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Asset Management | ||||||||||||||
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Asset Management in Utility Companies It is generally recognised that modern Utility Operations (Water, Electricity, Gas, Telephone ) are essentially Asset Management companies whose aim is to utilise the capital invested in their assets to make a profit. They can do this by managing their assets in the most cost effective manner. The aim being to reduce the total cost of ownership and capitalise on the investment in those assets. To help them manage this they often use high specification enterprise scalable Asset Management Systems However many smaller companies often have the same sort of reliance on the performance of their assets but do not realise that the proper management of assets can make the difference between profitability and failure. They frequently fail to use an AMS and as a result do not see the true costs of ownership of their assets. The aim of asset management is to improve every single case of interaction with the asset. This results in a better understanding of its performance and support or maintenance needs. This is carried out by having a structured and systematic approach to managing every stage of an assets lifecycle from design through installation to maintenance and retirement At its simplest level Effective Asset Management means knowing what you own, where it's located, where and when you bought it and for how much. Once this amount of information has been collated, additional data can be collected and recorded. Recording the operations carried out on the assets (such as the number of times a circuit breaker trips on fault, or a pressure relief valve operates) and the work carried out to keep the asset in an appropriate condition can start to build up a picture of the uses of assets and the costs involved in maintaining them. A regular review of as found conditions can also help to provide information on the way the asset is performing. Adding commercial information to the asset history such as the discount that was achieved, the range of prices that were quoted, the batch size of the order and the details of any warrantees and repair and support contracts can help to build a financial picture of the a financial picture can be built up that will help in any future procurement. Once the data is available the next stage is the analysis of the data held in the systems. Once a clear picture of the way an asset is used and how much it costs, decisions can be made to determine if the assets are functioning as they are required to and whether there is merit in changing the designs of systems to include less or perhaps more of that type of asset. Simple reports can be sufficient for this but, with large quantities of different types of assets, statistical analysis becomes essential and predictive tools are needed to try to guess the likely future costs of the ownership of the assets. This allows decisions on asset replacement and maintenance policies to be made. There are a number of new techniques of asset management which can help to select the most appropriate methods of maintenance and can take into account the consequences of the item failing. As an example; it is clearly not worth carrying out expensive maintenance on a pump which powers and ornamental fountain while an identical pump that provides water for a fire protection system is worth preventative maintenance. There may be no need to have a full featured Asset Management System. The data needed to be collected during the life of an asset can be small and can be easily modelled in an Access database or excel spreadsheet for example. It is also possible to collect electronic data from Telecontrol systems to automatically update event histories of plant items and once again this can be simple. However when dealing with large amounts of data and lots of simultaneous input a robust AMS may be the most economic solution. In order to support the decisions that are made when working with asset management systems it can be difficult to tie all of the requirements together. Successful asset management methods incorporate policies, functional products, and operational procedures and resources and if these can all be integrated with the IT systems then the maintenance can be more effective and less error prone. As more technology in the form of monitoring Telecontrol and positional tracking is provided the more the IT systems that support the assets need to able to exchange data and interface to other systems. Some common benefits from implementing an ongoing, up-to-date asset management system are: Provide asset tracking data for corporate assets Reduce the direct cost of ownership Establish asset standards to reduce 'over- and under-buying' of hardware and software and to contribute to productivity and support efficiencies Provide configuration management for standardisation / productivity/ support efficiencies Determine warranty status of assets when servicing Identify lease expiration for lease management Provide processes / procedure/ policies for asset management system components Provide configuration tracking to facilitate help desk responsiveness and efficiency Provide maintenance data to verify maintenance charges from maintenance/support vendors Provide maintenance history to track associated maintenance costs (more important as assets age) Implement consistent asset-related processes/procedures/policies throughout the enterprise Redeploy assets versus purchase Reallocate assets not being efficiently used Provide information for accurate budgeting of hardware and software Provide information for departmental charge-backs Provide information for accurate purchase vs. lease vs. redeploy decisions Provide data for purchasing negotiations, resulting in volume discounts |
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