Setup Asset Management D365 for managing and reporting Asset faults

Author: Kenny Gunter, Senior Consultant, D365, Arbela Technologies

Managing assets in asset-intensive industries can be expensive and time-consuming. By applying the best practices and a CMMS (computerized maintenance management system), we can help reduce fruitless maintenance expenses and downtime when we need our assets to be fully operational. Practicing scheduled maintenance will also extend their useful lifetime. However, preventive maintenance is not always enough to highlight these consistent faults due to operator error, using assets under abnormal conditions, fruitless expenses while under warranty or detecting trends of abnormal behavior.

The case for Fault management

Do we know why our assets fail?

Do we know what remedies we applied to fix the faults?

Do we have good data and reporting to see trends in asset behavior?

Do we have the tools available for our Reliability engineers to use so that we can maximize our asset uptime and minimize cost due to downtime?

Asset Management for D365 allows for a structured setup of user definable data to ensure accurate reporting on common faults encountered on your assets.

Faults can be set up in a hierarchical fashion to capture and report on:

• Fault symptoms
• Fault areas
• Fault types
• Fault causes
• Fault remedies

Using the Fault designer, you can configure fault combinations that are applicable to specific asset types to ensure data integrity. Doing so will also prevent users from capturing a fault symptom that is not related to a specific asset type.

Immediate benefits

You will experience immediate benefits using the Fault function in Asset Management. Breakdowns are often fixed to simply “get the job done”, without thinking why it occurred and what can be done to prevent future faults. Carrying out a simple root cause analysis, prompted by the core setup and step-by-step prompts in Asset Management Faults while doing feedback on the work order, will ensure an organized structure for reporting.

Future use of Fault data

Your Reliability and Maintenance management teams will be able to use the historical data to see how many times a fault code occurred on an asset, the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) and the failure rate. They can use this data to create a reliability centered maintenance strategy to ensure a more cost-effective maintenance operation with improved up-time of assets. By analyzing the data, they can:

• Determine if they need to adjust PM schedule intervals
• Include additional tasks to be performed on PM’s
• Analyzing the Fault data will ensure technicians ability to assess breakdowns quicker and easier.
• Using data analytics to prevent faults from occurring. Typical examples are training needs for technicians and behavior of assets under different conditions as recommended by OEM’s (Original Equipment Manufacturer).
• Associating criticalities to your assets will help determine what effect a failure to the asset may have on your operations.

Where do I get Fault codes?

Your Maintenance technicians are the best source of information. Many of them have been working on your assets for years and they keep record of their experience in spreadsheets, documents, a pocket notebook or if you ask them, they will share their knowledge not previously written down.

The OEM could be a source of information

There are many articles on the internet on Failure mode, effects, and criticality analyses (FMECA).

Analytics and reporting

By using Faults in Asset Management, you will soon have a snapshot view of asset breakdowns to help you make informed decisions about corrective actions.

Asset Management in D365 has a range of Inquiries and Reports to provide the information you need to assess your asset performance.

Why use Faults in Asset Management?

• Help improve MTBF on assets faults
• Evaluation of statistics help create improved standards for maintenance work practices
• Identify trends and problems on assets
• Review, evaluate and optimize PM tasks

Need more information or a demo? Speak to our experts at Arbela.