INCOSE International Conference
Last week on the 19th July our Sensei, Jim Kennedy, attended the International Systems Engineering conference in Adelaide to participate in a ninety minute panel session. The session, entitled ‘Systems Engineering and Asset Management, Two Sides of the Same Coin’, explored the common ground between Asset Management and Systems Engineering. The four panel members each gave a ten minute opening warm up then faced the enquiring minds of the systems engineering audience.
Jim’s talk focussed on the role of system engineering as core technical discipline for asset management. The adoption of systems engineering in the published 1993 asset management model, later adopted by the AM Council, emphasises how long ago a systems approach had first been applied to the evolving approach to asset management. Case studies from the successful Sydney Airport link and the application of the asset management model to achieve long term organisational change were presented.
The questions from the floor provided some insight into the interest in asset management as a key stakeholder in the systems engineering discipline. In particular the value of ISO/IEC 15288:2015 Systems engineering – Systems lifecycle processes, was emphasised along with its relationship to key AM Council models in particular, the recently published IEC 62775TS Technical and Financial Process in Asset Management. Hopefully the opening of new doors for system engineers will result in closer collaborative relations between the two disciplines to the benefit of both.
Adelaide Chapter Evening Session
Since Jim was in town it seemed a good idea to have a local chapter session and leverage off the INCOSE theme. This event titled ‘Leading Edge of Asset Management’ top and tailed Jim’s presentation with two excellent sessions on asset modelling work being conducted by students and staff at University of Adelaide. These sessions presented by Seyed Ashkan Zarghami (PhD Student) and Indra Gunawan (Faculty) demonstrated the value of maths based quantitative modelling and supported Jim’s theme of ‘Achieving the Defensible Budget’ as the key leading edge capability for all asset management focussed organisations.
The session focussed on the concept of a defensible budget developed during work done by Jim for the Maritime Division in the former Defence Materiel Organisation. The approach assures that budgetary requests can be defended from arbitrary change unless there is a commensurate rebalancing of performance and risk as required by ISO 55000.