Summary
Assuring the C-suite that production forecasts will be met, that preventive maintenance work is scheduled at the least disruptive/most economically beneficial time, and that plant performance is continuously improving is a daunting task. 
Lloyd’s Register (LR), the company that has been helping industry address risk for over 250 years, has a digital and software division that provides such assurance with a high level of confidence with its AllAssets APM platform. LR AllAssets is a secure SaaS-based Asset Performance Management (APM) platform based on the company’s extensive engineering expertise and proven methodologies to reduce risk and optimize business operations. According to the company, LR AllAssets delivers a consistent interpretation of production risk exposure across the enterprise and visualizes it in role-based dashboards. In addition, LR AllAssets offers the connectivity, ease of integration, and security expected of SaaS and IIoT-capable solutions.
Lloyd’s Register recently briefed ARC regarding its LR AllAssets APM platform. Key findings include:
- Digital knowledge involves encoding human subject matter expertise and data from across silos, digitizing the insight, and driving it into relevant decision flows. LR has driven its extensive engineering experience into LR AllAssets to enable the value within the data to be revealed and help ensure benefits are achieved in a timely and continuous manner.
- LR AllAssets offers the industry- and application-specific templates end users seek to facilitate integration.
- ARC research indicates that cybersecurity is a frequently cited inhibitor of SaaS and IIoT adoption. According to the company, the LR AllAssets APM platform is built and tested using cybersecurity best practices.
Heavy process industries such, as oil & gas and chemicals, operate 24/7/365 and are asset intensive. Any unplanned 
interruption to production can result in off-spec product that must be re-processed or scrapped. Either option represents lost revenue and potentially creates safety and environmental consequences. Sound APM strategies can help enterprises protect returns from capital asset investments while keeping operations safe.
The forward progress of an organization that is always looking backward for insight is fraught with risk. In an IIoT world, decisions based on static data that may no longer be relevant create uncertainty. While analysis of historical data is useful in examining behavior over time, it is of limited value in forecasting future performance with any degree of assurance. Analysis of accurate real-time asset data delivers awareness of current plant performance for proactive decision-making in the context of operational risk. In addition, LR AllAssets allows simulation of various operating scenarios for a better understanding of risk exposure levels.
AllAssets APM Platform Replaces Uncertainty with Assurance
In the manufacturing industries, the ability to identify the risk of business interruption is critical. According to the company, LR AllAssets digitally delivers its 250 years of engineering expertise to provide a single version of truth of production and safety risk exposure regardless of enterprise size. Proven Mechanical Integrity/Risk-based Inspection (RBI) and other tools including RCM, FMEA, FMECA optimize maintenance and clearly identify the risk of failure from the smallest component to multi-site enterprise systems. Role-based dashboards enable RBI inspectors as well as risk management and maintenance professionals to identify the right work to be done at the right time.
LR AllAssets offers the heavy process industries a state-of-the-art platform underpinned by proven engineering methodologies, rigorous cybersecurity testing, and powered by an extensive failure data library with easy-to-use templates and risk-based algorithms to optimize business operation at acceptable risk levels. As an APM platform, LR AllAssets enables a systematic approach to capturing asset data, human knowledge, and best practices all in single place and synthesizes it with LR’s algorithms for analysis, decision-making, and reporting. The SaaS deployment model offers rapid time to value at lower cost and provides scalability and connectivity at all plant levels to improve efficiency and effectiveness.
Lloyd’s Register has been on a digital transformation of its own, capturing and digitizing its vast collective knowledge of industrial operations, risk, and performance. The LR AllAssets Data Library incorporates LR’s ongoing digitization of decades of asset failure data, risk avoidance recommendations, and industrial operations best practices with updates to the AADL in every software release. LR AllAssets offers preconfigured templates including LR’s certified recommendations to speed time to insight. Like templates and operating conditions are easily identifiable using the search 
engine. The templates are designed to facilitate integration with common EAM systems for work scheduling and execution as well as the LR AllAssets analysis engine for risk evaluation and maintenance optimization.
If templates are not appropriate, LR AllAssets includes a model building tool that allows users to adapt and author their own library of risk models based on its own enterprise operating environment and context. For consistency throughout the enterprise, the model builder also enables creation and/or modification of asset hierarchies, risk matrixes, inspection templates, and reports. LR’s digital asset certification program is available to validate both user-modified and built models to verify conformance with LR requirements.
LR AllAssets was designed with cybersecurity in mind. The acquisition of Nettitude has also strengthened LR’s cyber defense capabilities enabling the company to provide a complete suite of cybersecurity assurance services to identify, protect, detect, respond to, and recover from cyber threats. As OT and IT convergence deepens, the ability to protect data from threats is essential. This is especially true in a manufacturing environment where the value of asset data can outweigh the value of the physical asset to the organization over the course of its lifecycle.
Conclusion
While risk generally has a negative connotation, it is double-edged. Uncertainties that could positively affect the enterprise are opportunities. The most valuable risk management solutions are those capable of reducing threats and amplifying opportunities. For example, it may seem counter-intuitive that slowing machine speed could increase yield, yet real-time analytics proved that decreasing machine speed by 30 percent could yield a 100 percent increase in output. A high level of assurance of either is priceless.
End users across several industries continue to stretch the envelope of useful asset life, which not only affects uptime, but also jeopardizes worker safety. Yet there is ever increasing need to extend asset life. A sound asset performance management strategy can help achieve better asset utilization by safely extending asset life at the lowest cost.
ARC research indicates that owner-operators are placing increased emphasis on ROI and ROA to reduce both risk and costs. When it comes to convincing management of the value of managing assets, nothing works better than demonstrated returns. Lloyd’s Register has been providing engineering and technology expertise with assurance for over 250 years.
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Keywords: Asset Performance Management (APM), Assurance, Cybersecurity, IIoT, Risk Assurance, SaaS, ARC Advisory Group.