Q&A for the presentation of “Siveco’s aggressive replacement program for end-of-life CMMS/EAM”

We would like to thank all the participants. Here is a summary of some of the questions and answers raised during the session. For more information, please contact Fiona Yan, Marketing Manager, at info@sivecochina.com.

 
Question: I agree with you that many of our goals have not been achieved: our plant structures are not up-to-date, which makes it more and more difficult to report jobs; we are not able to perform reliability analysis with the system yet; planning is also a problem, but we can manage by exporting data to Microsoft Project. However, we have used this EAM system for many years already: we have invested a lot of money, trained our teams and the system is working. How can we change now what we have taken years to build?
 
Answer: In our view, an IT project should not be different from any other engineering project. In fact, a CMMS implementation is an engineering project, which means you have goals and you are able to measure the results. Now if your structures are not up to date, it means you do not maintain the technical database in the system. I guess you still use drawings, folders or another document management tool. You cannot do realiability analysis, because faults are not properly reported, which means you cannot support improvement decisions with the system. Finally you also admit you can't do your planning! From an engineering point of view, this means the system is NOT working. Now you raised two very valid issues: you are not able to reinvest the same amount in another system. Your management would never approve this. We recognize this financial issue, that is why we offer a very special price. The second issue about training of the team is perhaps the most critical: users have been living with the system every day for several years, they may not like it, they may not think it is very useful, but they are used to it. This is where the COSWIN technology comes into play, as you will see in our demonstration: COSWIN doesn't look at all like conventional "EAM" systems. It is highly graphical, more like a DCS screen. This has proven to greatly simplify acceptance by the users, with little training, allowing them to focus on their job rather than on the system.

 
Question: Ok, we have not reached our goals, as you stated many times. My experience is that most EAM projects fail. This is because users are not mature in China. If xxx and xxx and xxx [names of companies removed] cannot implement a successful project, how can Siveco?
 
Answer: I have heard that one before: "users are not mature". It is amazing how successful companies can accept to be blamed by their suppliers for the failure of the projects. In essence, suppliers are telling you "we are a big company, we have word-class software, we know what we are doing, if the project failed it's all your fault". Why not say "we installed a hightech tool, but these guys are idiot monkeys"? I really do not understand how companies like yours can accept that. We, at Siveco, do not accept that. Yes, the level of maturity when it comes to maintenance, methodologies, is not the same in China as in Western countries. On the other hand, technicians are much more open to new technology, they are very willing to accept change in their daily work process. In the West, technology is often seen as a threat. In China, it is also much easier to get ROI from projects, because maintenance has seldom been optimized. Not only projects do not have to fail in China, but on the contrary they can be more successful both in terms of technology and ROI. So what is the difference between us and others? Well, others would never tell you what I just said, because their IT background prevents them for looking at the business reality. Our projects are entirely business-driven. They are not IT projects, but maintenance improvement projects. Our people are maintenance engineers, not IT. All our customers are good references and can be visited: they can explain what has been improved and how. I mean all our customers, not one or two of them who get paid commissions when they say good words for us!

 
Question: Could you explain your replacement process? What are the steps in the project? What are the main challenges?

 
The first step is the initial audit, when we go through the entire system together with your users, to verify the scope of the previous implementation (functionalities, work processes), how much is really being use, the quality of data (what can be recovered, what should be cleaned before migration), the level of the users, etc. We create a "Core Model" defining how COSWIN will work, keeping the same scope as the replaced system. This is part of the deal: we only replace, based on the existing scope. If you want more, you should of course be ready to pay for it!

 
The second step is to extract all data, cleanse them and migrate into a COSWIN database, which will be used for training. As part of this process, our engineers configure the system. Various COSWIN tools are available to recover existing data, configuration from various systems. We have experience with xxx, xxx, xxx, xxx and xxx [named removed]. Also a few others, not active in China. You can say this second step is the "implementation". The system is then tested by the customer, under our guidance.

 
Finally, the transition phase between the old and new system. This includes end-user training and all cut-over activities. We "babysit" the users for a while to ensure they adapt to the new system and come back again after one month for an audit and improvement session, usually focusing on analysis (typically what was not done in the old system, to show the improvement to both users and management).

 
Optionally, we can come again for regular audits and implement more advanced functionality.

 
The process is not very complex. The main challenge is the initial audit, which has to be comprehensive, otherwise hidden requirements will pop-up later in the project. Luckily our team has a vast experience conducting audits, both organizational audits (including EAM/ERP systems audits but also business process reviews) and plant audits (more focused on the assets themselves), so we are quite confident in how to handle this first phase in the project. The rest of the project derives from the audit and the "Core Model".

 
Question: We are xxx [company name removed, large coal-fired power plant in East China]. As you know, in the power generation industry, the maintenance process is very complex, very few EAM systems can handle power plants. We know xxx, xxx and xxx [company names removed] but as you said, most of their projects are failed. In fact I totally agree with your assessment. My question is how can Siveco handle power plant requirements?
 
Answer: Thanks for your question. I have been working in the power industry myself for over 5 years, involved in thermal, hydro and nuclear power. I will perhaps surprised you by saying that maintenance management is a power plant is not as complex as you think – or as I thought when I was in this industry. Maintenance is more critical, this is true. Safety and regulatory constraints are much tighter, this is also true. The total asset value tends to be very high, compared to manufacturing plants for example. Finally, partly because of regulatory requirements and partly because of the management style in state-owned companies, there is more paperwork, more approval processes etc. But these are all covered by standard CMMS functionality that almost every CMMS have. On the other hand, the awareness of maintenance is much higher than in other industries. Documentation and drawings are always available. Clear budgets and resources are allocated to maintenance. Large manufacturing companies can be much more complex, for example with tool exchange (when switching to another product range), with quality related management (impact of maintenance on product quality). Other infrastructure projects, such as metro or water distribution networks, add another level of complexity with a large variety of assets over a large area, with complex planning and dispatching needs (while in a power plant, the maintenance team is always onsite). Our experience is that power plant projects are among the simplest… They are however often larger, due to their size. You look very surprised! I know the background of your EAM project and I know the supplier did a lot of new software development, even needing to involve subcontractors, is that correct?

 
- Yes. That's what I mean. Even with a mature solution for power plant, they had to do a lot of development and change the source code!

 
- What kind of development? For what functionality and what purpose?

 
- Mostly because we needed to maintain more data fields for different equipment. There was not enough data fields. We also wanted to record operation parameters, the EAM system normally does not have this functionality. We developped a completely new module. About 40% of the project was for such development, and even today we still get support from xxx [company name removed] subcontractors for more modifications.

 
- This is a common power plant requirement, I agree. With a tool like COSWIN, all this development can be handled as configuration, without IT skills, without touching the source code. You can create new screens, add as many fields as needed, create your own user interface and even link data to other subsystems. Based on our own estimates, we can reduce this 40% of the project to perhaps 10%, without requiring specialized resources and without access to the source code. Once the solution is defined, you can recruit students to do the job. Just like DCS suppliers do for designing their HMI. We are doing to show you this in the demo, if you want you can also test it yourself after the meeting.