Its time, rewrite EAM tool functionality

Tell me your ideas for managing tools in EAM …

Tool functionality in most EAM solutions is antiquated

Non-manufacturing EAM users use 3^rd party tool management systems

The time of AI is the time for a redo on tools

Whilst my colleagues in the Northern Hemisphere have spent time dealing with the wet, miserable, cold and the shoveling of snow, we down here in the south have been luxuriating in temperatures that call for the beach, the pool, and long cold drinks over seafood and BBQs. Unfortunately, now that Australia Day has ended the summer holidays, its time to get back to it.

So, welcome back to the real world where asset management issues don’t take holidays. Whilst a four-week break was nice, I did take some time out over the summer hiatus to get my office/study in order. Part of that exercise has been unboxing of books held in storage for the last 12 years and deciding which ones get to be donated to Lifeline, and which ones need to be kept. In these boxes I found a collection of large Collins diaries going all the way back to 1991. These were a result of a habit I was taught by one of my early managers and mentors – to take contemporaneous notes of conversations and phone calls. These diaries are those records. When we moved to Canada I did the same thing in notebooks, I have the last three years’ worth with me, but the rest will arrive by ship sometime next month.

What’s in those diaries are going to pop up in this column a lot this year 😊.

A recurring theme in these notes, from as far back as 1996, concern tools. The notes make me wonder, is there a worse piece of functionality in EAM solutions than that provided for managing tools for maintenance and projects? The notes back up what prospective customers had been saying to me for 30 years – tool management functionality is an unnecessary friction for non-manufacturing maintenance and project management processes.

Most likely because of its complete lack of glamour, nobody has been inclined to bring tool management out of its 20^th century cul-de-sac. Yes, most EAM vendors have not meaningfully updated their tool management functionality in decades. This needs to change. There is no better time than the present, with the advent of AI, to start reimagining how tool functionality works.

I suspect the reason the why tool management works the way it does across most platforms is because just about all major EAM software packages were originally written around manufacturing needs. Which is great if you’re a manufacturer, but thereafter many EAM solutions have been rolled out to other industries where the requirement for managing tools is more complex. With so many other industry specific functionality being more saleable (and necessary) tool management has always taken a back seat.

Why is it important to change? Tools are fundamental to getting the job done – no tools, no work – and its a stumbling block to smooth work management. This of course raises the question as to what constitutes a tool. In asset management the definition of a tool is broader than the standard dictionary definition. Essentially, a tool is any piece of equipment that is required by an employee to physically carry out a maintenance or a project activity that is returned to source once the activity is complete.

Now, because that definition is so broad, we typically categorise them. These categories are not defined the same way from vendor to vendor but essentially can be bundled as follows:

1. Simple tools – these are the tools that we keep in the store or depot. We check them out when we need them and return them when we are finished. The important bit is that it doesn’t matter which one we get, “a hammer is a hammer is a hammer” as the saying goes, and we don’t care whether is hammer A, B or C.

2. Serialised tools – these are tools that need to be tracked because their condition is important to the final outcome of the maintenance being undertaken. A simple example would be calibrators for temperature sensors and indicators where reverse traceability is a driver.

3. Tools that are assets – a backhoe is a prime example in the utility industry. Tools that need to be managed in exactly the same way as any other asset, the only difference is that they need to be made available for use in jobs, work orders and projects.

Let’s face it, all the EAM solutions deal with the checking in and out of these tools to jobs and work orders – and that’s fine. It’s when you want to apply scale, or book a tool in high demand, that it all comes completely undone. This is particularly true when the tool must be hired in or managed around a maintenance schedule.

In these cases, the questions I’ve been asked over the last 30 years have tended to revolve around visibility. Here are six of many. Can I:

• See what tools are available;

• Understand when they are available;

• Check the lead time for delivery and return;

• Sequence different tools in the correct order of use;

• Understand different cost impacts of hiring versus delaying until available;

• Switch the same tool so that I can do a job over a period when two different individual tools are available but one isn’t for the entire time needed?

In late 2022 during my gardening leave between Hexagon and IFS I looked at multiple EAM solutions. For all the systems I looked at the user selected a date and the EAM solution told you if the tool was available. Several came back and said how many were available and a couple just gave a message saying, “tool not available”. None checked whether any were likely to be undergoing maintenance, none checked whether there were likely candidates awaiting removal from another site, none suggested an alternate date, and none initiated a requisition process that allowed the store to determine whether they needed to hire one for the job or project.

What would I have like to have seen? Some of the things that would be useful would be:

• Good visualisation;

• Drop and drag scheduling including ship in and ship out timings;

• Sequence driven tool scheduling – I need tool “A” before tool “B” can be deployed;

• System generated advice – would swapping the same tool work for me?

• Cost comparisons and/or modeling.

Another contrary but useful piece of functionality just be able to requisition a tool. For most of the systems examined I needed to raise a requisition to hire a tool or alternatively book an existing tool i.e. I needed to determine before requesting which way I wanted to go. I couldn’t place a requisition and have the system or a central agency make that decision for me. In the end, I need the tool, the business should be able to work out the best way of meeting my need in conjunction with everyone else’s need. It then naturally follows that the central store needs the functionality to best model the optimal tool utilisation.

Of course, today we have AI that could do a lot of the heavy lifting without us having to build complex processes. Optimization, modeling and cost balancing are core capabilities of AI. Do I need to scroll through hundreds of line items and their graphical representations when AI could potentially present me with the three best fits? In fact, with the introduction of AI use cases within EAM solutions, now would be the best time to re-engineer how vendors do tool management!

What are your thoughts?