Page 24 - Improving Machinery Reliability

Information Exchange. This is a vital issue. There are three basic
alternatives for information exchange. Many large corporations imple-
ment single-supplier, facility-wide information systems that include
accounting, financial, personnel, operations, and maintenance. Others
accomplish a custom integration to connect information components and
practices currently in use within the enterprise. A third alternative
employs self-integrating open systems that enable an enterprise to pick
components that are best for their specific application with assurance of
interoperabili ty.
The single-supplier structure has the advantage of defined accountabil-
ity. Disadvantages include total reliance on a single supplier and the dif-
ficulty of duplicating and maintaining levels of excellence equivalent to
specialized, applications-specific information components within a single
source system. The crucial question is whether an information system
designed primarily for one purpose can be efficiently extended to accorn-
modate the facilities and rich detail necessary to gain maximum value in
specialized areas such as condition assessment, lifetime prediction, an
condition-directed maintenance. And if not, how are these vital tasks
incorporated into the overall architecture?
Integrating information components that are in use within an enter-
prise has the advantages of familiarity and presumably adequate perfor-
mance for the tasks. Disadvantages include the hazards of institutional-
izing current practice, which may not be best practice, and the high-cost,
one-time, specialized nature of component integration. The necessity to
redo all or part of a system integration in order to gain the benefits of
advances in experience and technology is another potentially costly dis-
advantage.
3elf integration, the so called “plug-and-play” open system has numer-
ous advantages for enterprise information systems. Users can select com-
ponents that are best for their specific application with assurance of full
information exchange. System components and information can migrate
to best-practice improvements at least cost as experience and technology
increase. The personal computer model is instructive. Low-cost word
processing, ready exchange of information between applications, and the
current proliferation of CD-ROMs for multiple uses would not have
occurred without a standard platform and open information exchange
conventions.

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