Читать книгу Maintaining Mission Critical Systems in a 24/7 Environment - Peter M. Curtis - Страница 27

The past decade has seen wrenching change for many organizations. As firms and institutions have looked for ways to survive and remain profitable, a simple but powerful change strategy called “benchmarking” has become popular. The underlying rationale for the benchmarking process is that learning by example and from best‐practice cases is the most effective means of understanding the principles and the specifics of effective practices. Recovery and redundancy together cannot provide sufficient resiliency if they can be disrupted by a single unpredictable event. A mission critical data center must be able to endure hazards of nature, such as earthquakes, tornados, floods, and other natural disasters, as well as human‐made events. Great care should be taken to ensure critical functions that will minimize downtime. Standards should be established with guidelines and mandatory requirements for continuity of business applications. Procedures should be developed for the systematic sharing of safety ‐ and performance‐related material, best practices, and standards.

The key is to benchmark the facility on a routine basis with the goal of identifying performance deviations from the original design specifications. Done properly, this will provide an early warning mechanism to allow potential failure to be addressed and corrected before it occurs. Once deficiencies are identified, and before any corrective action can be taken, a Method of Operation (MOP) must be written. The MOP will clearly stipulate step‐by‐step procedures and conditions, including who is to be present, the documentation required, phasing of work, and the state in which the system is to be placed after the work is completed. The MOP will greatly minimize errors and potential system downtime by identifying the responsibility of vendors, contractors, the owner, the testing entity, and anyone else involved. In addition, a program of ongoing operational staff training, and procedures is important to deal with emergencies outside of the regular maintenance program.

The most important aspect of benchmarking is that it is a process driven by the participants whose goal is to improve their organization. It is a process through which participants learn about successful practices in other organizations and then draw on those cases to develop solutions most suitable for their own organizations. True process benchmarking identifies the “how’s” and “whys” for performance gaps and helps organizations learn and understand how to perform with higher standards of practice. Keep in mind that you can’t improve if you don’t measure and benchmark.