Asset criticality analysis is a process to identify the business value of your assets. It lets maintenance teams identify which assets are the most important to operations. An asset is deemed critical if the failure of that asset or component – regardless of its size or complexity – will significantly impact other assets or stop production.
Asset criticality analysis helps teams make smart maintenance decisions to minimize the potential for catastrophic failure. For example, maintenance teams often misinterpret problematic machines as critical assets, when in fact, they just get more attention because they’re always breaking down. In other cases, asset maintenance is prioritized on the cost to repair or replace that particular piece of equipment.
An asset criticality analysis helps remove biases. It lets reliability professionals evaluate and determine equipment value based on quantitative empirical data instead of guesswork. Furthermore, an asset criticality analysis factors in the total impact of the asset on the organization – so teams can prioritize maintenance activities accordingly to maximize uptime.
Keep reading to understand how to quantify asset criticalness, the prerequisites for asset criticality analysis, and the many benefits of asset criticality analysis for your business.
Before You Begin an Asset Criticality Analysis
Before you begin an asset criticality analysis, it’s important to have a few key elements in place. For one, you need the right stakeholders. It’s essential to assemble a diverse team of knowledgeable stakeholders, including maintenance, operations, engineering, procurement, and health and safety.
To start your asset criticality analysis off right, the team must first answer the following questions:
- How will you identify assets, determine criteria, and score?
- Which assets should be included and why?
- What criteria will be used to analyze the asset?
- How much will the asset failure impact:
- Operations
- Safety
- Maintenance
- Reliability (MTBF)
- Probability of failure
- Quality
- Production/quality
- Environment
- What background information and data will be used to support asset criticality determinations?
- Inventory hierarchy
- OEM manuals
- Asset lists
- Nameplate information
How to Quantify Asset Criticality
One of the most important steps here is defining the criteria that you’ll use to classify and rank all of your assets. These criteria let your team appropriately assess the importance of each asset using a consistent framework, although the specific criteria will vary depending on each facility’s unique circumstances.
Once the criteria are agreed upon, decide which ones to include on the list and identify them by type, size, location, etc. Use a numbering system, like one to five, based on their importance to overall production and processes. Add the numbers to reach a criticality ranking for each machine or component and then group machinery as a star, critical, semi-critical, or non-critical asset.
Once the analysis is completed, add the asset’s details, including the model number, serial number, and manufacturer. Next, use the information to decide maintenance frequency: daily, weekly, quarterly, or as needed.
An asset criticality analysis shows organizations an asset’s impact on their operations and the associated risks should it fail. It ensures reliability is looked at from a risk-based perspective rather than opinions. The data obtained during the analysis can also support reasons to introduce an asset condition monitoring program using wireless vibration sensors and other predictive maintenance strategies. A wireless vibration sensor can continuously monitor changes in critical assets rather than relying on scheduled route-based screening.
Asset rankings will change, and one organization’s determiners obtained from a criticality analysis won’t be the same as another company’s. Numerous individual internal and external operational factors play into decisions and should fit the overall business, whether food, pharmaceutical, oil and gas, automotive, or other industry.
7 Advantages of Asset Criticality Analysis
An asset criticality analysis is a powerful way to optimize maintenance strategies to manage organizational risk. Once a maintenance team knows how vital the equipment is to the organization, they can use that information to make their maintenance decisions. This enables teams to make major improvements in their reliability programs.
The following are 7 advantages of using an asset criticality analysis:
- Accurately identify operational risks and consequences of equipment failure.
- Understand which assets are most vital to the organization as a whole.
- Reduce expensive downtime and enable more effective maintenance scheduling.
- Optimize spare parts inventory management.
- Align workflows and resource planning with asset value.
- Boost reliability maintenance strategies and improve asset lifetime.
- Reveal safety implications and enhance workplace safety planning.
To learn more, see how to use asset criticality analysis to prioritize predictive maintenance strategies.
Consider Taking an Expert Workshop
Now that you understand the advantages of asset criticality analysis, it’s time to implement it. For expert help with an asset criticality assessment, Fluke Reliability offers an Asset Criticality Workshop. The workshop teaches maintenance teams how to use data and best practices for an effective asset criticality analysis. The workshop shows teams how to identify the highest-value assets based on their likelihood of failure, overall consequences, and risk to the business (criticalness). Once you know the failure modes with the biggest operational impact, you can develop strategies to minimize or move to eliminate failure modes.