Hi everybody,

Up to what extent valves and instruments are included in the PM or PdM program of an organization?

Thanks in advance.

Albert

Pls mention the types of valves and instruments that you are talking about.

I would say all, even manual/block valves need to be checked for internal passing or simply repainting during shutdown.

Hi Josh,

Thanks for the reply. To give you a brief background about my post, I am involved in the data entry of all the manageable assets installed on board a Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels used for oil & gas E&P.

We used P&ID drawings to cover all of these assets. In that sense, we are getting several hundreds of different kind of valves, be it manual, motor or hydraulic operated. Also for main equipment, there are a numerous instruments installed - level gauge, indicators, transmitters, controllers to name a few.

If we are to register all the said assets, then upload to the PM or Pdm program, will this result to a thousand work orders? Is there really a need to cover these assets or be more selective on what type of valves and instruments that will be included in the PM?

Thanks in advance.

Albert

Many WOs are not problems, you can group them. R u new to CMMS?

No. Actually we are into building the database of the CMMS. It's just that now we are using Maximo. I am not familiar with the end-user side of it.

Many thanks.

The principles are the same regardless of the brand.

Accurate analysis further down the path depends on the building blocks of your CMMS. We use Maximo here. Brand doesn't matter though.

Our group advocates adding valves into our database, others are against it; but we are ten years entrenched in a database that has never had them. If you write workorders at the valve level, then having them in the database will assist in showing troublesome units. If there are no rules around workorder generation and workorders are written to a higher system locations by habit, then having the valves at the lower level doesn't help show troublesome units without diving deep into the workorder text to discover it.

You attach spare parts to equipment. With a quick lookup you will know what spares go to each of your valves. If there is ever a recall you will know with a quick database search if, and to what extent you are affected. For turn-arounds a quick database search will tell you how many parts you need. We have many diaphragm valves which require replacement on some interval so we are affected by this.

Database space is cheap. I see value in having equipment in the database. If there are proper rules in place for workorder generation, a wealth of history can be extracted from it.

If you don't enter them into the database now, it will never be done as workarounds will be devised and entrenched into the culture. It's now or never. I would enter them and develop good rules around the program looking forward to the day when data history will have real value.

Wally

Thanks for the response.

I understand your point of entering all of these data in your CMMS. However, a certain limit should be applied on what type of equipment goes to our system. Let say in your plant, probably you'll have hundreds of 1/4" size valves. The question is, are we going to enter these in the system? Secondly, what do we use as a reference of the equipment that will be entered in the CMMS?

ALbert

Josh

It seems that you're familiar with Maximo. I appreciate if you can share to me how you group work orders in Maximo? Do you do this during data population or Maximo has a certain functionality for this task?

ALbert

Amos somewhere you have to draw a line,

• Is the object an asset or not? a 1/4" gate valve in my eyes is not an asset, it would be better to attach the whole piping branch as an asset/object
  
• You can define a price limit for let say, everything above $500 could be entered in the system
  
• Be sure that you define a "maintenance asset" in terms of functionality and maintenance requirements, resources parts etc.., so ambiguous interpretation is eliminated
  

The 2 last points need to be worked out simultaneously, else you could find someday the chair of the director in your equipment master list because it costs $501 or a $2500 spare shaft (component) classified as an asset

Al

You can find the answer to your question in this forum if you search for it.

How long have done CMMS? R u a ICT graduate or a maintenance engineer?

I think Josh is referring to work type when he says grouping work orders (CM, PM, PdM, etc.).

You should have a detailed enough hierarchy that work orders can be written to equipment that may require failure tracking. You should also include equipment down to the lowest repairable unit (LRU) that you care about. I do agree with giving piping branches or piping sub-systems equipment numbers if that's the way you want to track it. The point is to make it so your hierarchy allows for work orders to be written as close to the equipment you want to track as possible for later failure tracking and analysis.

Be sure to take care in attaching accurate spares AND spares quantities to your equipment in the beginning. It will prove valuable later on.

Steve is right, set rules and standardize up front. Data can get so buried when you have years of data on your system that it becomes lost. Make sure that there are rules around work order entry so that people don't write work orders to too high in hierarchy. If many work orders are written at a high level you have to dig into the work order text to determine what the failure was. That is needless work for later analysis.

Josh

I am a mechanical engineer. It has been two years now since I passed the licensure exam and joined a software company(Asset Management, CMMS for shipping, oil&gas, etc). I guess my lack of industry experience prompted me to ask you guys about this matter. I appreciate all of you who replied to my queries.

ALbert

Al, the company should train you first or somebody to guide you through.

Wally, I'm talking about equipment grouping for PM work order generation.

Josh

I appreciate your comment, however, let's go to the main point of this discussion.

ALbert

quote:

Up to what extent valves and instruments are included in the PM or PdM program of an organization?

• control valves should enter in the Equipment Master List, they have a valve and a control part (either electrical, mechanical, pneumatic, electronic, hydraulic) which requires that someone looks at it once in a while (PM). In most cases they already are identified on a P&ID , PFD or some schematic drawing
  
• ordinary block valves etc.. would be better of if they are part of some "piping, cooling or pumping" system, unless they are made some exotic material used at Nasa, nuclear power plants or on the bottom of the sea
  
• PM on valves, the simple ones: replace the packing if leaking every two years during a shutdown or turnaround for equipment that cannot be bypassed or taken out of production. Here grouping in a system comes handy. You do not need 300 separate work orders for 100 meters of piping.
  
• Control valves combine the control part with the valve part
  
• PdM, valve leakage can be detected with ultrasound scans (per systems), infrared surveys, continuous monitoring of process variables (DCS, PLC, scada systems)
  

It is necessary to think in systems, instead of segmented components when designing the asset hierarchy.

Mr.Albert,

I understood your question in two different perspectives
Number one: what are the equipments to be added as "ASSET" in Asset register whether shall i add valves in asset register or not
Asset Register: This serves many purposes.
As Finance Man: it is used to calculate the book value of present plant assets to decide the insurance requirement premium or to know the worth of company value after 3% depreciation every year ...many.
As Maintenance Man: To book the work order and use full to roll up the cost of the "OBJECT "to evaluate the effectiveness of maintenance. ASSET it may be simply your concrete Foundations or Core reactor of the Plant. There is no hard and fast rule to determine the Asset Register. For oil and Gas Plant your Maintenance crew`s Pick-up may not be Asset of the Plant but for the Fright Movers that is Main asset. So in General ASSET "can be anything useful to your plant ". You have to set boundary line what you are going to get from that, how it is to be useful in future data collection such as reliability studies or cost issue...etc
For instance we have Pipe line in our asset list, purpose we have been spending lot of money for painting, insulation, welding, grinding, repairing pipe supports..Etc. if we did not added that in ASSET REGISTER it may go to the pipe line system. Then you may get confuse where I will add downstream vessel or upstream vessel. You have to do brainstorm and set the norms how you are breaking up. So discuss with the client and take him on board and determine what he wants in ASSET REGISTER. I can't determine ¼ ˜' valve shall be added as ASSET REGISTER or not it may `do a critical function in one of your system in other did not. It is your and client sole discretion to add as asset, no one can't question as that is wrong. But be remember, if you want to add any general item like this you must Unicode the component or instrument which consumes huge time.

What extent valves and instruments are included in the PM or PdM program of an organization
Answer is very simple: Must be derived from Maintenance strategy matrix of your plant
How it is critical to your business? What would be the consequences of the valve if it fails to function,(may be protection system) do you have spare valve in stock to replace if fails which will not affect your business. Will give insight to the selection of PdM or PM program.

Hi Svanels

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

I agree with the five points that you made.

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Here grouping in a system comes handy. You do not need 300 separate work orders for 100 meters of piping.
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Would grouping of valves and instruments using the equipment as the group name for the work order is feasible?

Thanks.

Albert

Hi KJAP

Thank you for your insights.

What I am referring in this discussion is for the 'Maintenance Man'. You're right by saying that registering these assets is somewhat a case to case basis. It depends on the organization on up to what extent these items should be included and also depending on the maintenance philosophy that will be implemented.

We can see in our discussion the importance of 'Maintenance'asset register to implement an effective maintenance program. Especially using CMMS software, where the data that we enter determines its effectivity. I hope every maintenance professional realizes the importance of data entry. Its not only a job for 'data clerks' rather they should be more involve in the data building.

I hope we contributed a good discussion here.

Thanks to all,

ALbert

One last thought for this thread; Data entry accuracy is important. To typo is human.

We have many cases in our CMMS where fat fingers caused like equipments, spares, location names, etc. to be different as considered by the database. Databases are very literal machines. Have someone review the entries against the intended list, especially if this is a new installation. It will pay off later on.