SKF Reliability Systems - Library

What Is Asset Management and What Are
The Most Critical Elements
Mark Brunner Onesteel Rod Bar and Wire (Australia)
Asset Management is defined by the Asset Management Council of Australia as being, “The life cycle
management of physical assets to achieve the stated outputs of the enterprise”. (2009) The British Standards
Institution through a Publicly Avaliable Standard PAS 55-1:2004 define Asset Management as “the systematic
and coordinated activities and practices through which an organisation optimally manages its assets and
associated performance, risks and expenditures over their lifecycle for the purpose of achieving its organisational
strategic plan”. These definitions convey similar thoughts and are debateable but they fundamentally make
sense. Businesses and agencies invest in physical assets to deliver an output, so they can make a profit or
provide a service. Following from this it could be assumed that actions need to be taken to ensure the assets
continue to deliver an acceptable output over their usable life. These actions may need to include more than
just maintaining plant and should also address:
• The selection of equipment
• The design of equipment for operability, reliability and maintainability
• The operating parameters of the plant so it can meet expectations by mitigating loses such as, changeover
delays, plant maintenance, unplanned maintenance, rate loss, rework and scrap.
A system must then be in place to investigate & solve the root cause of any unplanned losses (van Dullemen,
2009).
Asset management can be considered a collation of all of the elements above, but until recently most people
in industry called this “Plant Maintenance”, so at some stage in time the term has evolved to be “Asset
Management”. It didn’t happen overnight and some still call it Plant maintenance, but what is the significance
of this change in terminology? It really is open to interpretation of individuals but I believe it indicates and
evolutionary change in the way businesses views maintenance, and the acknowledgement that the maintenance
groups do not solely own asset performance. As a trainee Engineer in the early 80’s I learnt that the only key
maintenance metric that was of any concern to management was costs. In relation to other plant maintenance
KPI’s:
• Equipment reliability was not well understood.
• Requests for work were managed manually by recording requests in log book.
• Planned maintenance systems were managed via a paper system and it was inherently difficult to
monitor compliance.
• Follow up work requests built up from inspections were sent to leading hand tradesmen who
consequently filed them.
With the focus only on costs, the performance of the maintenance department was based on perceptions.
It was very easy for production departments to blame maintenance for production losses and Maintenance
clearly knew that all breakdowns and losses were caused by production. This was known as the “they break it
we fix it” syndrome, and unfortunately this perception still exists within many industries. If we wanted to be a
little smarter back then we would have worked together to improve our Assets performance, but in reality few
knew any better. Move back to the present and there is a growing realisation that Asset management is not just
completing inspections, fixing breakdowns and managing shutdowns. It must include all elements that help
meet the “assets to achieve the stated outputs of the enterprise”(2009). These elements can be categorised
under a few broad headings including:
1. The organisation and leadership
2. Plant capability and criticality
3. Operational and Maintenance practices and behaviours
4. Support services.
Assuming we have accepted the definition of the Asset Management Council, the next question would be;
what are the most critical elements of any Asset Management System? It would be fair to say that individual
businesses or indeed units within a business will be at different points in their Asset management journey and
what is considered as “Critical” will be different in every case. If you had a brainstorming session on what are
the important aspects of asset management in your business you are likely to get dozens of suggestions many
with common themes. Below, is a list of asset management elements that has been sorted into the categories
mentioned above.