Most of the time, asset management priorities would probably be at the bottom of the priorities in the boardroom meeting. Such a priority may not even be on your business agenda. Business executives often make the mistake of assigning asset management to systems that are done manually and can be tedious. If not corrected, this practice can prove too costly in the long run. Other areas of the business, such as capital planning and equipment procurement, receive more attention than the rest, but assets are often neglected once they are installed.
Only the correct control and management of assets can help assign real value to a particular asset. The net efficiency of an asset would be the result of the ability of an asset to perform at par with the purpose for which it was designed, along with its absolute energy efficiency. This last metric is often overlooked, but it has many hidden meanings.
Asset management priorities may not be among the top priorities in the boardroom. In fact, the topic may not appear on your agenda at all. Business executives often err in the implementation of tedious, manual asset management, which can be prone to error, without being aware of the long-term costs attributed to this error. Much attention is paid to capital planning and the purchase of equipment items, but not much attention once the assets have been installed.
It is necessary to establish asset management priorities to help discover the energy efficiency of each of the assets. When measured against a benchmark, the efficiency of individual assets can be monitored in real time and this will help reveal problems as they begin to emerge. In most situations, a problem would arise once a piece of equipment fails, and consequences are expected. An asset that would start to consume beyond normal levels, as shown in monitoring, could be a warning sign.
Asset failure causes a lack of productivity, downtime, costly technician call charges and, in certain circumstances, can also cause other items of equipment to fail. It’s inconceivable that executives leave so much to chance by failing to recognize asset management priorities, but this image is repeated daily across the country.
For an organization to truly take ownership of its carbon footprint and its impacts on the environment and society, it must be fully aware of the scale of its own footprint. Unless asset management priorities have been established, an equipment inventory may not be up to date and cannot contribute valuable information to a footprinting exercise.
Before a carbon footprint can be established along the path to pure energy efficiency, each individual piece of equipment throughout the organization must be identified, categorized, tagged, and monitored. The labeling process itself can make the business more efficient and more focused. In the case of a smaller mobile asset, there could be a clear vulnerability to theft or misuse.
The bigger a company gets, the more likely executive teams are to accept the status quo. The usual fear is of business complexity, making asset inventory nearly impossible to fully implement. However, it is common for there to be dedicated teams within specialist labeling organisations, who are not easily scared off. Using a specific process, dedicated software, and experienced technicians, even the most complex distributed organizations can be handled.
Asset management priorities will become much more important as energy prices continue to soar, as an increasing call for sustainability is heard, and as organizations begin to find every opportunity to make their businesses more efficient and productive in the face of increasing competition.