Release Notes

Not everyone reads the Release Notes that are issue with OEM Firmware Upgrade Announcements; after this we hope you will, and if you already do, will look at them in a different light.

We took 18 months of Release Notes from an OEM supplying products (in this case relays) to the Utility Market and found some very interesting trends.

- 27% of the release notes indicated issues with metering, records and communications
- 16% of the release notes clearly stated that protection would be / was compromised - "protection may operate when it should not", "protection may not operate when it should", "protection is not available".
- 3% related to equipment rebooting unexpectedly

The impact of these issues on an organization are easily characterized by the 'iceberg' diagram, there's a whole bunch under the water line that you can't see.

The issues impact everyone from engineering to maintenance, operations to finance.  When products do not perform to specification and upgrades are required the actual upgrade costs are the smallest contributor in the cost equation.  Lost time in trouble-shooting, asset tracking, scheduling downtime, carrying more risk than necessary (until the fix can be applied), managing suppliers, inventory and implementation schedules, purging inventory, reviewing and updating data records to remove any contaminated data points (to ensure proper trending and forecasting in the future), all dwarfed by the cost (inability to deliver, income, safety, clean up, reputation, fines, etc) of downtime should a failure occur.

Release Notes are a great source of information.  Individually they have value, collectively they are invaluable.

As with Service Bulletins, applying RCEM philosophies and ensuring all organizational functions interact for the overall effectiveness of the system is paramount.

This study was specific to the Utility Market however SKUs from the the same family of products are used in Oil & Gas, Mining and Heavy Industrial Applications.

www.RCEM.ca

value in categorizing Service Bulletins

We reviewed 10 (random) OEM Service Bulletins for products deployed in the Utility Market and applied the RCEM philosophy to categorize the Bulletins wrt what departments needed to either 'be aware' of the information contained, or 'take action' based on the details of the bulletins.

It was interesting to note the 'distribution list' of functions / departments that would not only benefit from the information but really required the data in order to perform their duties effectively.

In reality the distribution list for many organizations does not look similar.  For many companies Service Bulletins enter the organization via Engineering or Asset Management, are filed or added to a data repository (in many cases with restricted access) and are only actively shared when categorized as a 'high' risk; with the definition of 'high' varying. 

This study was specific to the Utility Market however SKUs from the the same family of products are used in Oil & Gas, Mining and Heavy Industrial Applications. 

www.rcem.ca

Service Bulletins and RCEM

Taking a look at a series of Service Bulletins from a Utility Product OEM (relays) we found that the bulletins referenced:

- relay will reboot

- potential for misoperation

- false trip

- power supply failure

- inability to communicate

The Utility we studied had a point of contact for the Supplier and that position received all Service Bulletins.  The bulletins were filled with Asset Management and were not making their way throughout the rest of the organization.  Operations were replacing product with like product (had the same issue), service was trouble shooting when in fact the issue was already known (though not communicated to them), control centers were noting issues and allocating resources for issues that were again known but not communicated, risk mitigation strategies were not complete as the Risk Management Team were not in the loop on issues.

One of the main benefits of RCEM is understanding the interaction points among departments to ensure optimal system performance.

This study was specific to the Utility Market however SKUs from the the same family of products are used in Oil & Gas, Mining and Heavy Industrial Applications.

www.RCEM.ca

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