From the department of "Andy Chatha Speaks!"

Andy Chatha, CEO of ARC Advisory Group, incidentally, Control's partner in drafting the Top 50 Companies report for the December issue which is already available online, gave a rousing speech about the great benefit of asset management which he called "Driving operational excellence trhough collaboration and interoperability." Andy noted the manufacturing squeeze: --increasing global competition --downward pressure on costs --more distributed operations --shrinking product lifespans --aging workforce (darn, there it is again...I am not the only "doom and gloom" prophet, I guess...) --dynamic customer requirements (my God, what a nice way to put this...) --more customer-imposed standards --pull-based replenishment --excessive IT costs (no! really! I am shocked, shocked, I tell you!) --high regulatory costs He posted an equation that I found interesting: Design x Operate x Maintain = Win Note that the operators are multipliers. "Design/Operate/Maintain processes," Andy noted, "are highly interdependent and complex, and require interoperability and collaboration at all levels, not just at the plant floor level." Design and Maintenance are the foundation for optimizing performance, he proclaimed. The integration challenge, he said, is that most plants continue to operate as islands. "You have to start thinking about integrating your entire enterprise!" Andy showed ARC's five layer model based on S95 and S88 for plant-to-enterprise integration, and also discussed ARC's graphical representation of Plant Asset Management. And finally, Chatha made an impassioned plea to dump legacy equipment and systems and install completely new systems and hardware...which will, of course, never happen. Not that I don't think Andy is right-- I do agree with him completely. However, as long as cost accountants run things in manufacturing, that's never going to happen. Which is one potential explanation for why less than 20% of manufacturing plants worldwide are even trying to implement real time performance management schemes, after almost fifteen years of consultants like me and Andy Chatha preaching it.