Pasi Valkokari

Road-mapping the business potential of sustainability within the European manufacturing industry

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to explore the required changes, outline business potential and envisage the key steps that a networked manufacturing industry needs to take to reach more sustainably performing manufacturing in the future. Design/methodology/approach – The paper utilises a visionary road-mapping approach to study the required changes and the business potential related to sustainable development in the manufacturing industry. Findings – The results were summarised in three sub-roadmaps empowerment of stakeholders, increase efficiency and creation of new performance criteria. On the basis of the summary of the sub-roadmaps, the framework was configured to describe the opportunities and challenges of sustainable business development in the European manufacturing industry. Research limitations/implications – A clear implication of this study is that a more system-oriented approach, new models for collaboration between network actors and transparently shared network-level KPIs are requir...

Decision Making Situations Define Data Requirements in Fleet Asset Management

Large amounts of data are increasingly gathered in order to support decision making processes in asset management. The challenge is how best to utilise the large amounts of fragmented and unorganised data sets to benefit decision making, also at fleet level. It is therefore important to be able to utilize and combine all the relevant data, both technical and economic, to create new business knowledge to support effective decision making especially within diverse situations. It is also important to acknowledge that different types of data are required in different decision making context. A review of the literature has shown that decision making situations are usually categorized according to the decision making levels, namely strategic, tactical and operational. In addition, they can be classified according to the amount of time used in decision making. For example, two situations can be compared: (1) optimization decision where a large amount of time and consideration is used to determine an optimum solution, and (2) decisions that need to be made instantly. Fleet management of industrial assets suffers from a lack of asset management strategies in order to ensure the correct data is collected, analysed and used to inform critical business decisions with regard to fleet management. In this paper we categorize the decision making process within certain situation and propose a new framework to identify fleet decision making situations.

Asset Management Decisions—Based on System Thinking and Data Analysis

Asset related data is collected in several information systems (e.g. enterprise resource management (ERP) and computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) systems) at industrial plants. Information systems including asset related data are typically used for operational level decisions (e.g. creating maintenance work orders) but maintenance history data is also valuable when making asset management level decisions (e.g. investment decisions). Even though there is a huge amount of stored data, tacit knowledge is needed for risk conscious asset decisions both for supplementing the data contained in IT-systems and for creating the understanding of the production system itself and its interrelationships. The paper describes how data collected from ERP and CMMS system can be utilized when improving operational efficiency and researching investment opportunities and evaluating investment options.

Tapping the Value Potential of Extended Asset Services – Experiences from Finnish Companies

Abstract Recent developments in information technology and business models enable a wide variety of new services for companies looking for growth in services. Currently, manufacturing companies have been actively developing and providing novel asset based services such as condition monitoring and remote control. However, there is still untapped potential in extending the service delivery to the long-term co-operative development of physical assets over the whole lifecycle. Close collaboration with the end-customer and other stakeholders is needed in order to understand the value generation options. In this paper, we assess some of the asset services manufacturing companies are currently developing. The descriptions of the asset services are based on the results of an industrial workshop in which the companies presented their service development plans. The service propositions are compared with the Total Cost of Ownership and the closed loop life cycle frameworks. Based on the comparison, gaps that indicate potential for extended asset service concepts are recognised. In conclusion, we argue that the manufacturing companies do not recognise the whole potential for asset based services and for optimizing the performance of the end customers′ processes.

Strategic Asset Information Management: Experiences from Finnish Companies

Decisions on strategic asset management are crucial from the perspective of improving the sustainability of companies. The new ISO 55000 series of AM standards is a means of improving the AM strategies and practices of companies, and thus their sustainability performance. For this study, three Finnish companies were interviewed about their asset management, especially related to their asset information management practices and sustainability. The results are compared with the asset information management guidelines given in the AM standard. The goal of the research is to find best practices and areas of improvement in asset information management, and thus to improve asset management related decision-making and the sustainability of companies. All the interviewed companies gather and analyse data from their machinery and infrastructure and the analysis and utilization of asset related information is considered important. The economic perspective of AM is seen crucial in decision-making, but also sustainability reporting, maintenance and operating information, value of assets and fault data are utilized. The asset information is scattered in different systems and behind different organisational barriers. Companies, however, strive towards unified asset information management systems.

Toward Sustainability Governance in Manufacturing Networks

This paper presents a model for addressing sustainability governance in manufacturing networks. The model developed addresses sustainability governance within a manufacturing network as a process to guide the activities of all actors involved toward sustainable development and performance throughout the product life cycle. According to the model, there are three main tasks of sustainability governance: analysing, organising, and developing. These three main tasks are in accordance with company-level approaches but highlight the need for multilevel network governance.

In Search Of Best Practices In Industrial Maintenance: Some Underlying Factors

Abstract Business requirements and characteristics of production systems determine the effective modes of operations in industrial maintenance. In order to identify the best practices the first task is to identify the best performance in various business environments using relevant key performance indicators. The next step is to identify the modes of operations which create the best performance. There are several research strategies to find out the best practices. However, there are a lot of challenges in data collection and therefore a research process requires a long term roadmap in order to boost knowledge on behavior behind peak performance. This paper presents some of the results of a long research process, which form a solid basis for determining the best practices in the area of industrial maintenance.