Managing Your Utility Assets

With Bill Caver, President of Aleier, Inc.

NGPE. Why is enterprise asset management so critical for energy companies?
BC. Asset management is critical for companies that are asset intensive, that have a large investment in fixed assets. In addition, asset management is critical for companies whose operations are delivered on and dependent upon fixed assets. Energy companies are perfect examples of energy intensive businesses whose business operations are primarily dependent on the availability and performance of their fixed assets.

NGPE. Cost control and reduction through visibility of maintenance activities across sites and asset classes is a major concern for utilities. How can EAM drive provide better information to those charged with asset maintenance and management?
BC. Asset maintenance costs cannot be managed unless they can be measured and tracked. An Enterprise Asset Management system collects, tracks and displays maintenance costs to allow these costs to be managed more effectively. In addition, an EAM helps an organization to apply the appropriate maintenance strategy to assets – run to failure, preventive maintenance, condition-based maintenance – depending on the nature or the criticality of the asset. And an EAM provides the key performance indicators (KPIs) that give asset and maintenance managers visibility into the performance of maintenance activities.

NGPE. Why is it important to have access to real-time operational performance metrics within an organization?
BC. In today’s ever increasingly competitive environment, organizations must detect operational issues as quickly as they develop, and react immediately to correct them and minimize their impact on operations. Using real-time operational performance metrics are an essential tool to enable all members of an organization to identify operational problems quickly so that they can resolve those problems quickly.

NGPE. What solutions does Aleier offer to help power companies manage their physical assets more effectively?
BC. Aleier provides an enterprise-grade, full-function EAM that can help power companies manage their assets over the complete lifecycles and maximize the efficiency of their maintenance operations. In addition, Aleier can provide turnkey solutions that integrate its EAM to various sources of asset condition data to implement condition-based maintenance strategies across a broader range of equipment and machinery. Aleier can collect condition data from existing control and automation systems, from various equipment-specific monitoring systems, or by installing new data collection systems using appropriate technologies, including wireless sensor networks.

NGPE. Can you provide an example of how your solution has been used effectively within this industry sector?
BC. Aleier and its sister company, Cirronet, have provided asset management and condition monitoring solutions across a wide range of industrial companies. Condition-based maintenance is a relatively new maintenance strategy that is still being piloted in a number of organizations.

NGPE. Wireless sensor networks are becoming an increasingly useful tool for monitoring the condition of assets. How does Aleier’s enterprise asset management solution integrate with wireless sensor networks?
BC. Aleier’s EAM solution is designed to accept asset condition data over the Internet. Aleier’s EAM is configurable to communicate with a broad range of wireless sensor networks, most of which have Internet gateways, and to interpret and store the asset condition data that they can provide.

As data arrives from a wireless sensor network, Aleier’s EAM analyzes the data according to pre-defined rules appropriate to each asset to detect incipient failure or deteriorating performance. If the asset’s condition goes outside of allowable operating boundaries, then Aleier’s EAM allows automatic responses to be activated, including generating maintenance work orders, or alerts directly to cell phones or pagers.

Bill Caver is the President of Aleier, Inc., a subsidiary of RF Monolithics, Inc. His leadership and vision have been the driving force behind the production of one of the most advanced and flexible enterprise maintenance management software systems on the market. Caver began his career in accounting. He spent 14 years with BMW of North America where he was responsible for all construction and maintenance of North American corporate facilities. He came to Aleier from HDR, Inc. where he was Chief Operating Officer for Facilities Management.