Traditionally, maintenance leads divide asset management in organizations between maintenance, reliability, and operations, with each team working towards a different goal. Asset operations management (AOM), however, creates a single centralized command center for all your teams.
But does that work? And, what are the possible benefits of AOM?
What is asset operations management?
Asset operations management is a maintenance solution that bridges the gap between your maintenance, reliability, and operations teams. Rather than having separate teams with their own solutions, asset operations management creates a centralized solution that makes it easier for your employees to get hold of everything they need to do their jobs properly.
This easy-to-use, unified solution can provide insights into real-time performance data, manage multi-location maintenance cycles, and optimize asset utilization. The ultimate aim is to help you look past what your teams do so you can see their impact on the business and make more informed decisions. Instead of silos of information and activity, you combine everything into a broader, more unified program.
What are the long-term benefits of AOM?
Data is everywhere–but it’s not much use if you don’t leverage it properly. Switching to an asset operations management strategy can help you leverage active and passive data from humans and sensors to help you align your teams and better understand your assets. Here are a few of the benefits AOM can bring.
Reduced downtime
The absence of accurate and accessible data leads to reactive maintenance that generates downtime and waste. By bringing your systems and teams together, AOM can reduce your unplanned downtime by between 10 and 40%.
Lower parts and materials costs
Many organizations have little or no visibility on the parts and materials they need in their inventory, so they’re left relying on gut feelings and guesswork rather than data. Using asset operations management gives you full visibility of your part lists and inventory levels across the organization, so you only buy new parts before you need them, saving you the costs of rush shipping and the stress of watching assets sit idle while the team is waiting on delivery. And because you’re ordering only the parts and materials you need when you need them, you can also cut down on waste and shrinkage, where valuable parts and materials sit on the shelves long enough to degrade or just go missing.
More cohesive teams and operations
Unifying your teams in a single solution helps your people and operations work together more fluidly. Every team has full visibility of all passive and active data and activities, with full reporting and analytics. Once they can better see the big picture, it’s easier for everyone to start pulling in the same direction. Reducing data friction between teams also reduces overall friction between them. Understanding what people are doing and why goes a long way to cutting down on baseless blaming and finger-pointing.
Fewer mistakes and less rework
Siloed data can cause information gaps between maintenance and reliability teams, which can turn into rework. Bringing all of that data together in a single source of truth can reduce the instances of rework and create a more accurate understanding of the condition of your assets.
More engaged employees
One of the biggest issues for technicians is software that’s difficult to use and doesn’t address their needs. Some also still use paper or spreadsheets to track their maintenance activities. An AOM system should be user-led and easy to use, providing the tools and data your techs need when and where they need it. The result is more engaged employees who are more productive and make better decisions. On some levels, it’s simple psychology. Because everyone can better see what’s going on, no one feels left out. Once it’s clear how their efforts are supporting larger goals, people across teams take more pride in their work. Those old us-vs-them feelings eventually fall away.
How AOM improves maintenance teams
An asset operations management solution matches your maintenance teams, with a focus on being easy to use, mobile, and having everything in one place, so your techs don’t have to switch between systems.
Having the information they need at their fingertips can increase the speed and quality of manual work and free them up to spend more time right where you want them, working directly on assets and equipment. Routine answers to questions from automated work orders ensure the best use of resources, and with AOM, you’ll never lose a work order again. With all of these obstacles removed, your techs can be more efficient and productive.
How AOM improves reliability teams
Reliability teams are an undervalued part of many organizations despite the critical role they play in maximizing facility uptime and maintaining safety protocols. AOM shifts the way reliability is reported and streamlines workflows to make the work they do more easily tracking and, as a result, appreciated.
AOM also allows tasks to be automatically assigned to appropriate reliability team members and increases the speed and quality of answers to routine questions. All interactions are tracked to create an audit trail and reduce paperwork for your techs, while leaders receive data on each interaction to help optimize performance.
How AOM improves operations teams
AOM does away with disparate systems and creates a single blueprint for your operational teams. With efficient and visible workflows, your ops team can become a revenue-generating asset that drives you towards your KPIs and goals.
One of the biggest benefits is the improved speed of service, with quicker and better responses to questions and many of the usual obstacles removed so team members can be more productive. AOM also helps to anticipate the replacement parts needed, with real-time notifications of part quantities making it easier to initiate an efficient preventive maintenance plan that achieves the full useful life of assets.
All that theory’s great, but at some point, you have to get on with the task of implementing an asset operations management solution in your organization.
Implementing AOM in your organization
Typically, the biggest challenge is getting buy-in from management. Once you have that, you can follow these AOM implementation best practices.
Decide what you want to achieve
The first step is to match the goals of AOM implementation to your business’s needs. Some of the potential objectives include improving data quality, reducing equipment failure, easing the administrative burden, and reducing your asset management costs. You also need to decide how you’ll measure your success.
Plan the implementation with milestones and timelines
Planning is a vital part of any timely and successful implementation. First, you must consult with personnel at all levels, from technicians up to your high-level execs, to make sure everyone is on board. You can think about the hardware and software you’ll need to support the system, how data will be collected and entered, and what workflows employees should follow. It’s also worth deciding who is going to perform each task and what training you must have in place to familiarize everyone with the new system.
A good software solution provider can help you with a lot of these steps. They should have a lot of experience with implementations, and that means they know who needs to know what and how to set up effective training.
Build your implementation team
Once you know what you want to achieve and how you’re going to get there, it’s time to choose the people to make it happen. Ideally, you should have one person who controls the operation. You can then build a small team around them who are familiar with how your business’s maintenance, repairs, and operations processes work, understand the technology, and are committed to the company’s goals.
Streamline your maintenance management with ManagerPlus
ManagerPlus® can help you take a unified view of everything, assets, teams, schedules, and devices, to create data and insights that boost your business intelligence. Purpose-built to match the way your teams work, ManagerPlus lets you look at your whole asset management process to make sure your teams can effectively communicate with one another so they never miss a thing.
Because everything is connected, you can manage part lists and inventory counts and know when to order more and how much to keep in stock. You can also gain insight and clarity into the way your facilities run with easy-to-read dashboards and automated, comprehensive reporting.
ManagerPlus is also mobile-friendly, so your techs can take control of your assets and optimize your maintenance program from wherever they are. And as it lives in the cloud, every change is reflected in real-time.
What’s next?
Want to find out how the ManagerPlus AOM solution can unify your maintenance, reliability, and operations teams? Book a live demo with one of our experts or get in touch so we can answer your questions.
Executive summary
Asset operations management (AOM) bridges the gap between your maintenance, reliability, and operations teams. Rather than having separate teams with their own siloed solutions, it creates a single command center where employees can access everything they need to do their jobs properly.
By leveraging active and passive data and providing full visibility, an AOM solution can help you reduce downtime, lower parts costs, make better business decisions, and reduce instances of rework. Importantly, unifying all of your teams in a single, mission-critical solution can also help you create more cohesive and engaged teams.
To implement your AOM strategy successfully, you must align the objectives with your business’s goals, plan the implementation with milestones and timelines and build an effective implementation team. Choosing an AOM solution like ManagerPlus that’s mobile-friendly, user-led, and lets you look at your whole asset management process can help to make sure your teams never miss a thing.
