Category Archives: Strategy

AGL’s Energy Efficiency Journey: Why Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

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AGL were unknowingly losing $20m per year on fuel costs by operating with many feedwater heaters out of service. For years individuals had attempted to get them back into service because they felt it was the right thing to do. But consistency brewed complacency. AGL used human-centred design techniques to identify the root cause – we’re not talking technical root cause, rather behavioural root cause. Then they started on an ambitious journey to change the culture. Sarah Hannah, Head of Asset Systems (Acting) at AGL Energy will be outlining the astonishing results achieved in her session at Mainstream Conference 2019. Here she tells us why you should be focusing on culture transformation instead of initiatives, and outlines how they have engaged AGLs leadership to come on their transformation journey. Why Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast How many initiatives have we seen started in our companies which seemingly evaporate with no real value delivered. As asset management professionals, we are continually delivering initiatives to improve our asset management systems, our asset performance, our maintenance strategies… the list goes on. How much of the time that we spend delivering these initiatives do we focus on ‘how’ we are delivering rather than ‘what’ we are delivering? And do we know ‘why’ we are delivering it? “People are our most important asset and bringing them along on the asset management journey is not an option, it’s essential.” The phrase ‘culture eats strategy for breakfast’ talks to the fact that if you aren’t identifying the … Continue reading →

5 Steps to Developing Critical Asset Strategy with ISO 55000 

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At the Mainstream Conference in 2017, Andrew Schweitzer, Cold Reduction Maintenance Strategist from BlueScope, spoke about how the company broke down the requirements of ISO 55000 to identify and develop a strategy for managing their critical equipment. Here are some of the takeaways from their journey to critical asset management strategy with ISO 55000.  Note: You can also listen to the full audio of this presentation, linked with slides here.  What Drove the Need for Implementing The ISO 55000 Standard at Bluescope? BlueScope is a large steel solutions, manufacturing and distribution company employing 9,000 employees across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific.  During the global financial crisis in 2009 the company felt the pain of cutbacks, tight margins and export losses. They saw a transition to reactive maintenance and they were putting a lot of effort into activities that didn’t add value to the business. They were dealing with bottlenecks in processes, specifically following a move to SAP and with it, the transfer of uncleansed master data from a legacy system.  There was a need to implement a plan that would allow for better decision-making, risk mitigation, a better understanding of assets and critical management strategies – overall improved efficiency and effectiveness. This is when they decided to take a close look at ISO 55000 as a guide to improving the management of their assets.  The Four Fundamentals Bluescope chose four fundamentals from ISO 55000 that were most important to the company, and focused on those aspects as the cornerstones for driving improvement. These were:   Maximising the value the asset provides Alignment of the organisational objectives with the asset decision making Leadership and workplace culture  Assurance/confidence that the assets will deliver on targets  With these goals … Continue reading →