5 Tips for Streamlining Asset Management
Everything that contributes to a value stream is an asset. But that means hundreds, if not thousands, of assets that you need to track and maintain — from simple pallet jacks to multi-million-dollar equipment. Manufacturers still managing assets through spreadsheets and checklists are bound to get overwhelmed. In today’s modern age of manufacturing, it’s not enough to keep up on your assets. You need to streamline asset management.
Asset management is a different picture for every manufacturer. However, the principles are the same: develop a clear understanding of your assets and ensure they deliver maximum return on investment (ROI). Maintenance, deployment, utilization, and service records all play an important role. To tap into the value of each asset, manufacturers must discover the process and practices that work best for them. Now we’ll look at five tips to help streamline asset management.
Tips to Streamline Asset Management
- Use an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system. An EAM is your foundation for all things involving asset management — from track and trace to deployment and maintenance. Having everything in a consolidated database enables a higher level of oversight — one that’s essential for asset management at-scale.
- Invest in cloud deployment and tracking solutions. If your manufacturing ecosystem is already in the cloud, moving asset deployment and tracking there should be easy — especially with a cloud-based EAM. Cloud management gives you the power to manage assets any time, any place, ensuring they benefit from comprehensive oversight. It’s especially helpful for on-the-ground operations that need instant insights.
- Integrate and couple with maintenance efforts. Again, asset management and maintenance go hand-in-hand, as one enables the other. The better oversight you have across your assets, the better your maintenance efforts can become. Use asset management to advise better maintenance strategies and make the shift toward proactive and real-time efforts.
- Track investment, contribution, and value. Asset management is all about squeezing the highest ROI and maximum value out of your assets. To do that, you need constant insights. How much of an investment does the asset represent? What is its depreciation? What quantifiable value does it offer? The more metrics you have about an individual asset, the more focused you can be in optimizing its ROI. Track everything you can to compile a real value picture of your assets.
- Dedicate the right personnel to managing assets. Asset management should be consigned to someone as a full-time job. Your assets are the prime contributors to your value stream and the means of production. Delegating a person or team to properly manage them is a reinvestment in your value stream. The more assets you have, the more attention they demand.
Remember, asset management and asset optimization aren’t the same thing — the former unlocks the latter. To get the maximum ROI from your essential equipment, embrace strategies for better asset management. Start with the suggestions above and be tactful in how you manage your assets. Given the right approach to management, optimization becomes much more feasible.
