Asset Performance Management

White Paper

Asset Performance Management Closing the Aging Workforce Gap

As the baby boomer generation ages and subsequently retires, skilled labor gaps are popping up across the globe. The experience and knowledge leaving with these retired professionals is creating an industrial vulnerability that impacts productivity, safety and profits. The problem is only compounded when the assets themselves begin to age.

The retirement of skilled baby boomers will create a workforce shortage of 10 million additional workers by 20201.

Global population trends predict decades of impact as the over-sixty annual growth rate peaks in 2025, and sustains a gap for decades afterwards. This is not a theoretical threat but one the industry should already be addressing. The most difficult jobs to staff are those that have the largest impact on productivity. With 80% of manufacturers reporting a shortage of qualified applicants for skilled production positions, the consequences of this skills gap are significant. In fact, the total cost of skills shortages has been reported as much as 11% of net earnings3.

Your Operational Intelligence Is RetiringThe skilled labor gap, or brain drain, has an immediate and long-term impact on any organizations ability to reach optimum productivity levels. Those retiring are the people that understand how equipment works, when it is going to fail and how to prevent it, when it needs help and attention, and how to respond when something goes wrong.

This unique intelligence about how the plant operates and how it is maintained is at risk of being lost. And if lost en masse, negative consequences will ensue, including:

Workforce expenses To maintain experienced oversight of production, plants will incur over time costs while younger, less practiced employees are being trained.

1http://blog.industrysoftware.automation.siemens.com/blog/tag/global-aging-workforce/ 2http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/worldageing19502050/pdf/80chapterii.pdf

The aging workforce will impact skilled labor for decades if not mitigated by better knowledge transfer and analytic solutions2.

Asset Performance Management: Closing the Aging Workforce Gap

The skilled labor gap is growing faster than new employees can be recruited and trained. For example in the mining industry a survey by Schlumberger Business Consulting finds

that 22,000 experienced geoscientists and engineers will leave the field by 2015.

Safety concerns When staff are new to their roles, they may miss subtle signals that equipment needs attention. If or when disaster strikes, they dont have the experience upon which to respond in an optimal manner. Lost productivity Inexperienced staff can slow production and take longer to recover from system failures. In fact, nearly two-thirds of manufacturers report at least a 5% increase in production downtime and production cycle time as a result of a skills gap3.

More than 70% of manufacturers report at least a 5% increase in overtime costs and nearly one-third report a greater than 10% increase in overtime costs3.

Shutting Down the Brain DrainDespite significant risk, there is good news. With careful planning, you can mitigate consequences of the skills gap can be mitigated by stemming the tide of lost knowledge.

Entice younger workers by digitizing and automating. Millennial workers want to engage careers that are technologically advanced and secure long- term earning potential. By automating and building a strong digital foundation, industrial environments can be very attractive. Combined with solid training programs that reach out to talented young professionals, organizations can lessen the impact of retiring employees. Preserve critical information before its lost. In a structured fashion, document the knowledge resident in the minds of your aging workforce through the use of tools that record, verify and update best practices, workflows, and strategies. Improve collaboration. By better integrating information and communication across sites and facilities, your less experienced staff can tap into the resources of seasoned workers and documented knowledge even when geographically dispersed. Give data a voice. Using technology to consolidate and analyze big data and best practices from across the enterprise, you can replace the in their head knowledge of retiring professionals.

Crew turn over was a contributing factor in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 men and spewed 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico4.

32014 Manufacturing Skills & Training Study published by The Manufacturing Institute4http://www.npr.org/2012/04/20/150871935/as-workers-age-oil-industry-braces-for-skills-gap


Meridium Can HelpBy leveraging Meridiums leading Asset Performance Management (APM) solution you can reduce the risk associated with an aging workforce with confidence. Meridium will improve accessibility, standardization and communications between departments and sites, helping even the newest staff members to achieve financial, operational and production objectives. APM combines structured processes and analytics in order to identify critical assets and failure modes, calculate equipment reliability and determine downtime impacts; in turn, that drives insights that enable operational excellence.

About MeridiumMeridium is the global leader in asset performance management (APM) software and services for asset-intensive industries. Meridium increases the availability of assets, improves safety, optimizes cost and lowers risk for our global clients in more than 80 countries with more than 1,200 licensed sites around the world. Through our unique software developed in collaboration with our clients, we predict and prevent asset failures with intelligent asset strategies. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Roanoke, VA (USA), with offices around the world, Meridium is the pioneer of APM and continues to drive innovation, leveraging the data from sensors, devices, systems and smart equipment to minimize unplanned events, incidents and downtime.

Copyright 2015 All rights reserved


Corporate HeadquartersRoanoke, Virginia, USA +1.540.344.9205

Regional OfficeHouston, Texas, USA +1.281.920.9616

EuropeMadrid, Spain +34.91.555.1380

Middle East/AfricaDubai, United Arab Emirates +971.4.365.4808

Asia/PacificSingapore +65.9764.1244

[email protected]


042015v35

Asset Performance Management

Documents

Transcript of Asset Performance Management