In many cases, when the maintenance activity is being performed, the technician uses the set of tools & replacement parts defined by the manufacturer as part of the product service plan. This is normally contained in a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system. In reality, this information could be out of synchronization in the Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system. For example, the original part could have been replaced in the past, which might require a different set of tools and spare parts. The technician comes to know about it only after a visit. Re-visit is required with the correct set of tools, spares, or even skills to properly perform the job. This inadvertently increases the downtime of the asset. What could be the root cause of the lack of the latest information? This is a result of the gap between PLM & EAM systems. This gap can be minimized with an integrated digital thread solution.
Siemens Teamcenter Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) has a Design & Service Engineering solution to support service plan definition, including service requirements, frequencies, activities, technical publications, etc. On the other hand, a typical EAM system would have service operations such as work order management, scheduling, costing, dispatching, etc. Conveying updated information on Service Plans & sBOMs is a major concern in connecting PLM to EAM systems. The EAM systems which perform service operations may have missing important updates available from PLM systems. This could bring down the effectiveness of the asset’s maintenance.
sBOM & Service Plan in Teamcenter SLM
The above image shows sBOM with occurrence-specific details. The service plan will have information about how the product needs to be serviced. It contains information about frequency, work cards, time & activity details.
Imported data from Teamcenter SLM to IBM Maximo
The IBM Maximo user can pull the latest & configured sBOM & Service Plan information from Teamcenter SLM. The resulting data in IBM Maximo can be seen below images.
The Assets, Items, Spares are created in IBM Maximo by referring to Teamcenter sBOM.
The Job Plans & Job Plan Tasks are created in IBM Maximo by referring Work Cards & Activities from Teamcenter.
Work Order History Gap:
Another gap that can be addressed through an integrated digital thread solution is the lack of performance visibility. The part movements, usage, fault codes & failures would be captured after execution of Work Orders in IBM Maximo. This information will be transferred to Teamcenter As-Maintained structures. This information from the field can be useful input for the designer to perform design improvement analysis. Such workflow of getting feedback from real assets closes the loop between PLM & EAM systems. It is done by leveraging the Digital Thread of assets from design to service engineering, from service engineering to service operations, and vice versa.
For a given asset, the Work Order history is created in IBM Maximo in a standard way, as shown below image.
Import of Work Order History from Maximo to Teamcenter SLM:
For a given sBOM in Teamcenter SLM, the Designer/Service Engineer can pull the Work Order history of the associated assets from IBM Maximo, as shown below images. This Work Order history provides vital information of fielded assets to the designer, which improves the design.
This image shows Active Workspace (AW), which is the web version of Teamcenter. Teamcenter Service Engineer can pull the Work Order history from IBM Maximo by providing date range & associated Fault Code in AW.
Summary:
The above solution is an attempt to minimize the gap between PLM & EAM systems and to close the loop of Design, Manufacturing, and Service Operations to improve the quality of the product based on the feedback of failures, reduce commissioning time, avoid repeating technician visits and increase asset’s availability.
Don’t hesitate to contact Thanh for advice on automation solutions for CAD / CAM / CAE / PLM / ERP / IT systems exclusively for SMEs.
Luu Phan Thanh (Tyler) Solutions Consultant at PLM Ecosystem Mobile +84 976 099 099
Web www.plmes.io Email tyler.luu@plmes.io