How can we better control our assets

Asset Management is the most important process for an enterprise. Its main goal is to ensure the efficiency and predictability of the use of physical assets throughout their entire life cycle.

Leaders must not only know how much and what is available, but also understand how to use assets to achieve economic goals. And at the same time, do not reduce the level of reliability and overspend on equipment maintenance.

A good Asset Management Plan (AMP) will provide the foundation for these tasks. Its compilation includes several stages:

– inventory and formation of a unified digital register;

– analysis of efficiency and operational value;

– assessment of the residual life cycle;

– calculation of the cost of repair and replacement;

– assessment of business risks (in case of breakdown, loss of warranty, etc.);

– determination of the level of service and mode of operation;

– forecast of resource consumption;

– creation of an optimization and investment strategy.

Once you’ve done all this work, you can use AMP to help you budget your business and shape your global manufacturing finance strategy.

Practical experience and individual approach

A good asset management plan is cost effective and predictable. How to get data for such a plan? From the manufacturer’s instructions, you will learn only general information on the useful life and other characteristics of the assets. Therefore, it is worth using the warranty period for:

– collection and analysis of production data;

– classification of assets and their integration into the tracking system;

– creating a hierarchy of asset values;

– developing an effective proactive service strategy;

– ensuring compliance with regulations.

A personalized asset management plan can help balance risk and cost to ultimately get the most out of your investment.

Risk analysis and prediction of consequences

In 2017, Wasp Barcode Technologies surveyed executives from 1,100 small businesses in the United States. According to their report, 29% of respondents pay minimal attention to asset management. About 11% of companies do not deal with these issues at all, another 12% do not maintain an electronic register of fixed assets, but rely on paper reports.

Such companies regularly face problems:

– lack of an objective tracking mechanism;

– the appearance of “ghostly” assets on the balance sheet;

– overpayments for raw materials and excess stocks in the warehouse;

– waste and cost overruns of materials;

– systematic equipment downtime;

– unplanned payments for overtime to staff;

– excess of the budget for repairs and maintenance;

– shortage of finished products and non-compliance with the terms of orders;

– shortage of transport and special equipment;

– additional costs for logistics and storage;

– decrease in the productivity of employees.

Without an effective asset management plan, an enterprise is doomed to balance between overage and downtime. Such a swing will sooner or later use up the company’s financial resources.

AMP and Asset Tracking bring order, ensure production stability, and help resolve emergency situations quickly. Each of the company’s employees can check the anti-crisis roadmap at any time and take appropriate measures.

How it works?

Asset management tools are a collection of software and hardware solutions in two basic categories.

– Training systems. Each asset is assigned a unique identifier that contains information about value, actual location, production characteristics, access and service history. RFID Tags, QR Codes, Barcodes, GPS Trackers, NFC Tags are used to create tags and track assets.

– Software modules for creating and maintaining an asset base. Information systems based on IIoT technologies provide collection of data on physical assets, transfer of information into digital form for subsequent storage in a single register and analytical processing. These can be cloud-based and client-side solutions such as the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Asset Management module.

SmartEAM develops state-of-the-art software products for asset tracking, performance measurement, production planning automation and maintenance management.