducing the number of PMs required per year,more efficiently utilize your resources, and increase your schedule compliance.

By making the commitment to better capture and structure data,analyze failures,and build better SAP Plant Maintenance plans, you can achieve long-term results with higher asset OEE and minimize the impact of unplanned events on safety, the environment,and business profitability.

How Sigga Can Help

Sigga is a certified SAP partner with over two decades of experience providing industry-leading industrial maintenance solutions. Our mobile EAMsolution streamlines the collection of data. Work orders are dispatched to technicians on their mobile devices. Technicians automatically capture and structure the data needed for analysis through their day-to-day use of the app to complete their work orders.Data is automatically synced with SAP Plant Maintenance. This solution solves data gaps and helps enable maintenance teams to be able to create, implement, and monitor preventive maintenance plans.

In addition, our planning and scheduling solution automates routines to improve the deployment of preventive maintenance programs with full visibility to the prioritization of tasks.With these two solutions, our clients have seen productivity results from 15% to over 50%.

Sigga Solutions

Read more about Sigga Solutions and how we can help you improve your preventive maintenance program.

Increase Budget Control for Strategic Maintenance Management

Posted on November 23, 2021 by Matt Sickler

In many ways, maintenanceis one of the most importantfunctionswithin an organization. It has the potential to impact everything from production to customer service. Yet manyoperationsmanagerslack the tools and data that they need tostrategicallyplan and budget for maintenance operations.Creatingadata-drivenplan from SAP EAM requirescountless hoursofmanipulatingvolumes of transactiondetailsin spreadsheets.Eventhen, the data qualitycan inhibitdrawing insights to build a solid plan.Organizations can overcome these limitations and improve theirannualmaintenance planning and budgeting processes by augmenting SAP withtoday’s automation capabilities.

In this article, we willexplore thebudget creation and trackingchallenges andthenhighlightopportunities toimprove process efficiency and accuracy formore strategicmaintenance management.

Continue reading “Increase Budget Control for Strategic Maintenance Management”

EAM Strategies to Improve ESG Risk Management

Posted on November 16, 2021 by Matt Sickler

Environmental, social and governance (ESG)is gaining greater interest with investors who are evaluating how companies mitigate these risks to ensure their long-term sustainability as a business.

Most companies have plans to identify and manage normal Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) operating risks. But considering the potential occurrence of ESG risks a company might face is just as important.Even though predicting events such as hurricanes, pandemics and violations of regulations are difficult, being prepared or mitigating the impact can avoid the potential for devastating effects on an asset-intensive organization, as well as its employees and shareholders.

In this article, we will explore ESG risk factors and how maintenance operations play a critical role in ESG risk management and contribute to a company’s ESG investor evaluation.

Continue reading “EAM Strategies to Improve ESG Risk Management”

Practical Advice to Attract and Retain Industrial Maintenance Talent

Posted on November 9, 2021 by Matt Sickler

Today’s maintenance departments face dynamic challenges such as shrinking budgets and a growing labor shortage.Both of these challenges have been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Baby Boomers are opting to retire early rather than cope with the health risks and restrictions of returning to work. With younger generations gravitating away from industrial maintenance professions, there are not enough qualified workers to fill job openings. And as organizations accelerate their deployment of digital technologies and smart machines, today’s maintenance professionals require more diversified skill sets – the ability to handle both physical and software-based maintenance and repair tasks.

In this business environment, it has become imperative to motivate, retain and attract your industrial maintenance workforce. Download eBook to get some practical advice from industry experts and our own experiences with successful, global, enterprise organizations. The list includes tips on what you can do immediately and in the near term to make a material impact within your maintenance department.

Keep reading!

ISO 5500X – Do you have an Asset Management Strategy?

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Matt Sickler

Companies are constantly challenged by how to adapt their asset management practices to the volatility, uncertainty, change and ambiguity in today’s business environment.

To address these challenges, the International Standards Organization (ISO) developed the ISO 5500X Series of standards for companies to perform effective and efficient asset management practices.

The ISO’s 5500X Series (55000, 55001, 55002) helps organizations address their asset management challenges by setting best practices for companies to follow, standardize their processes and deliver increased value to their customers, investors and stakeholders.

In this article, we’ll share the role that the ISO 5500X standards play in taking asset management from a business task to a strategy.

Before going into depth on ISO 55000, it is important to understand what we mean by assets and their management.

ISO 55000 defines assets as any “item, thing or entity that has potential or actual value to an organization”. In other words, anything in your company that creates or adds value, from your physical assets (such as PPE) to your IP, to your employees and stakeholders.

Asset management, refers to the use of industry tools (e.g. software / applications/ platforms) to measure and assess their performance using key performance indicators(KPIs). This practice also includes analyzing and mitigating the business risks associated with the use of the assets.

In short, proper asset management practices require protecting everything that adds value to your company. This, in turn, is essential to ensuring the streamlined performance of your company’s assets and resources, as well as for reducing costs and unnecessary efforts.

As mentioned above, ISO 5500X is a series of international standards that present general concepts and specify global principles for asset management. It’s often seen as a ‘manual’ that uniforms asset management parameters and practices anywhere in the world.

For example, if your company has operations (e.g. production plants, manufacturing) in Germany, Brazil, US and India, becoming ISO 5000X-certified will help standardize your asset management practices in each location. This standardization delivers different business benefits such as the ones we discuss further in this post.

ISO 5500X was created with the aim of offering companies new options for managing operating costs by adopting an efficient and standardized asset management strategy.

In 2004, the British Standards Institution (BSI) created the PAS 55 standard (Publicly Available Specification), a guide to best practices in the management of assets and possessions of various kinds.

PAS 55 guided industries in several “key points”, considered good practices in asset management. These key points referred to improvements in areas such as energy, electricity, water, roads, air and land transport, manufacturing, natural resources, and many others.

After 10 years of different companies adopting and implementing PAS 55, the ISO acknowledged the need for excellence in asset management practices and created the ISO 55000 series to replace PAS 55.

In 2014, the ISO Project Committee finally launched ISO 55000, which has become widespread worldwide and is now considered the main guide for industries and companies that want to implement and optimize their asset management practices.

The ISO 5500X series includes three standards for Asset Management:

ISO 55000:2014 – Overview, principles and terminology.
ISO 55001: 2014 – Asset Management Systems (AMS) requirements
ISO 55002:2018 – Management Systems – Guidelines on the application of ISO 55001

In addition to the economic and productivity benefits described above, adhering to ISO 5500X standards includes a series of benefits. Implementing ISO standards unifies all process methods, metrics and evaluation criteria.

ISO certification requires transparency for all stages of production and manufacturing processes. This transparency is very beneficial when it comes to proving compliance with relevant rules, requirements and regulations.

Adhering to ISO standards is an important step towards improving the quality of the goods and services delivered. ISO-level quality generate sustainable growth which, in turn, increases your industrial processes’ productivity.

ISO Standard Certification is a very rigorous process. We’ve identified 7 steps so you can prepare your company to apply for certification:

Objectives
Understand your company’s operating principles to align management and business objectives relevant to certification.

Strategy
Define your asset management strategy based on your business objectives. This will allow you to define goals for asset productivity, sustainability, life cycle, compliance and cost rationalization.

Documentation
Document all your activities from maintenance plans and inspections to repairs.

Leadership
Appoint a professional responsible for supervising the development, implementation, operation and continuous improvement of the asset management system.

Support
Identify the resources and people needed for the application process. Promote employee commitment and collaboration between different sectors of the company towards the common goal of certification.

Assessment
Evaluate implementation, control processes, monitor risks and support change management. Identify financial metrics for asset management performance and conduct regular checkpoints and audits.

Improvement
Identify process weaknesses and implement continuous improvement practices.

In short, ISO certification is a process that requires careful planning, managing stakeholder expectations and commitment from all parties involved.

Once the certification is achieved, adherence to ISO 5500X asset management standards will positively impact the entire corporate culture as well as how the company is seen by customers, stakeholders and the global corporate environment. Although it is a long and complicated process, the outcome is a strategic positive transformation that leads to improved business results.

Sigga ‘s 20+ years’ experience in asset management and industrial maintenance solutions can guide you and your company through the process in an efficient and simple manner.

Our solutions allow you to optimize the execution of maintenance routines, eliminating unproductive tasks, excessive unnecessary shifts, as well as reducing paper usage to zero.

Using Sigga’s EAM Product Suite across your entire process towards ISO 5000X certification greatly facilitates executing your asset management strategy objectives as well as reaching your asset performance and productivity goals.

Enable your company’s digital transformation. Learn more about Sigga’s Solutions portfolio.

Do You Have an ISO 55000 Asset Management Plan?

Posted on October 26, 2021 by Matt Sickler

Companies are constantly challenged by how to adapt their asset management standards practices to the volatility, uncertainty, change and ambiguity in today’s business environment.

To address these challenges, the International Standards Organization (ISO) developed the ISO 55000 series(55000, 55001, and 55002) of international standards covering the management of assets of any kind.TheISO 55000 series describes what a company should do to maximize the value of its assets on a sustainable basis.

In this article, we’ll share the role that the ISO 55000 asset management standards play in formulating a best-in-class asset management plan for industrial maintenance asset-intensive companies that use SAP EAM.

Why is having an overall ISO 55000 asset management plan important?

“The most important benefit of asset management is that it provides a structured framework for investment planning that delivers the most cost-effective solutions for delivering acceptable levels of service over the entire asset life-cycle at minimal risk.”

– Definitions and Benefits of Asset Management

Proper asset management practices require protecting the assets that provide value to your company.ISO 55000 defines assets as any “item, thing or entity that has potential or actual value to an organization”. Assets include material assets such as machinery, equipment,furniture and vehicles, as well as intangible assets like patents, licenses and intellectual property.

An ISO 55000 asset management plan outlines how a company obtains value from its assets by optimizing performance, risks, and costs across the asset lifecycle. The plan defines the activities needed to classify, analyze, control, and measure the effectiveness of asset maintenance strategies. ISO 55000 combines organizational goals and structure with the process, data, technology, and auditing tools to maintain effective operations.

A comprehensive IS0 55000 asset management plan allows companies to make incremental improvements to their asset management strategies.As a result, companies improve performance, enhance customer satisfaction, save money and eliminate unnecessary efforts, while delivering increased value to their customers, investors and stakeholders.

Advantages of Applying ISO 55000 Standards to Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)

While an asset management plan can improve many areas of a business, EAM can particularly benefit by applying the principles of the ISO 55000 standards. EAM involves the management and maintenance of a company’s physical assets, from production equipment to power lines during the complete lifecycle of those assets. The failure to appropriately manage and maintain these assets can cause poor equipment performance, unplanned downtime, unnecessary work, and a shortage of maintenance parts and resources.

Getting Started: Data Capture and Data Quality are Key

The easiest way to get started with building an ISO 55000 asset management plan, especially for EAM, is to gather all existing preventive maintenance plans, asset records, and previous analyses of failures.Data capture and dataintegrityarekeyto buildingand continually improvingan Asset Management Plan.The greater the amount of information collected about equipment performance and activities, the more useful the data will ultimately be.

YourSAP EAMsoftwareis an important resource for this endeavor if the data is structured well for analysis.AMobile EAM software solution can supply the ongoing structuring of data by capturing important details such as failure types, repair task time estimates and meter readings.

While these data inputs are extremely valuable, the raw data itself does not tell you how to respond, what procedure to follow, and who is responsible. However, creating an ISO 50000 management plan based on this data will provide the strategic direction needed to react to notifications and perform repairs efficiently.

Building the Asset Management Plan

TheseISO 55000 series of standard shareall highly relevant forEAM andtogether create the Asset Management Plan:

While the ISO 55000 asset management plan series may have some differences depending on the type of company and assets, the following sections are normally included.

Plan Overview – Defines the assets in the plan, how the performance of these assets relates to your company’s objectives, the stakeholders involved with the plan, and how the plan relates to other company plans or standard practices.

Levels of Service – Describes how the assets should be performing and to what condition. Details on both current and targeted levels of service is necessary to identify gaps to be addressed in other sections of the asset management plan.

Future Demand – Provides details of forecasted growth and asset utilization, including demand drivers, impact of demand changes on assets, as well as contingency and investments needed to meet the demand forecast.

Asset Lifecycle Management – Summarizes how assets will be managed and operated at the service level outlined, while optimizing risk and costs. This is the most important part of the plan and includes the following subsections:

Background Information – Provides basic asset information including age, size, capacity, performance, current condition, current value and asset history.

Risk Management Plan – Identifies and evaluates risks based on consequences, probability and detectability to determine the impact to service levels, as well as define mitigations.

Operating Plan – Outlines operating strategies and methods used to meet service levels, prioritization of operating tasks and planned operating costs forecasts.

Equipment Maintenance Plan – Defines maintenance strategies and methods to meet service levels, prioritization of maintenance tasks, and maintenance cost forecasts.

Recapitalization Plan – Outlines expenditures that do not increase the asset’s capacity but restore or renew an existing asset to its original condition.

Capital Plan – Describes investments that create new assets or upgrade or improve an existing asset beyond its original capacity.

Disposal Plan– Identifies how outdated assets will be disposed of, including timing and impact on cash flow.

Financial Summary – Includes a recap of the financial activities resulting from the activities in the previous section, including a cash flow forecast.

Continuous Improvement – Details current and future asset management practices, how the plan will be monitored, and improvement recommendations and plans.

Tracking Progress to Goals

Creating an ISO 55000 asset management plan can seem overwhelming, but the business improvements that result from such a plan make it worth the effort. Tracking progress toward meeting goals outlined in the asset management plan can provide a sense of how well the plan is working.Key metrics to keep an eye on include:

Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) – Measured in hours, MTBF reflects the average time an asset is functioning properly in between breakage or failure events. The higher the MTBF, typically the less downtime.

Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) – The MTTR metric reflects the average time it takes to troubleshoot and repair a failed piece of equipment. MTTR effectively measures both the effectiveness of your maintenance operations and a machine’s ability to be repaired or maintained.

Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) – This metric focuses on the piece of equipment’s overall functionality and reliability, and thus its impact on downtime. The OEE calculation factors in machine availability, performance, and quality. In a perfect world, your OEE would be 100%.

Maintaining the Asset Management Plan

Creating an ISO 55000 asset management plan is not a one time activity, but rather a cycle of continuous improvement. An asset management plan should evolve over time. Capability gaps and opportunities for improvement will become apparent during the development of the plan. These improvement opportunities should be tackled on a regular basis and progress updated in the plan.

Moving from preventive maintenance approach to aReliabilityCenteredMaintenance (RCM) approach is one way you can take action on your company’s asset management plan. Preventative maintenance is intended to prevent major failures by scheduling maintenance of assets at regular intervals. In comparison, RCM is focused on keeping machinery and assets up and running at maximum capacity while minimizing maintenance costs.

With RCM, the conditions that could result in downtime are identified for each asset and prioritized from a maintenance cost standpoint. Then you determine what specific actions provide the best return on maintenance spend to prevent possible failures from occurring. This information can then be fed back into the asset management plan as part of the continuous improvement loop.

ISO 55000 Certification

The process for ISO 55000 certification is a rigorous one. Whether your company chooses to seek formal certification is a decision that every business must make.Regardless, your company will still benefit from aligning your asset management practices with the requirements of the ISO 55000 series.

An asset management plan that aligns with ISO 55000 asset management standards will optimize the return on investment for your enterprise assets, reduce risk and improve performance.The development of the plan sets the path for managing maintenance operations, drive continual improvement, and achieve near-term and future success.

How Sigga Can Help

Here at Sigga, we have been helping asset-intensive industries with SAPIM drive digital transformation and mobile initiatives in industrial maintenance for 20 years. OurSAPCertifiedEAM software improves the capture, structure, and quality of the data needed to build an asset management plan.The solutions are designed to then support the implementation and on-going measurements needed for continual improvement.

OurMobile EAM application digitizes the entire maintenance process connecting users across your business real-time. Mobile EAM helps your technicians accurately capture the data you’ll need for your asset management plan, allowing you to create custom, mandatory inputs to capture and structure the data you need on your critical assets.

Our integrated Planning & Scheduling Desktop software automates many scheduling routines withSAP EAM such as checking capacities, assigning resources, and prioritizing work orders. The software provides an easy interface to SAP data for creating and monitoring ofAsset Management Plans.

Our Mobile Warehouse & Inventory solution digitalizes the workflow of stockroom personnel, from inbound to outbound transactions, with an intuitive user interface.

With our TEAM products for SAP, your company can better collect the data needed to construct and manage your enterprise assets toan asset management plan. Let us help you achieve asset management plan objectives to reach your asset performance and productivity goals.

20 Years of Simplifying EAM Workflows

Posted on October 19, 2021 by Matt Sickler

Only a handful of companies have been in the business of supporting Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) for a full two decades. And even fewer have experience providing mobile EAM solutions for nearly that long.

That’s why here at Sigga, we are proud to be celebrating 20 years of partnering with global enterprise SAP customers to accelerate and achieve their EAM digital transformation initiatives. Over the past two decades, we’ve provided services and innovative software applications that optimize maintenance workflows, streamline processes and generate real-time data to enhance productivity.

Our longevity is due to the successes of our loyal customers, many of which have been with us from the beginning. Here’s our story.

Sigga History

The Early Foundations

Our founder and CEO, Warley Borges, is no stranger to overcoming challenges and hard work. Growing up in the interior of Brazil, Warley had to work hard to make his dreams come true.

Warley initially went to work as a maintenance technician and quickly moved into management. While working full time, he opened his first business of building and selling computers. When speaking to potential investors in 2019, he called, “At that time,I had to work all day as a manager, attend engineering university at night and work on building computers with the remainder of my time.”

With several years of industrial maintenance experience under his belt, Warley sold his computer company to take a position at a Professional Services firm supporting ERP implementations. It was during this time thatWarley first met Romeu Sciotta, our current Executive Vice President, who was also building his career in Professional Services consulting.

Warley Noticed that there was an opportunity in the markettoprovide an even greater level of service to customers in the EAM space.So, it wasn’t long before the entrepreneurial spirit hitWarleyagain and, in 2001, he opened his own Professional Services Firm– Sigga. (It’s interesting to note that in Portuguese, SIGGA stands for Innovative Solutions to Guarantee Asset Management.) Romeu joined Warley at Sigga, establishing the leadership and foundation for our company.

Warley’sfirstbusiness planentailed having17 consultants working with companies to implement Maximo,Oracle,and SAP.In only 4 years,Warleyand RomeugrewSiggato more than 70 consultants and the company became the mostwell-knownEAM professional services company in South America.

From Professional Services to EAM Software

In working with SAP EAM clients,Warleyand Romeusaw the opportunity to vastly improve how maintenance teams use the powerful program. With this insight, they transitioned from a professional services company to being a provider of mobile apps and EAM software solutions to provide a more intuitive and productive user experience with SAP.

In 2002, they launched their first Mobile EAM app. Overtime,they drove continued continual innovations and support for the evolutions of mobile technologies.As a result, our first Mobile EAM customer, a leading manufacturer and supplier of cement, remains a global client of Sigga today.

Keeping Up With 20-Years of ERP Evolutions

From our early history of helping customers install ERP systems to providing solutions that vastly improve the interface and use of SAP, we have been dedicated to helping customers get the most out of theirEAMsystems.In 2005, Warley expanded our investment in R&D and hired Gustavo Comanduci, our current CTO, to join the company to lead the product innovation roadmap.

As a result, we have stayed on the cutting edge of developing and supporting mobile apps and software solutions that improve the use of each generation of SAP technologies. We were the first SAP partner to have a product running on the Sybase Unwired Platform. We were also the first partner to perform an SAP Customer Qualification Process.

With our deep industry experience, we developed a proprietary SAP-certified software integration technology for enterprise-scale installations to deliver higher performance for high volumes of users and transactions. We are one of a very few companies that have successfully addressed thischallenge.Due to this work,we became a benchmark SAP ICC partner for integrating solutions to SAP.

Our commitment to SAPcan be seen in our long history ofSAP qualifications including our SAP-certified EAM solutions,and sustaining our SAP Silver Partner Status for over 15-years.

Rapid Global Expansion

We have a long history of working with asset-intensive, large, and global corporations with locations around the world. To serve our customers’ local operations, we have been continually expanding our talent around the globe including sales and professional services to provide deployment and on-going support.In the past few years, we officially opened offices in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific, and then in 2019, moved the company headquarters to Houston, Texas.

A few examples of our global clients include oil and gas supplier, Petrobras consumer goods manufacturer, Unilever agri-business, BP Bunge beverage manufacturer Anheuser-Busch (Ambev) and metals and mining company, Glencore.

Prepared for the Next 20-Years

In 2020, we went into partnership with Gemspring Capital to bring additional support to our rapid growth trajectory. Gemspring chose to invest in Sigga due to our unique, competitive offerings and significant growth potential according to Aron Grossman, Managing Director at Gemspring. “Sigga’s world-class suite of EAM software products drives significant ROI for customers. The value and efficiency gain the software provides is of significant importance in today’s highly competitive market given the need for enterprises to drive higher plant efficiency despite shortages of skilled maintenance workers. We are delighted to partner with Warley and the entire Sigga team to build on their successes to date and accelerate the company’s momentum.”

Gemspring takes a hands-on approach to help drive growth, market leadership, operational excellence, and strategic value for their partner companies. Their expertise, resources, and capital will help us to accelerate our reach of service and support for our global clients.

Our Experience is Your Guarantee of Success

Today, Sigga is a US company, who’s mission continues to be focused on helping companies accelerate their digital transformation of Enterprise Asset Management.Our Mobile EAM app is a globally recognized solution to improve the work of maintenance teams and our talented people are constantly bringing new innovations to help our SAP customers achieve new levels of productivity and profitability.

With our 20 years of experience in transforming maintenance operations in enterprise asset-intensive industries,our customer-centric culture,and a high level of integrity,you can expect fast results.We have the knowledge and expertise to take you from initial engagement through deployment and supporting on-going use of our solutions to simplify how your organization works with SAP. You can count on us your success is our guarantee.