Organizational Benchmark Assessment

Asset Centric Consulting offers a FREE Organizational Benchmark Assessment you can fill out and submit. The assessment is designed to help you understand the maturity level of key initiatives within your organization and areas of strengths and gaps or deficiencies.

Once you've completed the assessment and submitted it we'll produce a report summarizing the information and provide you with our recommended 'next steps' to close any observed gaps or deficiencies.

ACC - Organizational Benchmark

Company & User Information

Personal email addresses will be ignored.

Instructions

For each question, selection from the drop-down menu the current level of maturity for each initiative. This list is purposefully comprehensive to catalog the areas of strength and, more importantly, and gaps and/or deficiencies within the organization. Once you've submitted the assessment, we'll create summary reports to share with you. We'll also provide our suggested next steps to remediate observed deficiencies as part of a continuous improvement process.

ASSESSMENT QUESTIONS

Asset Care Strategy

Physical assets are maintained in an optimal, reliable, predictable, and dependable condition throughout their life cycle.
Asset inventory, maintenance strategies, resource optimization and allocation, training and development, CMMS utilization, performance monitoring, continuous improvement, etc., are all sufficiently addressed.

Asset Integrity Management

Organization enshrines the expectation that assets perform their required function to protect health, safety, the environment, and assets critical to the business by mitigating risks to prevent disruptions to the business.
Risk-based inspection assessments are performed from which tactics are developed to reduce risks to the lowest practical level.

Asset Management Organization & Structure

Asset management effectively interfaces with other peripheral functions including reliability, finance, procurement, inventory control, project design, project management, contractor management, etc.
Asset management aligns its initiatives and outcomes with the goals and objectives of the company as a whole.

CMMS Utilization

Asset management uses the CMMS to ensure accurate and complete maintenance information is captured regarding costs, resources, and performance.
Information is used to make important and financially sound equipment, repair, refurbish, replacement, or scrap decisions.

Equipment Identification

Asset management assigns equipment IDs in the CMMS using an appropriate level of asset hierarchy especially for new assets.
Equipment IDs attached to new assets before they are placed into service to make it easy to identify them in the field.
Equipment IDs easily visible on assets in the field and contain sufficient information to positively verify the equipment.

Maintenance Engineering

Maintenance engineers react to undesirable events and equipment failures by performing deep-dive Root Cause Analysis (RCA) to identify the true root cause from which they develop action plans to prevent recurrence.
RCA reports are distributed to stakeholders in a timely manner.
RCA results are shared with reliability engineers so RCM tactics can be updated accordingly.
Maintenance procedures are well written so they are easy to follow.
Maintenance procedure instructions are sequenced in a logical order.
Maintenance procedures accurately reflect the required sources including people, materials, and tooling.
Maintenance procedures specify specialty skills required to perform tasks.
Maintenance procedures have adequate time allotted to perform the work.

Parts & Inventory Control

The organization’s parts and inventory control program uses criticality assessment information to make informed decisions.
The frequency of an item’s use is used to help understand the number of turns of an item in a year and in what quantities a part may be needed using the information to make accurate projections?
Safety stock is established for critical parts to accommodate an event whereby a higher rate of use may be witnessed beyond what was planned.

Planning & Scheduling

Asset management places rigor in the systematic planning, scheduling, and execution of maintenance activities to ensure assets are maintained efficiently and effectively and in optimal condition.
Information is used from all sources such as routine inspections, predictive maintenance, unexpected failures, safety observations, warranty work, senior leadership mandates, etc., as part of the planning and scheduling process.
Planning and scheduling processes are reviewed to incorporate needed changes to close any identified gaps and deficiencies in the process.

Reliability Engineering

Reliability engineers proactively use RCM to develop maintenance strategies to ensure standardization, maintenance tactics, operating strategies, training, documentation, inventory, etc.
Reliability engineers incorporate root cause analysis (RCA) findings into RCM strategies to prevent recurrence.
Reliability engineers monitor the performance of critical asset against established criteria to identify early warning signs of impending issues.
Continuous monitoring is used on critical systems to aid in real time, early detection of potential issues.

Reliability Excellence Program

Reliability excellence initiatives focus on improving the reliability, availability, and performance of systems, equipment, and processes for critical systems.
Maintenance, operations, engineering, and organizational practices are effectively used to achieve long-term efficiency and cost-effectiveness.
Critical assets are well-maintained and effectively managed using techniques such as risk-based asset management, equipment lifecycle planning, ensuring the right maintenance strategies are in place, etc.

Work Control

Asset management effectively manages the work control process to ensure all tasks are planned, sequenced, scheduled, and executed efficiently to keep plant equipment and processes running optimally.
Highest priority work performed at the right time with the right resources, and level loading is performed to prevent unexpected swings in workload.
Maintenance work backlog is well managed.
Work is tracked and effectively reported to key stakeholders in a timely manner.

Business Improvement

Organization incorporates appropriate strategies, methodologies, and initiatives to help the business explore innovative ways to improve products, processes, and/or services.
Organization relies on the sequencing of steps to define, measure, analyze, improve, and control events to achieve the desired results promoting continuous improvement.
Simple tools such as 5-why’s or plan-do-check-act (PDCA) approach are used to understand problems and arrive at fast and cost-effective solutions.

Lean Manufacturing

Organization applies lean practices, principles, and tools to develop and manufacture products or mine material, eliminate waste, optimize processes, cut costs, boost innovation, and reduce time-to-market.
Lean principles are used to eliminate waste associated with overproduction, waiting or idle time, transportation, processing, excess inventory, movement, defective products, and underutilized workers.

Lean Six Sigma

Organization combines tools, methods, and principles of lean with six sigma to create a single, hybrid methodology for improving an organization’s operation.
The three key elements of lean six sigma are deployed for tools and techniques, process and methodology, and mindset and culture for a more holistic approach.
Analytical techniques are used to promote the mindset of continuous improvement.

Six Sigma

Organization uses six sigma to improve processes by applying statistics to define variation inherent in data driven processes by using standardized measurements and metrics.
Practices of customer-focused improvement, continuous process improvement, variation, removing waste, and equipping people are incorporated into decision making process.
Design for six sigma (DFSS) is used during new design processes to ensure final projects meet all requirements, expectations, and fullfil the business case.

Contractor Control

Organization effectively controls and manages contractors.
How well are contractors expected to adhere to the same standards as company employees?
Oversight is provided to ensure contractor's assigned work and delivered products and services meet expectations within the allotted time.
Contractors are vetted to ensure they meet the same on-boarding requirements of employees and that they possess the required skill sets to immediately perform their work with no training.
Contractors are held accountable for upholding safety and environmental standards mandated by the company and regulatory requirements.

Employee Skills & Training

Organization deploys well-defined roles and responsibilities and job descriptions for all mission critical functions.
Organization performs skills assessments for employees to understand their strengths and weaknesses while providing training, guidance, and mentoring to help close gaps in skills deficiencies?
Organization has developed a program that helps employees prepare for their desired career path.

Health, Safety, the Environment & Community (HSEC) Stewardship

Organization supports and promotes health, safety, environment, and community initiatives as fundamental building blocks by which all business operations and initiatives must embrace.
Organization enforces and sustains HSEC initiatives to prevent complacency and the backsliding of threshold requirements and tolerance levels.

Human Resources (HR) Development

Organization’s human resources group drives strategic initiatives related to workforce planning, development, retention, the alignment of human capital with organizational goals, etc.
Human resources group helps develop employees skill levels through training programs, workshops, and courses.
Human resources group helps shape and nurture the culture?
Human resources group oversees workplace safety and wellness programs and compliance with health regulations.

Roles & Responsibilities

Roles and responsibilities are well defined so everyone knows what is expected of their roles, how their roles interact with others, and the expectations of the other roles to help promote clarity and an understanding of boundaries.
Responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed (RACI) documents have been defined and communicated to reflect roles and expectations especially within departmental and cross functional teams.

Cultural Change Management

Organization uses cultural change management to help guide and influence shifts in the anticipated culture to align with new goals, strategies, or external conditions.
Organization considers underlying values, beliefs, norms, paradigms, and behaviors that define how the organization will operate and interact both internally and externally.
Leadership plays a pivotal role in championing the cultural change management process?

Leadership Development

Organization encourages leaders to inspire, motivate, and guide employees while maintaining operational efficiency and organizational growth.
Leaders look beyond the current state to anticipate future challenges and opportunities while providing clear direction and purpose that aligns with the businesses long-term goals.
Leaders make timely, well-considered decisions, especially when faced with uncertainty or conflicting information.

Management Commitment

Leaders play a pivotal role in helping champion business improvement initiatives including supporting asset management and asset care initiatives to promote excellence in equipment reliability, availability, uptime, and performance.
Leaders balance priorities between production and asset management strategies to ensure assets are maintained in optimal health while supporting production commitments.

MSHA & OSHA Certified Training

Organization places emphasis on mine safety and health administration (MSHA) or occupational safety and health administration (OSHA) training and initiatives to ensure the safety and health of workers.
MSHA or OSHA training educates employers, employees, and contractors on safety protocols, hazard recognition, emergency procedures, regulatory compliance, required personal protective equipment (PPE), equipment operation, rights and responsibilities, and accident prevention.

Business Resilience & Continuity Plan

Organization’s business resilience and continuity plan identifies all potential interruptions, no matter how unlikely, with specific action plans that address what to do if one of the unlikely events were to occur.
Business resilience and continuity plan considers economic loss, loss of competitive advantage, breach of law and/or standards, failure to achieve agreed upon service levels, political and/or reputational issues, increased costs, etc.
Business resilience and continuity plan analysis helps understand at what point unavailability of business processes becomes unacceptable to business.
Contingency plans include scenarios that may cause an event, triggers that define when to action the contingency plan, appropriate responses depending on the event, whom to contact, key responsibilities, and timeline that addresses the detailed action plan of activities and their sequencing for different potential scenarios.

Capital Budget & Control

Organization prepares annual short- and long-term capital budget plans and forecasts, especially for assets and components whose cost exceeds a predetermined operating budget threshold.
Asset planning takes into consideration the life cycle of assets and economic points to repair, refurbish, replace, and scrap.
One, two, and five-year forecasts are used to help project capital spend while aligning the forecast with business expenses and profitability forecasts.

Continuous Improvement

Organization uses continuous improvement to regularly review processes to identify deficiencies, gaps, and constraints in practices, procedures, standards, requirements, etc., and define action plans based on findings.
Organization uses continuous improvement to regularly review processes to identify deficiencies, gaps, and constraints in practices, procedures, standards, requirements, etc., and define action plans based on findings.

Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG)

Organization deploys environmental, social, and governance initiatives that socially conscious investors may use to screen for potential investments.
Organization stays abreast of ESG criteria and adjust strategies accordingly given it is an evolving metric.

Financial Analysis & Planning

Organizational financial analysis and planning processes take into account funding to replace aging production assets and infrastructure, or acquire necessary equipment to allow maintenance to effectively carry out its work.
The planning process uses important metrics and criteria to evaluate funding requests such as net present value (NPV), payback period (PP), and internal rate of return (IRR).
Forecasts accurately project the timing of spend while considering the company's debits and credits to understand the net cash flow impact as a result of proposed implementations.

Management of Change (MOC)

Organization uses the management of change process when making important decisions having an impact on the organization to afford stakeholders an opportunity to review proposed change prior to implementation.
The MOC process is used for changes in organizational structure.
The MOC process is used for maintenance procedures or standard operating procedures for mission-critical assets.
The MOC process is used for technical specification validation and deviations from standardized equipment procurement.
The MOC process is used for changes personal protective equipment (PPE) requirements.
The MOC process is used for changes in environmental policies.

Operating Budget & Control

Organization prepares annual operating budgets based on zero based budgeting.
Prepared budgets are accurate requiring little to no adjustments during the fiscal year for which the budget was prepared.
Asset management’s input is incorporated into the operating budget given assets often account for the largest share of the operating budget.
Life cycle costing information is used by asset management to prepare the operating budget based on the condition and age of assets.

Operating Procedures

Operating procedures detail the expected normal operation of equipment, what abnormalities operators should look for, and how to report deficiencies immediately when noticed to avoid equipment damage.
Operating procedures are clearly written and easy to understand even for operators who may be new to their role and not as familiar with the equipment.

Overall Equipment Effectiveness

Organization has successfully deployed overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).
OEE metrics include the use of relevant key performance indicators to measure availability, performance, and quality as part of an operational efficiency initiative.
Organization uses OEE information to ensure improved reliable of processes, better resource utilization, and improved bottom line profitability.

Performance Metrics

Organization uses performance metrics to measure and track asset management and organizational initiatives regarding the effectiveness of maintenance activities.
The right KPIs have been deployed to help gauge how well the asset management and the organization is doing as compared to goals and objectives in support of the overall business.
KPIs are used to make data-driven decisions to help optimize maintenance tactics and strategies to reduce costs, optimize resource allocation, improve safety, ensure compliance with applicable requirements, and strive for continuous improvement.

Procurement

Procurement processes align with organizational goals while prioritizing long-term value over upfront costs.
Suppliers are benchmarked to establish favorable terms and ensure cost-effectiveness.
Procurement ensures suppliers meet rigorous quality criteria and deliver consistent, defect-free goods and services.
Procurement processes allow for adjusting strategies to respond to supply chain disruptions, price fluctuations, or demand shifts.
Procurement processes use MOCs before making arbitrary decisions to replace components or equipment for alternative 'like kinds' to ensure critical specifications are validated.

Production Planning

Organization communicates intended changes in production plans to asset management so they have time to make necessary changes to tactics prior to implementing the production plan.
KPIs are monitored to understand relationship between production plan changes to equipment availability, performance, and quality, and adjustments made based on observations.

Technical Services

In mining operations, the organization communicates intended changes in ore types or ore characteristics to asset management so they have time to make necessary changes to tactics prior to implementing the ore change.
In mining operations, how well does the organization incorporate chaHow well are KPIs monitored to understand the relationship between ore characteristic changes to equipment availability, performance, and quality and adjustments made based on observations?

Threats, Risk & Opportunity Analysis Management

Organization performs threat and risk analysis and management commensurate to the complexity and criticality of a project or task with enough time given to deploy findings ahead of time.
Threat and risk analysis initiatives accurately identify threats, risks, impacts, consequences, class of risk, risk manageability, etc.
How effectively is the threat and risk information cataloged and managed using a risk register so action plans, assignments, due dates, etc., can be followed up on to ensure compliance with the action plan?
How well are opportunities identified during the workshop used to improve the business case and effectively actioned during implementation?

Visual Management

Organization effectively uses visual management to communicate important metrics to stakeholders, work groups, and the business.
Visual metrics are easy to interpret so individuals familiar with the initiative understands the information in less than a minute without any explanation.

Warehouse

Warehousing strategies align with organizational goals and objectives to help streamline the operation, minimize costs, and meet customer demands.
Warehouse logically arranged for easy retrieval using vertical and horizontal storage pace to maximize capacity.
Warehouse has segregated areas for receiving, storage, picking, packing, and shipping.
Warehouse layout accommodate safe and efficient material handling.
Suppliers are leveraged to stock certain inventory with the expectation of immediate delivery when needed.

Operational Readiness (OR) Deployment

Organization embeds operational readiness in projects to ensure the delivery of effective bodies of work, competent and trained people, and reliable and predictable asset performance.
Operational readiness is embedded in projects no later than prefeasibility to help ensure robust, reliable designs with accurate cost estimates and well-defined business cases ahead of funding requests.
Lean operational readiness used for smaller projects to reap the same benefits on a smaller scale.

Design for Reliability, Operability, & Maintainability (DROM)

Organization embeds design for reliability, operability, and maintainability (DROM) initiatives in projects.
Organization enforces the use of standardized equipment, high quality materials to promote the safest and lowest long-term cost of asset ownership, improved reliability and predictability, etc.
Organization recruits input from subject matter experts (SMEs) to positively influence the design during the early stages to ensure easy access for maintainers and operators.

132. Project & Management Deployment

Project management group collaborates with asset management to ensure maintenance tactics and inventory are established, and all relevant information entered into the CMMS before the project is placed into service.
Project management group ensures all pre-commissioning and commissioning activities have been completed and identifying constraining action items resolved prior to turnover to the facility.
Project management group ensures training has been satisfactorily provided to personnel prior to turnover of the project to the facility.
Project management group ensures all documents are turned over to the facility in a timely manner upon completion of the project.
Project management group takes care of modifications after startup (MAS) work for actions that clearly belong to the group.
Project management group coordinates warranty work during and after project completion with the owner's team and facility.

Project Portfolio Management

Organization uses a project portfolio management process to manage, prioritize, and optimize a collection of projects and initiatives to most effectively achieve business objectives.
Projects align with organizational goals, funding, and resource availability to ensure projects deliver maximum value.
One, two, three, four, and five year horizon projections are sufficiently accurate to allow the business to effectively plan capital investment to maximize the ROI.
Projects and initiatives are sequenced to allow for the level loading of work avoid resource constraints and/or scheduling conflicts.
Projects are effectively re-prioritized to minimize disruptions when unforeseen constraints make it impractical to continue implementing an active project.

END OF ASSESSMENT

Click 'Submit' to submit assessment information. We will contact you shortly once the resulting reports have been created, including our recommended next steps.