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Introduction to Anomaly Risk Assessment and Integration

APM can be configured to integrate with an external Anomaly Assessment and Tracking (AA&T) system. With the help of AWEIS and other middleware, anomaly events are sent to the AA&T system, which then becomes the master system for the anomaly events. Information, including event statuses, is sent to the anomaly event in APM to keep the two systems synchronized.

When the integration has been set up, you can perform risk assessment when acknowledging indicator alarms or creating requests for work. The resulting criticality is added to the new anomaly event and used to determine if the anomaly is actionable. Actionable events are sent to the AA&T system for the creation of notifications, which are then sent on to the CMMS (SAP) to generate maintenance orders.

This topic includes:

•	Alarm Acknowledgment Process with Risk Assessment

•	Request for Work Process with Risk Assessment

•	More About Risk Assessment

Tip: To view tables of anomaly events, in the Site or Asset window, select the Work Management view and the Anomaly Events tab.

Note: Support for anomaly assessment is generally available. However, you must first enable feature 108 to use the functionality in APM. In the Enterprise window, select the Features view and the Enabled Features tab. Click Browse, select “Anomaly risk assessment” and click OK. If APM is running as a smart client, click Refresh Enabled Features on the server. Then restart the client to use the functionality.

Alarm Acknowledgment Process with Risk Assessment

Anomaly events are created in APM when users acknowledge indicator alarms and assess the risk associated with the anomaly (alarm). The risk assessment step occurs as part of the acknowledgment process and must be completed before the acknowledgment can be processed in APM.

The alarm acknowledgment and risk assessment process consists of these steps:

1.	An indicator reading is processed with an alarm. This places the indicator and its reading in a state of alarm.

2.	The alarm is acknowledged, and the user selects an acknowledgment method. If the method is “Request for work”, the user provides the information required to complete the request.

Note: Depending on settings in the anomaly risk assessment profile assigned to the site, some acknowledgment methods might not require risk assessment. For example, “Fixed during inspection” might not warrant a request for work, in which case, the Risk Assessment tab does not appear in the Acknowledge Indicator Alarm dialog.

3.	The user assesses the risk based on consequence severities and probability of failure. Once the risk has been analyzed, the user completes the acknowledgment, which can also include scheduling a follow-up reading or adding a new or existing failure record, for example.

4.	If the assessment result specifies it, a request for work and anomaly event are created when the acknowledgment is processed. The anomaly event is used to track information in the AA&T system and APM.

Note: Risk assessment result settings determine if an anomaly event is created for each of the acknowledgment methods. This means that an event can be created for a non-actionable result, for example, “Incorrect reading”.

5.	The anomaly event is published. It is processed by the middleware and sent to the AA&T system. The request for work is held in APM; the anomaly event represents the request in its interaction with the CMMS.

6.

The AA&T system creates the anomaly and notification (for example, if the CMMS is SAP Plant Maintenance), sends the notification to the CMMS (SAP), and sends messages to APM to update the anomaly event and request for work. The AA&T system continues to track the anomaly and communicate changes to APM.

This diagram shows the acknowledgment and risk assessment process in APM.

This diagram shows the integration components.

Request for Work Process with Risk Assessment

You can perform risk assessments when creating requests for work (without acknowledging an alarm). When activated, the functionality is available whether you are creating the request from scratch or adding follow-up work to an indicator reading, checksheet, failure record, inspection report, maintenance action plan, reliability program review, or safety override incident.

The work type site settings determine if risk assessment is required on requests for work. Your organization decides the circumstances that require risk assessment. For example, work type site settings might specify that only Inspection and Corrective tasks be assessed. For related information, see Setting up Site-Specific Work Types.

Risk assessment is performed either after the request for work’s approval process or, if the formal approval process is not in use, before the submission to AWEIS process.

The risk assessment process consists of the following steps:

1.	The request for work is created.

2.	Once the request has been approved (if required), risk assessment is performed.

3.	If the assessment result specifies it, an anomaly event is created and the request’s interop status changes to “Held in APM”. If the result is not actionable, the request for work is canceled.

4.	The anomaly event is published. The event is processed by the middleware and sent to the AA&T system.

5.	The AA&T system creates the anomaly and notification (if the CMMS is SAP Plant Maintenance), sends the notification to the CMMS, and sends messages to APM to update the anomaly event and request for work. The AA&T system continues to track the anomaly and communicate changes to APM.

This diagram shows the risk assessment process for requests for work:

 

More About Risk Assessment

To perform risk assessment, the severity of the consequences of failure must be determined. Consequences are categorized:

•	Economic effects – Financial effect of failure on assets and production. Labor and material costs associated with lost production and with repairing or replacing the damaged equipment are economic consequences

•	Health and safety effects – Equipment failure can cause hazards in the workplace. Examples are extreme temperatures or pressure or noxious fumes

•	Environmental effects – Environmental incidents are an important category to consider when determining overall consequence. Typically, two types of environmental incidents are considered:

•	Release of liquids that may cause soil and water pollution

•	Release of gases that may cause atmospheric pollution

•	Reputation effects – Consequences to reputation measure the impact that negative media attention has on an organization’s ability to operate in good faith. Typically, the severity of bad press is evaluated in terms of how far-reaching it is and how long it takes to mitigate

Each of these consequence categories is assigned a value. The sum of the values in all categories is used in the calculation of the criticality score, along with the result of the probability of failure evaluation.

For more information, see Overview of Risk Analysis.