Assessing Plant Potential for Asset Management, 2003 Fall Technical Conference

While some companies have developed methods for assessing the progress of their maintenance programs, there is little guidance on performing a gap analysis for higher levels of achievement in maintenance and reliability. This leaves maintenance councils and reliability leaders searching for tools instead of creating excitement for the future.

Our hypothesis is that work management will improve in most plants only when a vision for a higher-level goal exists. This creates a “pull” instead of a “push” system, allowing maintenance resources to be focused on higher value work. We call this Asset Management.

This article explores the opportunities available to look beyond the same tedious work management issues into Asset Management, measuring against a multi-stage mastery model. The very process of measurement, we find, helps people to see different possibilities. Even more important, it can establish multiple levels of goals to drive for a new vision of plant operation and corresponding value creation.