MRO Software
MRO Software: Strategic Asset Management for the Utility Industry MRO Software is a leading global provider of strategic asset management solutions for the management and optimization of assets that have a significant impact on operational excellence, including assets used in production and delivery, facilities, fleet, and information technology.
Make It All Count With MAXIMO Today’s business environment demands a new breed of applications that will accelerate entry into new markets, help reach and retain customers, adapt to internal changes, and streamline operating efficiency. At MRO Software, we have seen these demands across the broad spectrum of MAXIMO client base, including manufacturing, oil and gas, health care, facilities, aviation, transportation, technology, and, of course, utilities. The use of MAXIMO has grown within organizations that face the following challenges: • Highly competitive • Regulated • Mission-critical • Resource-limited • Cost-conscious • Very visible During the past 30 years, hundreds of utility companies have selected MAXIMO to meet many of their work and asset management needs in gas, electric, and water utilities. These companies represent many lines of business including generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity, transmission and distribution of natural gas, and the treatment, distribution, and collection of water and wastewater. This growth and acceptance has allowed MAXIMO to become the leading player in the enterprise asset management (EAM) marketplace. It also has allowed us to see the need for strategic asset management (SAM), which allows all types of assets to be managed in one common system. No longer are separate systems necessary for managing generating facilities and transmission assets, or for assets in New York or California or even Hong Kong.
The New B-to-B Is “Back-to-Basics” One of the predominant trends in the utility markets ser ved by MRO Software is a shift
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back to basics. For utility companies this means getting the most value out of their assets. Many believe systems that offer flexibility, scalability, and open integration standards will improve overall productivity. Recent analysis shows that utilities are refocusing on the fundamentals – the return they receive from capital assets that serve their customers. These utilities are increasing their investments in work management systems. The scope of work management projects is growing to include supply chain management, condition-based maintenance, advanced planning and scheduling for spare parts, automated workforce scheduling/optimization, and mobile computing – all this with the goal of driving operational efficiency and increasing the return on assets. MRO Software welcomes this renewed focus on assets, as we have had a long history of working in partnership with utility industry customers to continuously improve MAXIMO’s ability to help utilities meet the challenges of today’s constantly changing competitive landscape.
Asset Accountability in Transmission One example of the new focus on asset accountability is evident in the new asset management model being implemented by transmission companies. These utilities are realizing that the profitability, stability, and performance of the company relies heavily on how assets that are critical to business and financial performance are purchased, maintained, and optimized throughout their lifecycle – providing companies with an important source of cost savings, regulatory compliance, availability enhancements, and competitive advantage. This focus has consequently resulted in major developments and changes in business and operating models, with the trend being to unbundle the operations into three distinct units: • Asset Owner – Sets the overall business goals and parameters for risk, cost, and performance, and is responsible for meeting any regulatory legislation. The asset owner provides the operating guidelines for the asset manager, and ensures that an
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active service level agreement is available and tracked with the asset manager. • Asset Manager – Focuses on asset strategy and policy definition, risk management, investment and maintenance planning (not scheduling), and contract management. This approach enables the organization’s decision-making to be driven by the needs of the asset. The asset manager decides how and where money is spent and sets policies and procedures for service providers. • Service Providers – Focuses on core skills of scheduling manpower to deliver programs efficiently and effectively to meet defined service levels. The service provider does not decide where or how to invest funds. By focusing on core competencies, transmission and distribution managers are realizing that the long-term viability of their company hinges on how to create further value from its complex and distributed asset base. That is why they are introducing bestpractice asset management principles – linking strategy and values to key processes across the asset lifecycle, and making the trade-off among cost, performance, and risk. Survivors in open markets will be those organizations that can demonstrate their ability to manage this, and prove it through greater financial performance.
Asset Accountability in Generation Active portfolio management of generation assets has power plants changing owners at an unimagined rate. The new owners are incentivized to quickly put "their" best practices and systems in place to be sure the new addition to their fleet is operating in the top quartile. The new system must be implemented quickly and linked to other plants and systems to be sure that the plant is operating safely and efficiently within required regulations. This is true for all plant types, big or small, fossil, hydro, or nuclear.
Strategic Asset Management Another trend in utility companies is the drive for common systems across asset
classes, lines of business, or geographical areas. Chief information officers are pressured to reduce spending and rationalize the number of systems deployed. In asset management there used to be a need for separate systems for each asset class, each managed in their own silo because of special functionality. With the advent of strategic asset management, companies can now deploy a single asset management solution across all asset classes and all lines of business on a global basis.
MAXIMO 5 MAXIMO 5 represents the most advanced enterprise asset management software in the marketplace with its Internet optimized component architecture. This next generation architecture leverages the latest Internet concepts and technologies, ensuring optimum compatibility with today's Internet infrastructure. No matter what size your operation, you can improve the availability and per formance of your revenue-generating assets. With MAXIMO, you can cut time and money from the maintenance process and ensure par ts availability, both while decreasing investment in inventor y and streamlining sourcing and contract management. And now the true standardsbased component architecture of MAXIMO 5, the latest version of MAXIMO, promises even more – not only lower integration and ongoing suppor t costs, but also greater scalability and deployable XML Web ser vices for greater ease of collaboration. Some of the primar y advantages of the architecture include: • Lower cost of ownership – MAXIMO 5 eliminates client-side installations and upgrades, leading to lower cost of implementation, integration, and ongoing support. • Open standards – MAXIMO 5 delivers native, message-based, XML-based integration for collaboration with trading partners and for integration with other enterprise applications. Open standards ensure platform-independent, upgradeable, and compatible integration with industry standards. MAXIMO's integration adapters are "loosely coupled" integrations that support the evolution of underlying operating systems, database platforms, communication protocols, and most importantly, business process changes. • Advanced enterprise deployment – Clients benefit from a global centralized deployment approach for all sites, optimizing the initial and
ongoing infrastructure cost. Additional features supporting global deployments address time zones, languages, and currencies. MAXIMO 5 can also be tailored to specific customer requirements without changing source code, reducing the cost and complexity of upgrades. • Scalability – The architecture's design is highly scalable as a result of a robust application layer with industry-standard J2EE application server support. Commercial application server support provides CPU load-balancing, threaded processes, thread pooling and clustering, etc. Lab testing with standard hardware and software shows virtually linear scalability with the ability to handle thousands of active users.
Why Did We Do All This? Every company has critical assets – assets that have a direct and significant impact on corporate performance and profitability. It is a company’s assets and its human capital that combine to create competitive advantage and earnings. Any company that’s not getting the maximum from its asset base is leaving money on the table. So why is strategic asset management an unfamiliar concept? Because until now, management of assets from an enterprise perspective has been impossible. Different assets have distinct management needs, creating a fragmented patchwork of systems that made a corporation’s assets invisible in any meaningful way at the executive level. When one considers all that a corporation does from a systems perspective – customers, supply chain, financials, and people – where is the corporation-level asset management system? With MAXIMO 5, it’s here. And it comes precisely at a time when companies need to extract more value from revenue-generating assets. MRO Software now has a suite of solutions that addresses the needs that organizations have for all assets – production, delivery, facilities, fleet, and IT. It works across all lines of business. It makes assets visible and makes it possible to manage them for strategic benefit and bottom-line impact. Strategic asset management makes sense in five key areas: • Technology that works • Longer asset life • Higher performance • Flexible, global deployment • Asset-centric procurement We make asset management easier, more productive, more predictable, and more visible. So you can make it all count. ■
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Solution Provider
www.mro.com
CONTACT INFORMATION Chip Drapeau President and Chief Executive Officer Bill Sawyer Executive VP of Operations Patricia Foye Executive VP of Global Marketing and Alliances Ted Williams Executive VP of Worldwide Sales MRO Software, Inc. 100 Crosby Drive Bedford, MA 01730 Phone 781.280.2000 Fax 781.280.2002
[email protected] BUSINESS CONTACT
Bill Ely Strategic Business Development Manager
[email protected] Phone 727.360.2388
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