Maintworld 4/2018

ASSET MANAGEMENT
THE MAINTENANCE
IMPERATIVE
The Importance of Physical
Asset Management
In today’s operating and production environments, systems and equipment must routinely
perform at levels that were not possible a decade ago and which were unthinkable
thirty years ago. Requirements for increased availability, throughput, product
quality, agility, and operating effectiveness within a rapidly-changing demand environment
continue to elevate the tempo and intensity of operations.
TRACY T. STRAWN,
CMRP, President, Energy
Services at Marshall
Institute
tstrawn@
marshallinstitute.com
AS ORGANIZATIONS are pressured to
reduce costs to remain competitive, they
must produce the same or improved
results with fewer people and, often,
with diminished resources. Increasingly
restrictive regulatory constraints are
contributing to reduced operating flexibility,
and operating margins. In addition,
the need to reduce capital employed
is leading to lower levels of stocked spare
parts, diminished redundancy and again,
operating flexibility. In a world of foreign
manufactured, mass marketed, unitized
18 maintworld 4/2018
constructed, machine assembled, and
non-repairable disposable consumer
products, where no one under the age of
fifty has ever seen the inside of an alarm
clock, or a toaster, or the engine compartment
of a 57 Ford, and the concept of
craftsmanship is mostly unheard of, it is
increasingly difficult to find competently
skilled workers.
The necessity to maintain—and often
increase—operational effectiveness, revenue,
and customer satisfaction, while simultaneously
reducing capital, operating,
and support costs is the largest challenge
facing operating and production enterprises.
Success demands radical change
from earlier culture, process, management,
and organizational concepts.
Furthermore, organizations must attain
unprecedented levels of equipment availability,
reliability, and maintainability.
They must manage the behaviour of a
fortune’s-worth of thundering mechanical
beasts with the strong arm of a blacksmith
and the nimble fingers of a sixteenyear-old
computer geek. “Old time mechanics’
skills” must be smoothly blended
with “gigabit & teraflop” information systems,
under the direction of MBA class
management skills, to effectively mitigate
mission-threatening anomalies.
Traditionally, equipment maintenance
and reliability have been viewed
as business costs, largely below the radar
of senior corporate and financial executives.
Today’s climate of heavy profitability
pressures have caused operating,
process, and manufacturing enterprises
to reduce costs through measures such
as workforce reductions, deferment of
“non-essential” work, and outsourcing
some services. All these things might gain