Maintenance and asset management

As a maintenance manager, it can be hard to “sell” your activities in the management team. Take inspections for example, which may seem to have little purpose to outsiders. But what would be the likelihood and impact of a technical failure if the inspection would not be carried out? How does your organization decide what inspections have to be performed, and what inspections may be unnecessary?

An asset management system creates a link between the organizational objectives and the (maintenance) activities that you perform. All activities have to contribute to the realization of these objectives. This could be a direct contribution or an indirect contribution.

You directly influence the value of an asset by performing maintenance. This value could be financial, but it could also take other forms. Examples:

By performing maintenance at a time that suits “operations”, for example during the night, you directly influence the (operational) availability.
You can influence the organization’s image (when the image is important to that organization) by keeping an asset that is visible to the public clean or well coated.
For both examples, the effort you have to make has to be proportionate to the increased value (in this case availability and image).

By reducing risks, you indirectly influence the organizational objectives. An objective on the area of, for example, safety or availability, would enable you to check if the inspection as mentioned in the introduction is beneficial for your organization.

Also in this case, the effort you have to make has to be proportionate to the risk reduction. It can be wise to consider multiple measures. These may be taken in other departments of your organization.

Life cycle management

Changes in the environment could give rise to change the way of maintenance. Examples of this are:

• Changed production volume, now and in the future;
• Innovations of assets (more efficient, cheaper, etc. Systems);
• Innovations of analysis techniques;
• Changed regulations, now and in the future;
• Changed labour costs;
• Other customer expectations;
• Etc.

A good asset management system helps adequately anticipating these changes. This allows you to perform the best possible maintenance for your organization.