Distributed Information & Automation Laboratory

Working with Industry

DIAL works with leading international companies in areas ranging from RFID technology development to through-life product information management. Interaction with industry takes a variety of forms including long-term research collaborations, commissioned research, consultancy and executive education.

Strategies for Asset Information Management (SAIM)

Strategies for Asset Information Management is a 2-year IMRC (Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre) funded research project. It aims to develop and test new strategies for managing information associated with complex engineering assets. In particular, we aim to examine and demonstrate the impact of key emerging technologies such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) on the effectiveness with which these assets are managed throughout their lifecycle – particularly during the usage and retirement phases.

The key objectives can be summarised as follows:

1. To develop asset information management strategies for complex engineering systems that deploys key emerging technologies
2. To develop methods for quantifying the impact of improved information on industrial asset management
3. To demonstrate the utility of the new strategies in a showcase environment

Project timeline

November 2007 – April 2010

Researchers involved

Ajith Kumar Parlikad, Duncan McFarlane, Mohamed Zied Ouertani, Raj Srinivasan, Tarik Driouichi

Industrial partners

IBM, ExxonMobil, EA Technology, TWPL, DSTL, Marshal Aerospace, Marshal Solution, BAE Systems, SAP, BT, Delivery Management, Metronet, Eye For Solution, ENWLTD, SITA, IATA, Rail care Ltd, GSK, London Underground, National Grid

Specific activities involving DIAL researchers at Cambridge

The activities required to achieve the project aims will be carried out in three interconnected work packages:

WP 1: Asset information strategies: This work package aims to develop strategies for information management (capture, storage, and retrieval) throughout an asset’s lifecycle

WP 2: Value of information in asset management: This work package aims to identify and develop a set of tools for quantifying the impact of improved asset information management strategies

WP 3: Demonstrator: This work packages aims to develop a lab environment to facilitate testing and demonstration of research outcomes of the first two work packages

Key results

• Identified and documented approaches to design and evaluate strategies for asset information management
• Identified information requirements for asset management
• Identified a set of tools for quantifying value of information and comparison of information systems
• Developed a methodology to identify the most suitable asset information management strategy

Publications

• Ouertani, M.Z., Parlikad, A.K., McFarlane, D.C., "Towards an approach to select an asset information management strategy," International Journal of Computer Science and Applications, Volume 5, Issue 3b, pp 25-44
• Ouertani, M.Z., Parlikad, A.K., McFarlane, D.C., "Research challenges in Asset Information Management," IEEE International Conference on Research Challenges in Information Science (RCIS’08), Marrakech, June 2008
• Ouertani, M.Z., Parlikad, A.K., McFarlane, D.C., "Through-life management of asset information," International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management, PLM' 08, Seoul, July 2008
• Ouertani, M.Z., Driouchi, T., Parlikad, A.K., McFarlane, D.C., "Designing and Analysing Strategies for Asset Information Management", World Congress on Engineering Asset Management - WCEAM 2008, Beijing, Nov 2008
• Parlikad, A.K., McFarlane, D.C., "Exploring the trade-off between information completeness and accessibility in product recovery decisions," CIRP Life Cycle Engineering Seminar, Cairo, May 2009
• M. Z. Ouertani, R. Srinivasan, A. K. Parlikad, D. McFarlane, D. Ranasinghe, T. Kelepouris, T. S. Lopez, A. Thorne, M. Harrison, A. Brintrup, R. Cuthbert "Integrated Asset Maintenance: A lab-based demonstrator," CIRP Life Cycle Engineering Seminar, Cairo, May 2009
• Srinivasan, R., Parlikad, A.K., Ouertani, Z., "Towards measuring the impact of information availability on maintenance decisions and asset performance," 13th IFAC symposium on information control problems in manufacturing (INCOM), Moscow, June 2009
• Ouertani, Z., Srinivasan, V., Parlikad, A.K., Luyer, E., McFarlane, D.C., "Through-life active asset configuration management," International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management, PLM’09, Bath, July 2009

Related links

The Institute of Asset Management