By: Bernd Prüssing, Director Business Line Networks

To efficiently manage operations and business processes, a utility must have a shared understanding of its asset base across the entire organization. This goes beyond simply knowing what types of assets you have. Utilities must also understand the attributes of each asset and the relationships between them and services running over it.

Who benefits from digital asset inventory?

• Finance departments require an up-to-date asset inventory to produce accurate financial statements.
• Planning and Operations departments must understand the utilization, age, condition, and location of each asset for change planning, preventive maintenance and efficient workforce deployments.
• IT departments need to understand the current revision level of all deployed software to know which software must be replaced.
• Cybersecurity practitioners must understand operational aspects of assets to know when to apply patches to devices.
• Project managers must have a thorough asset inventory that defines the staff, resources, and budget needed to execute these business-critical tasks. A unified asset inventory will also help managers understand which assets are deployed to individual customers to avoid service interruptions and downtime.

Four steps to building a reliable asset database

The first step in building a reliable asset database is to clearly define which assets will be included in the register. Once the scope is defined, stakeholders must be identified – who are the owners or custodians of the assets and services that will go into your database?

Next, collect relevant information about the assets and services that are in scope. There are likely attributes of an asset that are available but don’t play a role in helping you achieve efficient operations. This winnowing of attributes is likely to be a challenge, but it is key to gathering the right information before planning how you will organize it.

Likewise, determine every possible relationship between assets and services – how the performance of one asset will affect others, for example. Often, these relationships have already been addressed in “n-1” test plans, which can be a valuable input into definition of the asset database. Relationships will help explain what attributes are necessary to capture for each asset, while attributes will give insight into which relationships among assets and assets and services should be considered.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the asset database must be continuously updated to remain in synchronization with the physical environment and logical resources that it represents. Planning network migrations, for example, is a recipe for disaster without a current asset register. Planning downtimes for maintenance can also lead to unforeseen complications if the planners do not have an accurate view of current assets, services, and interdependencies.

Database synchronization with a digital twin

An asset database must be considered a living document. For successful asset database synchronization, careful planning during the design of the asset database is required. The ideal asset management technology will have the ability to reflect infrastructure changes in its database as soon as they are made. Change control methodologies must include scheduled reconciliation, as well as immediate update of configuration databases, in real-time, by interfacing with the different network management systems (NMS) or directly with the elements. For passive equipment like racks and cables, workflow driven change processes can help to make sure that the databases get updated properly. Timing is critical since many faults in an infrastructure occur immediately after deployment of new or updated technology. The asset database can aid in diagnosing new faults, but only if it accurately represents the current state of the deployed infrastructure.

The ultimate expression of a synchronized database is a digital twin – a virtual representation of the currently deployed infrastructure. Digital twins are implemented by the asset management system and can model any infrastructure if the asset database has the flexibility to model a broad range of physical and logical resources including different technologies. Digital twins rely upon a “closed-loop” approach to asset data management – upgrades can be planned in advanced and installed and configured in the network. Any deviation from the original plan will be recognized when equipment is installed in the network. Also, any other changes to the physical infrastructure are immediately reflected by the implemented synchronization mechanism, and planned changes are executed in the network based upon the applied planning and implementation processes. The closed loop planning approach for digital twins can yield a digital twin where upgrades, new deployments, or outages can be simulated, and the outcomes discovered before any changes occur in the real network. Based upon the results of those simulations, design and planning can be tweaked to yield better outcomes.

Solutions to common challenges

One of the main challenges a utility has is an unsuccessful deployment of new technology in the field, even when that technology had been tested several times prior. This is not surprising as “the field” – the physical world – has millions more entities, relationships, and attributes than anyone could possibly model. A digital twin, however, can greatly reduce the chance for errors and identify problems in the design or rollout plans for new technology before they are executed. Finding problems during design is always less expensive and disruptive than finding those same problems after deployment.

A unified asset register also enables more efficient operational processes by eliminating the manual steps that are required to link the outputs of multiple asset inventory systems or departmental asset registers stored in Excel workbooks. This benefit is highlighted when planning telecommunications outages that may affect utility operations such as loss of telecommunications to grid management devices like relays, transformers, and voltage regulators.

The ability to relate assets to services running on those assets enables faster and more thorough planning of field activities, through the unified asset register’s ability to recognize relationships and dependencies that may be difficult to identify using a manual process to link multiple automated or manual asset registers.

Post-procedure, after outages or changes are completed, the observed results of the process can be compared with those that were forecast by the asset register, as a feedback loop. Any discrepancies between the forecast and the reality may indicate an opportunity to optimize the relationships and attributes that are recorded in the asset register.

Smart integrations

Beyond reconciliation of data from the physical network, another major benefit of a digital asset register is its ability to share accurate and granular information with other OSS and BSS systems used for day-to-day utility operation. During a shortage of skilled staff, planning maintenance and recovery operations in the asset management system enables an accurate forecast of needs to workforce management applications. In this scenario, the asset register can mitigate the risk of realizing additional staffing needs at the last minute and allow managers to fill positions proactively.

Integrating the asset register with operational systems can also help during times of supply chain restrictions. In this scenario, the asset register can track asset health and input statuses into specific operational systems to enable long-range planning of asset procurement and mitigate last-minute requirements for equipment that may not be available.

Additionally, asset registers can be integrated into other systems such as:

• Financial systems, which track book value and accumulated depreciation of assets
• Ticketing systems to handle incidences
• Data enrichment of alarms with additional information like addresses, cable numbers or affected customers
• IT management software, which is used to track revision levels of all in-house software for update planning and compliance reporting
• Patch management systems, which must understand how systems will be affected by each vendor-issued patch
• Customer relationship systems, which need current asset information for contact centers and other support systems to provide accurate responses to customer inquiries

Overall, anywhere that current asset information and relationships can improve operations, an interface to the asset register should be considered.

About the Author

Bernd Pruessing, Director, Business Line Networks at FNT Software, has 25 years of experience in the telecommunications industry and over 12 years of experience in resource management, planning, and SDN and NFV orchestration. With a strong technical background, Bernd drives new ideas to valuable products and solutions and brings them to customers and partners.