As organizations grow, so will the need for standardization and process improvement. Without these elements, the culture of "fighting fires" will continue to be the norm for maintenance departments. Standardized asset management programs such as those outlined by the International Standards Organization (ISO), establish benchmarks for asset quality control leading to fewer down times, longer asset life, and lower energy consumption. There is now a new ISO standard for managing assets that may soon be implemented by your organization.
The latest ISO certification for asset management, ISO 55000:2014, outlines the "why" and "what" regarding why asset management is important and what the requirements are for an effective asset management program. These requirements circle around the asset life cycle. Here is a good paper about the meaning of "asset life cycle" authored by John Woodhouse, founder of the UK Institute of Asset Management.
Here is a run down of the four stages of the asset life cycle:
Stage 1: Asset Procurement
This stage is all about defining a problem an asset is required to solve, researching viable asset solutions, and determining which solution will add the most value over its expected life.
Stage 2: Utilization/Deployment
How an asset us used will directly affect it's value added to an organization. At this point, locating inefficiencies in utilization and correcting them is essential.
Stage 3: Maintenance/Risk Management
Your department is responsible for this stage. Maintaining an asset for optimum utilization is important, but what is more important, and often lacking, is proactive risk management, in other words effective preventive and predictive maintenance.
Stage 4: Disposal/Replacement
Retiring an asset at the end of its life cycle is important to raising the capital needed buy its replacement. Accurately determining the value of assets through depreciation, and selling them at book value, or higher, is the goal.
How an organization manages their assets life cycles will fall on software systems like Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) or Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems which are capable of capturing maintenance and asset histories. These software applications provide the data to know where your assets fall in their life cycles, how efficient they are performing, their cost of operation relative their value added to the operation, and when their opportune times are for replacement.
One thing is clear, organizations want to tie financial and performance metrics to their assets. This means more standardization and quality control across organizations, including notoriously unregulated maintenance departments. CMMS software and EAM software will be key to managing the value of the assets you maintain as your department faces increasing standardization and regulation.
Looking to standardize your asset management? Que Centre will help.
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