If you want to turn your fixed assets from potential liabilities into essential strategic supports then look no further than the trusty Asset Management standard ISO 55000:2014.
Here’s something the C-Suite will really love to hear.
Your assets don’t have to be simply a cost centre, they can actually add ongoing value to your business.
But this is only possible when you have the digital tools and systems in place to actively track and control their impact on your bottom line.
Luckily, there’s a blueprint for managing this process and it’s called ISO 55000.
What is ISO 55000?
ISO 55000 is the internationally recognised asset management standard that sprang out of the Institute of Asset Management (IAM) PAS guidelines:
It describes everything you need in place to move from reactive, tactical asset maintenance to integrated, strategic asset management. The steps listed in the standard will help you:
- Build the operational tool kit to control assets throughout the lifecycle
- Create the reporting mechanisms to monitor asset lifecycle
- Control compliance and commercial risks associated with asset failure
- Create systems for continual asset improvement
And who wouldn’t want to achieve all that!
Do you need ISO 55000?
The problem is, as with every ISO certification, gaining the standard can be expensive, and time-consuming.
But here’s the good news. You don’t need to go through the ISO certification process to start realising the benefits of an effective asset management system.
You can use the principles of end-to-end asset management outlined in the standard to help you establish the kind of control you need.
Align your teams and open up the line of sight!
There’s one key objective of the IAM approach and ISO standards that’s worth focusing on above all others, to make you are capable of strategic asset management.
It’s the call to ‘open up the line of sight’ between your assets and everyone who has responsibility for them in your organisation.
What is the line of sight in asset management?
The concept of the ‘line of sight’ in asset management refers to the ability of an entire business to have a clear understanding of their assets' current state, performance, and future needs throughout their lifecycle.
An alignment between teams driven by access to asset data is critical for making informed decisions, planning maintenance, and budgeting for replacement.
Challenges in alignment
But too often businesses simply don’t have the processes and tools in place to make the right data available to the right people as they make key decisions about their assets.
Assets have often been acquired and are maintained by different departments in isolation. Risk management and other compliance documentation can be stored in different locations, making them hard to find and act upon. There may be no central record of costs and condition, so you can’t make long term planning decisions with any confidence.
As the IAM point out, for many organisations:
There is no single, correct source of information about what assets actually exist, in what condition, providing what function and where. Data is fragmented, out of date and/or not to be trusted.
Sound familiar?
So, how’s your line of sight?
Here are 6 key questions to assess your readiness for strategic asset management:
1. Can your engineers see the state of the assets they are maintaining?
When you send a contractor or engineer a work order, have they always got all the data and information they need to carry out their work in the most efficient way possible? Have they got access to all the service history and compliance documentation? Can they clearly understand what needs to be done to fix failures and optimise asset performance?
2. Does your business understand the risks posed by asset failure?
Are risk assessments carried out as required and do they feed into your asset management plans? Are you able to track and control the risk of future asset failure in an efficient and sustainable way? Can you see the financial and compliance risks posed?
3. Can you see how well your team are maintaining assets?
Can you track how long it takes workers to fix assets and how much it costs you to complete maintenance tasks? Can you optimise their activities to extract greater value from your assets?
4. Can you see the path to asset sustainability?
Can you track and monitor the lifecycle of your assets effectively? Can you see when assets are reaching the end of the life and behaving inefficiently? Can you easily order new parts and maintain to extend the lifecycle of assets or manage their disposal to minimise environmental impact?
5. Can you see trends in asset performance?
Can you see the way assets or groups of assets are performing over time? Are certain contractors and engineers delivering better asset maintenance than others?
6. Can you see the future of your assets?
Can you see trends emerging over time as groups of assets begin to fail? Would preventive maintenance help other assets in the group? Can you see when the cost of maintaining your assets will outstrip the costs of replacing them?
How to open up the line of sight in your organisation
So what’s the best way to align your operations to increase visibility of your assets
Choose facilities management software that can centralise your asset record keeping - and give everyone access to the data they need in the most efficient and impactful way possible.
4 indispensable elements of effective asset management
1. Asset register
Opening up the line of sight starts with creating a single source of asset truth - the right asset register software will help you:
- Record the current conditions of your assets
- Record cost of acquisition
- Store warranty details
- Record service history in real time
- Calculate depreciation
- Calculate the total cost of ownership of each asset
2. Engineering portal
The right asset management system will then give contractors and engineers a dedicated portal through which they can:
- Access work orders,
- See details of requested work
- Record attendance and
- Add notes and photos about the state of the asset
- Automatically invoice on completion of tasks
As contractors and engineers record the work done on assets and all costs associated with their work, the software should be collating and converting that information into data the whole business can use.
3. Process control
The asset management software should give the Facility Management team complete control over maintenance and compliance process:
- Build work flows to create consistent maintenance/servicing routines
- Automate compliance processes
- Automate and optimise work order handling (triage work requests; seek and select best quotes from contractors; track and monitor job completion; automate invoice checking and fulfilment)
4. Analytics
Great asset management gives teams the dashboards they need to extract and analyse data, so they can:
- Appraise contractor performance.
- Spot trends in asset condition.
- Monitor compliance status.
- Project and plan future Capex requirements.
- Optimise maintenance process/regimes.
- Track and control maintenance spend.
With the right facility management software in place we can really begin to give our teams access and control over the data that can drive strategic decision making.
Increasing asset visibility empowers everyone in the value chain.
As the IAM point out, creating this chain of visibility can help everyone involved with asset management responsibilities, to make better decisions based on efficiency, innovation and risk control:
Alignment brings advantages in prioritisation and co-ordination of purpose, but it also helps to stimulate creativity and innovation; staff who understand what is important (and why) can often identify new and better ways of achieving their goals.
Conclusion
At the heart of ISO 55000 is a simple idea: use process and data to make sure the right people in your organisation are given the right asset information when they need it. This helps them do their job better and with the business’s long-term goals in mind.
You don’t need complex IoT to start opening up the line of sight between your assets and the people responsible for maintaining them. You just need well-designed asset management software that your team and your contractors will love to use - because it makes their life easier.
