Putting the horse before the cart: Events drive maintenance

The raw data which SCADA generates describes what is happening in a critical, rear time environment. This raw data assists operations to monitor and control these real time processes. Traditionally, this data has been kept within the domain of operations. But the modern utility views this as The Data, the heart beat of its business vital to making informed operational and business decisions. Maintenance, a critical support process to operations, is positioned to benefit greatly from access to this data about the process. Trends created from historical process data describing equipment performance over time married with our recently found understanding of behavior patterns of various types of equipment provide us with the fundamental knowledge we need to define the measurements and tolerances acceptable to reliable operations. In near-real-time, the events monitored by SCADA can trigger maintenance activities in advance of noticeable deterioration or outages. With this approach, maintenance can shift from the traditional run-fail-fix organization to a modern proactive entity with a focus on maintenance and planning and scheduling activities aimed at keeping a utility's operations' environment reliable. With events leading the way, maintenance can then become the source of operational reliability.