News

October 2010

Managing risk and reducing the likelihood, and impact, of human error upon plant and equipment is a concern for mine operators. This challenge is now being addressed with the innovative thinking behind Relegen’s asset management system baseLINE.
 
Set to revolutionise the delivery of onsite training, baseLINE bridges the gap between the physical asset and training theory to give a real-world solution available at the touch of a button.
 
When deployed on a mobile device, baseLINE allows workers to access appropriate training for any type of asset at the point of operation, in any location. Workers simply scan the asset and get immediate access to the most current version of safety and operating guidelines.
 
baseLINE acts as a vault for corporate knowledge and stores electronically information about anything from fit testing for masks, start up and shut down procedures for gas turbines, and operating checklists, to immersive training for earthmoving equipment.
 
baseLINE can also link the issuance of assets and the authority to operate assets to an individual. Personnel assessment and competence records stored in legacy systems can be accessed through at the point of operation, in even the most remote location.

Linking assets and individuals through baseLINE keeps workers safe and protects vital, high cost equipment, from accident or failure.

* This article was published in The Mining Chronicle, October 2010.

August 2010

In a tough regulatory environment with stringent occupational health, safety and environmental requirements (OHS & E), organisations are realising the benefits of implementing an enterprise asset management (EAM) software system, such as Relegen’s baseLINE.

Being able to identify assets uniquely, associate employees and sub-contractors directly to individual assets and pull information from other company databases to get the complete asset picture, is key to simplifying compliance, minimising asset shrinkage and being able to identify risks.

With an EAM software system such as baseLINE, information stored across the company can be combined in one location to provide users with everything they need to know about an individual asset.

Whether this is calibration, certification, physical location, usage history, cost, inventory levels or maintenance details, every asset can be managed with relevant and accurate information.

“The next step in best practice OHS & E management is being able to attach employee attributes such as personnel records, training, and certification directly to individual assets. Being able to then access all this information through mobile devices, the web or Cloud based architecture, truly closes the loop and this is where baseLINE is unique,” said Relegen managing director Paul Bennett.

baseLINE is an integral part of Relegen’s end-to-end EAM solution, which includes its unique tagging system assetDNA, consulting and managed services.

* This article was published in The Mining Chronicle, August 2010.

June 2010

In recent years, many asset-intensive organisations have progressed from maintenance management to an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) model; an approach that provides a single view of assets across departments (such as Finance, IT, and HR) for fully-informed decision-making.

While there are many advantages – both operational and financial – to this approach, in order to fully realise the benefits, an organisation should select an EAM software system that can enforce asset uniqueness at the individual component level. Enforcing asset uniqueness allows the user to manage an unlimited number of asset attributes specifically related to each individual asset. Considering assets at this level of fine detail means organisations can attribute risks and costs more accurately whilst significantly improving an asset’s performance and capability.

While traditional EAM software systems can record and track information relating to an asset category, they don’t allow you to record information relating to the attributes of an individual asset. This can limit the effectiveness of EAM because when an individual asset is removed from a system, the information relating to that asset stays with the asset category, rather than moving with an individual asset.

An example of this might be a crane on a work site for which you are required to provide information for regulatory purposes - such as when it was last inspected and maintenance reports. If the original crane is replaced and moved to another site and you are not using an EAM software system that enforces asset uniqueness, all the attributes relating to the original crane will remain with the information that relates to the first work site, rather than moving with the crane. This means that the lifecycle of the crane/asset cannot be tracked and will have implications for OH&S and overall productivity.

With an EAM software system such as baseLINE, you can enforce asset uniqueness by tracking every component of every part of every major operational asset, and record granular detail on each component including what it’s made from, its history, current location, relationships, and maintenance schedule. Users can pull history information from legacy systems for a single page view of an asset, giving immediate access to all the information needed to drill down to the root cause of an issue.

One of the most efficient ways to manage asset uniqueness is to use an asset management software system that includes a tagging system such as baseLINE’s assetDNA^TM. The assetDNA^TM tagging system gives each component of an asset a globally unique number and allows specific asset information to be shared between users of that same asset.

Many of today’s leading engineers are focused on the benefits of implementing a best-practice EAM approach for asset-intensive organisations. This commitment is supported by Engineers Australia’s establishment of the Asset Management Council of Australia whose purpose is to “promote and advance all facets of the science and practice of reliability and maintenance engineering and the engineering management of assets, and to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas related thereto". 

With EAM now a recognised industry best practice, the way forward will be for engineers to implement software systems that enforce asset uniqueness, so as to facilitate the best possible decision-making for the optimisation of productivity, safety, and regulatory compliance.

* This article appears in the June 2010 issue of Engineers Australia.