What Are Assets?
“...Language differences frequently—if not usually—erect a barrier to understanding.” —Ed McMinn, Oklahoma State Daily Devotions for Die-Hard Fans (p. 17)
Imagine that you have woken from a coma in a familiar land, but communicating with those around you seems to be difficult. Difficult because, although the words are all familiar, the context, structure, and inflection of the inhabitant’s speech doesn’t conform to your known norms or your familiarity with the spoken language. You can clearly hear every single word, and you know what each word means, but as a structured sentence, your compatriots are not making any sense. How frustrating would that be?
When I was in the military I made an accidental discovery that I went on to prove many times. I had noticed that the higher grade a senior officer (major through general), the more ambiguous and unclear his or her communication seemed to be. I left many colonel and general’s offices asking, “What did they just say?” It was difficult sometimes to differentiate between a thought, a direct order, and just an idea. Fortunately, the good senior NCOs (non-commissioned officers) I worked with could help me decipher the intent.
I contend this is the level to which our business vernacular and communication has declined. We are in an organization with other professionals, presumably on the same mission, shooting for the same goals, but for some reason we can’t understand our cohorts and they don’t seem to understand us. We are not speaking the same language. “When it comes to the language of equipment performance and availability, there doesn’t seem to be a common language at all.” (Ross, p. xx) And further, “A common language is foundationally needed for a working relationship. In order for maintenance, engineering, production, purchasing, corporate leadership, and others to work and thrive together, understanding the most primary terms is required.” (Ross, p. xx)
In the introductory chapter, I mentioned that you would be actively participating as you read through this book. I went on to explain that I was writing a book that had the feel of you and me sitting across the dining room table, drinking coffee and just talking about stuff. Here is your first task, and one that I hope successfully demonstrates this need for us to get alignment on our words, and more specifically, the meaning of those words. Please fill in your definition or description of what the following words or phrases mean.
| Maintainability: |
| Reliability: |
| Asset: |
| Asset Management: |
| Asset Management Plan: |
| Strategic Asset Management Plan: |
| Maintenance Activities: |
Of course there are canned and widely accepted definitions for these words and phrases, but I feel it’s important that you and your organization accept an explanation that is organic to your location and your situation. If we all subscribe to Webster’s definition, then we might falsely saddle our constituents with a term that doesn’t actually resonate with them.
Here is an example of taking a higher authority’s definition and convincing others that it means something that just doesn’t settle with the population at large. In 2012, the United States government set the poverty line for a typical family of four at $23,050. Of course establishing a standard like this across such a vast and varied area as the United States is a bit of a non-starter. I would agree that a family of four might eke by in Slapout, OK on $23,051 (one dollar above the poverty line). But in New York City, at $23,051, that family is most likely still poor.
I encourage you, before you move on in this book, to completely define the words and phrases previously listed. It is important that you do this to gain initial experience with the interactive design of this book and to make sure that when you say ‘asset,’ you have clearly stated what you are talking about and there is no ambiguity.
Now that you have completed the assignment, ask two other people in your organization to document their interpretation of the words and phrases. This is important to gauge the degree to which our understanding of simple business-level words differ between members in the same organization. I would expect the answers to be similar, but not exact. No big deal right? I really don’t know. But, according to the government, you’re poor if you only make $23,050, and thus you qualify for all kinds of benefits. But if you make $23,051, then it’s “good luck out there.” So, do small differences matter?
Record your two colleagues’ responses here:
| Maintainability: |
| Reliability: |
| Asset: |
| Asset Management: |
| Asset Management Plan: |
| Strategic Asset Management Plan: |
| Maintenance Activities: |
| Maintainability: |
| Reliability: |
| Asset: |
| Asset Management: |
| Asset Management Plan: |
| Strategic Asset Management Plan: |
| Maintenance Activities: |
Is interpretation and understanding important in the workplace in a reliability setting? Put aside the definition of ‘poverty’ previously mentioned and in its place add the understanding of reliability, or better yet, a reliability strategy or approach. See Figure 1-1 to visualize how just three slightly different interpretations of ‘reliability’ and then three additional thoughts on connecting issues can lead to an unmanageable spare parts matrix.
Figure 1-1 A portion of the results for a slightly different interpretation of ‘reliability’
Figure 1-1 is highly unscientific but shows what I believe to be an all too real example of how we can end up off the mark by starting off with a loose definition. The figure shown is a portion of the larger results that stem from asking three people to define what reliability means. Then, three additional people were asked to take those three definitions and describe their ideas for the Bill of Materials, and so forth until the group ended up at eighty-one unique requests for a spare parts package to support the exact same machine.
Has it been your experience that you keep adding spare parts to the storeroom for equipment that has been in your plant for over ten years (or longer)? This phenomenon might be the result of different people with differing ideas of what is needed to support an operational asset. It is certainly a result of not having a clear process for determining how to put together a spare parts package. The skill of putting together such a package requires some decision-making criteria. This will be discussed later, in Chapter 4.
To summarize this introduction to Chapter 1, we have to understand each other in order to work, live, play, and prosper amongst one another. In describing the day of Pentecost, St. Luke painted the scene of a large crowd, made up of religious people from every country in the world: “They were all excited, because each one of them heard the believers speaking in his or her own language.” (Acts 2, 6-7 GNB)
