After decades of lean manufacturing and Six Sigma, manufacturing executives need to look in new directions for the next competitive advantage. With margins getting thinner and turnaround times getting shorter, manufacturers are looking for new ways to squeeze the most possible value out of their assets. An effective strategy management plan is one way to do that. But what is asset strategy management?
Asset strategy management is a systematic approach to the production, organization, planning, and maintenance of all assets within an organization. So, within manufacturing, it is taking a strategic approach to delivering the highest value level of service to the customer. A key part of asset strategy management is analyzing the risks of downtime or outside threats like energy shortage or natural disasters. An effective asset strategy plan minimizes the likelihood or reduces the impact of such events.
How has asset strategy management been handled in the past?
Traditionally, asset strategy management relied on paper logs and manual checks on inventory. The problem with this is that:
- It creates a high chance of human error, which may be compounded over time and lead to a loss in productivity. It could also lead to potential future machine outages.
- Keeping track of what has been accomplished can be difficult.
- Paperwork can get confusing when multiple employees are involved in the process.
How should asset strategy management be handled today?
In today’s competitive manufacturing market, every plant needs to make full use of their machinery. The impact of strong asset management is prevalent in every area of the business.
- Effective asset management would mean virtually no unplanned machine downtime. When implementing a lean manufacturing strategy for manufacturing, you need machinery that works 99.8% of the time. This means that to ensure your manufacturing business is lean, it must be reliable.
- With smaller margins and a decreased turnaround time becoming the norm in the manufacturing industry, there is no way you can feasibly run production runs twice.
- The time it takes to make an unplanned repair is three to five times longer than when running planned repairs.
Today, an unplanned outage can have a disastrous effect on business. That’s why many manufacturing organizations are using the information acquired from a connected workplace to inform their asset strategy management. By having real-time information on your assets and your labor force, executives can more accurately understand how their resources are being allocated, making it easier to spot waste in the process. By utilizing the information from a connected workplace, you can:
- Ensure you only have the raw materials you need in stock by installing sensors in your storehouse. This means raw materials will never perish needlessly, and you will always have enough on hand for production.
- Strategic planners can understand where their processes need to be tightened.
- Potential future outages can be avoided through a predictive maintenance approach.
- The amount of data harvested from a connected workplace can be used by product developers to build more efficient and durable assets in the future.
- Machine learning can build strong predictive algorithms based on your asset usage, making it easier for you to forecast repair expenditure.
Effective asset strategy management—informed by a connected manufacturing line—can help your manufacturing business to:
- Reduce expensive downtime: Proactive, data-driven asset strategy management would ensure that all downtime is planned and efficient.
- Streamline your processes: Similarly, proper asset management can alert you of inefficiencies, as well as aid in streamlining processes.
- Gain key insights: The amount of information you could gather on the operations of your organization—how well it works and what it costs—could help you to gain key insights that could fuel innovation in the future.
Learn how you can use the industrial internet of things to make your manufacturing business more effective.
