Asset management is hot! In the past few years, developments in the field of asset management have been stunning. The path toward ISO 55000 has triggered a lot of initiatives and a fresh understanding in our field. Although the application of asset management might vary globally, the main goals of the standard are the same. When talking about asset management and the ISO 55000 standards, people emphasize the risk management part of the standard but, in my opinion, there is a lot more to it.
One of the most important targets for the standard is to connect different parts of an asset management organization. In an asset-intensive environment, asset management should be one of most important topics throughout the whole organization along with operational excellence. These two go together like a nut and a bolt. Everyone in the organization is involved in contributing to an efficient use of the assets. Asset management connects people in organizations both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal means operations need to start talking to maintenance and engineering, and both need to communicate to IT, human resources, etc. In essence, every function in the organization has some involvement in managing the assets, though some departments have more involvement than others. These same connections also need to be drilled down vertically. Management sets the policies with the owners and department heads. The asset management strategy is defined based on the policy and in cooperation with the shop floor processes where jobs are designed and implemented based on the strategy. Together, this sets your organizational design.
Designing your organization is often thought of as a nice theoretical exercise written down in a high-quality handbook, but the devil is in the details. A prime example of this is the role of IT. Most people believe IT is not an easy topic. In many companies, we see people struggling with the systems they need or want to use. Complaints we often hear from the users are:
- “System is not implemented well.”
- “We were not involved in the implementation.”
- “System is too complicated.”
- “Systems are not linked.”
Asset management can help set up a solid IT landscape to support your asset management organization, and technological advancements have made it easier to integrate systems. Several asset analysis/information tools can be integrated into your computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) or enterprise asset management (EAM) system, making it possible to have vertical and horizontal integration at a plant level in your availability status and reliability of your assets. It also increases process safety when work permit systems are integrated into process systems or enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Having an integrated asset management organizational design is essential to help set up those interfaces.
Systems can also integrate vertically with the option to incorporate the actual shop floor (plant automation) into your operations management and ERP environments. There are several standards available for this task with ISA 95 noted as one of the best known standards.
Applying ISO 55000 and asset management into your IT system not only makes your asset organization run more smoothly, but will also increase reliability and availability, reduce costs and increase safety.
The good news is it will only get better! New developments like condition-based monitoring capabilities and Internet of Things make our options in the future almost limitless.
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