In April 2019, AVEVA acquired the software assets of MaxGrip—an AVEVA partner since 2017 recognized for its asset performance with reliability centered maintenance solutions. As AVEVA integrates MaxGrip’s capabilities into its solution portfolio, Kim Custeau, vice president of AVEVA Asset Performance Management (APM), gave a preview of the company’s activities in this area during a session at the AVEVA World Conference in Orlando.
Custeau began by noting that AVEVA’s acquisition of MaxGrip is not just a technology integration, but an integration that includes the incorporation of MaxGrip’s system integrator partners into AVEVA’s own integrator framework. This is a key aspect of the acquisition, Custeau explained, because a principal focus of this integration is on AVEVA’s APM assessment process. This assessment is an analysis of processes and systems in place at customer sites to “deliver an APM solution that maps to achieving business objectives,” she said. “We provide them with a tactical way to approach this; we show them where to start and the specific steps to take to achieve their business objectives.”
She explained further that the assessment is “not a services engagement, but a period of time we work with clients to discover where they are on their APM journey and where their goals will take them.”
According to Custeau, the first action taken in the APM assessment process involves the identification of critical assets to be included in AVEVA’s Asset Strategy Optimization. “There are seven steps in this reliability centered maintenance (RCM) process to properly identify the criticality of a particular asset,” Custeau said. “The outcome is the delivery of a risk-based approach to maintenance decision-making. This helps users understand the consequence of the failure of an asset. With this insight, customers can better determine what level of maintenance investment needs to be made.”
The acquisition of MaxGrip’s software is a key component of the expansion of AVEVA’s assessment process, as it leverages MaxGrip’s asset library to help define and implement comprehensive RCM strategies based on asset criticality and risk. This library, developed over 20 years and 500 projects, includes more than 900 critical asset types with failure causes and conditions and proven maintenance remediations for assets used in the oil and gas, chemical, infrastructure, utilities, food & beverage, and water & wastewater industries.
“From engineering perspective, if you understand failure modes, you can design around that,” said Custeau. “You can design for reliability.”
The combination of AVEVA and MaxGrip technologies enables customers to realize high levels of reliability, availability, safety, and efficiency in the operation of their capital assets. It also closes the loop on managing fault scenarios with prescribed remediation actions based on best practices—moving users from reactive and predictive maintenance to prescriptive maintenance.
“Many companies offer predictive analytics,” added Custeau. “But if you cannot define the path to closure to extract the value of anomaly detection, you miss the value in that chain that we can capture. Also, many companies offer Enterprise Asset Management and vibration analysis technologies, but are they capturing the content and knowledge around it that helps drive operations and business strategy? We are doing that.”
Though the integration of AVEVA and MaxGrip technologies has not yet been formally announced, proof of concept tests have already been successfully conducted at customer sites. Custeau noted one application at a food and beverage customer’s site where the combined AVEVA and MaxGrip software highlighted an issue with a plugged filler. “This filler had been identified as being a critical asset during the assessment process, so we were able to use the software to set rules around how to deliver specific maintenance execution procedures to prevent its occurrence, as well as how to fix it if it occurs.”
Previewing the soon-to-be-released announcement around the integration of AVEVA and MaxGrip software, Custeau said, “The assessments we perform are done to understand people, processes, and technology—to understand a company’s overarching asset performance strategy and connect it to specific corporate objectives. It’s a complete collaboration loop to define analytics for continuous application and improvement.”
She added that the newly combined software offering “is architected to be integrated with existing technologies in the plant and at the enterprise level. This technology can scale—which is something that cannot be said about all APM technologies on market.”
