Building a successful and sustained asset management program
Part 1 – setting up the framework
By: James Reyes-Picknell & Uri Wittenberg. Many companies struggle with improvement efforts of all sorts. The ISO standards on Asset Management have sparked a great deal of interest that goes beyond just the maintenance and engineering communities.
CFOs understand the potential benefits of good asset care and good life cycle asset decisions – they want the financial performance, improved revenues from dependable production capacity, reductions in CAPEX and OPEX from higher reliability, increased standardization and design for maintainability as well as operability.
Risk managers have long struggled to deploy good risk management thinking into asset decisions for better risk management throughout the “life” of the company’s physical assets. The tools have existed, but were seldom used. They see the potential benefit from early identification of risks so that they can be managed, mitigated and contingency plans can be put into place. COOs have long appreciated the benefits of reliable assets that do what’s expected of them, dependably and are quickly returned to service in the event of failures. They often lament that their assets are not reliable, not available when needed and that maintainers can rarely return assets to service in a timely manner.
Good Asset Management across all the technical disciplines and those who support or are supported by them (e.g.: human resources, risk management, finance, training, materials management, procurement and operations) is the answer.
Today we have a standard that describes what good asset management is.
Companies are still studying it to learn what it might mean to their businesses and what it takes to implement. They want to know if there is a sound business case for it. Given the potential of Asset Management to touch on and impact a broad range of business functions, answering those questions and then implementing it may be challenging tasks.
Our experience, and that of others, in implementing large scale changes across a variety of industries, cultures and geographies has taught many lessons – what to do and what not to do. We’ve invested the time to gather that collective knowledge and use it to create a Framework for Asset Management (indeed any large scale change) that will lead to successful implementation, leaving no stone unturned and nothing to chance.
The Conscious Asset Framework™ is being presented to you in this series of articles. We hope you find it insightful and useful as you step through the Framework with us. If you have questions or want help in getting started, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
In this first article we describe what it takes to ensure sustained success with your initiatives. It doesn’t matter if it is a small project or a major corporate transformation across multiple sites and continents. The ingredients of success are the same – that is the Framework.
Subsequent articles will describe how to put it to work.
Part 1: Putting Up the Framework
A Practical Asset Management Framework That Works
Thoughtful managers and executives know that there are no quick or easy answers when business gets tough. They also know that the quality of their employees’ ideas and authenticity of their actions can shape the future. Successful leaders focus on results and leverage their employees’ ideas using thoughtful and systematic methods.
Asset Management leaders must build a highly motivated, highly productive workforce, capable of taking the Asset Management organization to increasingly higher and more demanding levels of performance! Today’s Asset Management and Maintenance Management organizations are facing common challenges in order to meet new and demanding standards. They need more flexible and fluid management systems based on collaborative team relationships that utilize scarce resources efficiently and effectively. Performance, costs and risks must be managed together. Managing team performance to deliver superior results today and sustainably into the future, is one of the biggest challenges we face and today’s standards are demanding more than ever before.
The Asset Management organization needs to embark on a new path. Resolve will be sustained if you can deliver visible results continually to all your stakeholders. This requires the buy-in and participation of the entire organization, understanding the big picture, while starting with smaller steps focused on the low hanging fruits and gradually expanding. Your corporate Asset Management business improvement initiative will, if implemented thoughtfully, assure sustainable success well into the future. It requires a thoroughly planned and executed Asset Management Framework.
The Conscious Asset Framework™ is built on the foundation of three key and vital elements, which work in collaboration to guarantee Sustainable Success namely, Technical, Change Management and Governance (see Figure 1), all three working in permanent synergy. Technical – denotes religiously following the set standards anchored in the initiative charter and using it as a guiding light; secondly, Change Management – consistently and thoroughly considering the criticality of buy-in and conduct in support of anticipated outcomes; and thirdly, Governance – performing continuing audits and lessons learned sessions, verifying the on-going performance governance of all elements of the program. Project management addresses the technical, change management addresses the people and governance ensures sustainability.
Should you miss any of the three elements or parts of them in this foundation, then you are lowering your chances of success. If the three elements don’t work together, then you have a weak foundation and are putting your initiative at risk.
Our Conscious Asset Framework™ builds on those foundation elements, acknowledges and begins with the premise that organizations will already have reached various stages of success and results. Each Asset Management organization is made of players with varied backgrounds and knowledge levels, aspects which must play a key role in the customization and assembly of a unique and tailored company Asset Management framework which is implementable and sustainable.
The Conscious Asset Framework™ consists of four different stages. Our first stage analyzes the readiness of the organization to take on a significant change. The second reviews the status quo to gain a better understanding of the company’s expectations of the initiative’s outcome and expected deliverables. In addition, we will provide the necessary education and training basics required for the initiative. In the third stage, we work with you to assemble the blueprint plan for moving forward. In the fourth stage we execute using all the required key performance measurements, accountability, vital checks and balances leading to a successful deployment.
Next week, we will describe the top level steps we follow in implementing the Framework. Subsequent articles will describe the details within those steps.
Get the whole story,
No Surprises! The Conscious Capital Asset Framework
If we are to be good at Asset Management we need to understand what it is and what it is not, begin to think of our business more holistically, consider our role as contributing to a greater whole and start behaving differently. Once we’ve achieved that, Asset Management should be sustained – it never stops. Putting it in place is not just a project with a beginning and end although it may start that way. It is really about putting in place a new corporate culture and continually improving it. This book speaks to those changes and how to go about doing it.
~$12 via Amazon
Leave a Reply