Proper asset lifecycle management is vital to ensuring your organization runs at peak efficiency. Asset lifecycle management is typically broken down into five stages: planning, acquisition, utilization, maintenance, and disposal.
This article covers the basics of asset lifecycle management, including the stages, benefits, and best practices to follow when managing your assets.
What is an Asset Lifecycle?
An asset refers to any piece of equipment, spare part, tool, vehicle, or building that your company relies on to achieve its goals. Every tangible item your company owns has an asset lifecycle. The asset lifecycle spans from before you purchase your asset to the time of its disposal.
Tracking the health and performance of your critical assets over time can help extend asset lifespan and increase uptime. That’s the purpose of asset lifecycle management.
What Is Asset Lifecycle Management?
Asset lifecycle management is a data-driven process designed to optimize your equipment’s performance and efficiency. By carefully monitoring the cost, labor, and time invested in your assets, you can effectively track the total cost of ownership.
It is useful to think of the asset management life cycle in five different stages:
- Asset planning. Before purchasing a new asset, research possible solutions to make sure that it is compatible with your existing facility and your production needs.
- Asset acquisition. After determining what asset best suits your facility’s needs, consider your company’s budget and the total cost of the asset. Include the costs of delivery, installation, maintenance, and disposal in your total budget.
- Asset utilization. This is the main stage in the asset lifecycle. Monitor your asset’s performance and health throughout its useful life so that you can improve operational efficiency. Many facilities use wireless sensors along with a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) such as eMaint.
- Asset maintenance. Over the course of the asset’s life, you should generally focus on preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance rather than corrective or emergency maintenance. It’s easier, less expensive, and less time-consuming to diagnose and address potential issues before they lead to breakdowns or other unplanned downtime.
- Asset disposal. The final stage of an asset’s life cycle is disposal, when your organization determines that the long-term value of the asset no longer justifies the cost of maintaining it. You can use a CMMS to manage obsolescence and supply the data-driven records you need to determine exactly when it makes financial sense to dispose of an asset.
Asset Lifecycle Management Best Practices
In order to maximize the productivity and efficiency of your most critical assets, maintenance teams should follow these asset life cycle management practices:
Monitor asset health data, organize it, and store it in a central location. Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) tools make it easy to track key indicators of asset health, like vibration levels or temperature. A CMMS, like eMaint, stores and organizes that data for easy analysis.
Get alerts whenever your critical assets show signs of a new fault. A CMMS can issue automatic notifications whenever vibration data crosses a pre-set threshold. eMaint can even generate work orders so your teams inspect the asset right away.
Build a strong preventive maintenance program. Preventive maintenance helps you stay ahead of machine failure by keeping your assets in optimal running condition at all times. A CMMS helps you plan preventive maintenance tasks and track PM completion rates.
Track your asset maintenance KPIs. Staying on top of important key performance indicators (KPIs), such as mean time between failures, will help you see where your maintenance strategy needs to improve.
Asset Lifecycle Strategy
Asset lifecycle management is an increasingly complex process. Successful operations rely on a high-quality CMMS, like eMaint, to manage their critical assets throughout the life cycle.
A strong CMMS tracks and stores asset health data, work order data, and KPIs in one central location. Managers can access that data remotely, making it possible to oversee multiple worksites.
A CMMS can also generate in-depth reports to help make decisions about asset procurement, maintenance, and disposal. With the right tools, your asset lifecycle strategy yields a wide range of benefits.
Benefits of Asset Lifecycle Management
Effective asset lifecycle management can transform your whole operation, increasing efficiency, lowering maintenance costs, and extending the lifespan of your critical machinery. The benefits of a good asset life cycle management program include:
- Developing a data-driven maintenance strategy that includes preventive maintenance and predictive maintenance
- Increased productivity and reduced downtime
- Improved compliance with safety and quality regulations
- Minimizing the total cost of ownership
- Greater operational efficiency
Asset Lifecycle Solutions
Effective asset life cycle management starts with the right tools. That means using sensors and other IIoT tools to monitor the health of your critical assets. It also means choosing a quality CMMS to track asset performance throughout the lifecycle.
A CMMS like eMaint gives you a wealth of insights into every stage of the asset life cycle. eMaint lets you monitor all the time and money invested into each asset, so that you can weigh the total cost of ownership against productivity and output.
The result? Data-driven decision-making that lets your organization make smart choices, improve ROI, and achieve far greater operational efficiency into the future.