If your asset scheduling is still confined to spreadsheets or even paper, then your assets aren’t delivering as much as they could be.
So, how can you get more from your assets?
What is asset scheduling?
Asset scheduling is the process of maximizing your asset utilization for overall cost reduction. Scheduling your assets allows you to see in real time when your assets are assigned, who they’re being used by, and how long they’re going to be in use in a simple calendar format. It can even incorporate finer details such as anticipated bookings to give you an up-to-date view of an asset’s availability over time.
Asset scheduling allows you to tap into all your non-current assets throughout their life cycles and keep track of their running costs. It can also help you maximize your assets’ productivity and schedule preventive maintenance for the right times.
However, before you can begin the process of scheduling your assets properly, it’s important to track them. Asset tracking allows you to control and monitor the whereabouts and movement of your assets to prevent loss and improve business operations.
Why is tracking assets important for scheduling?
Asset tracking plays an important part in scheduling your assets. It gives you accurate and real-time data about your assets so you can make more informed scheduling decisions when it comes to their usage and maintenance.
Here are four ways that asset tracking can help your asset scheduling:
Understand how and when your assets are used
Asset tracking also helps you understand how and when your assets are being used, as well as the whereabouts of assets that can be moved, such as construction and fleet vehicles. That enables you to determine the optimal number of assets required at any given time to optimize your scheduling.
Generate insights
The simple process of tracking and scheduling your assets can help you generate a host of new insights about their use, including everything from the amount of time an asset is in use to the average duration of each assignment. These are insights you can use to make more informed decisions about the efficiency and productivity of your assets.
Increase asset longevity
Tracking your assets can also help you increase their longevity. Asset tracking makes it easier to identify when the utilization of a particular asset is too high. You can then adjust your preventive maintenance schedules accordingly and make decisions about acquiring new assets. Adjusting your asset scheduling in line with usage can also help to improve safety and reduce unscheduled downtime.
Reduced wait times and provide better customer service
The usage data that asset tracking provides can help you optimize your scheduling and improve employee satisfaction by removing the need to wait for assets.
What are the benefits of scheduling your assets?
If you and your team waste time looking for lost assets or resolving logistical headaches, then it’s time to start scheduling your assets. There are three main benefits that asset scheduling can bring.
Streamline your assignment process
Assigning out assets to operators is a day-to-day task that can become an ongoing headache for you and your team. Asset scheduling can help.
Taking a more granular approach to asset scheduling helps to remove the logistical nightmare by enabling you to see when assets and equipment are assigned in real time. It can also help to prevent important details from being overlooked and make it easier to understand how assignments play out against each other throughout the day.
Track asset utilization and reduce downtime
The utilization data that asset scheduling helps you generate can provide valuable insights about assets and equipment that you may have missed. For example, if you assign the same tool or vehicle to multiple users regularly, it may be time to inspect and maintain that asset, replace it, or invest in more. 
Acting on asset utilization insights in this way can help you reduce the downtime of your assets and identify opportunities that could lead to a good return on investment.
Respond more quickly
Introducing a digital asset scheduling process helps you maintain the visibility of your assets so you can respond more quickly when something goes wrong. By removing the time delays caused by paper trails, spreadsheets, and emails, you can act on asset failures as soon as they are reported.
When a failure occurs, having a real-time schedule in place can also increase accountability in your business. It will tell you who the asset was assigned to at the time, so you can find out what went wrong and why.
How can asset scheduling software help?
When you manage your asset scheduling with spreadsheets, paper, and whiteboards, it’s easy to overlook important details and miss data tracking opportunities that can improve your operations. That’s where asset scheduling software can help.
ManagerPlus® enterprise asset management (EAM) software enables you to establish a single schedule for all your assets across the enterprise so you can optimize your asset operations, increase uptime, and extend the life of your assets and equipment.
You can easily schedule the routine inspection and maintenance of assets, maintain inspection logs, and generate notifications and reports to ensure that your assets are in good health. You can also track and gather valuable data on your assets to improve your maintenance strategies and deliver intelligent reports on their performance.
Also, ManagerPlus is always connected and lives in the cloud, which gives you and your team access to real-time data wherever you are, so you can keep all of your assets running efficiently.
Next steps
Want to find out how ManagerPlus can help you take control of your asset scheduling? Book a live demo with one of our experts or get in touch so we can answer your questions.
Executive summary
Asset scheduling is the process of maximizing your asset utilization for overall cost reduction. It allows you to see how your assets are being used and who they’re being used by to give you an up-to-date view of your assets’ availability over time. It also helps you identify how assets are being utilized throughout their lifecycle so you can schedule preventive maintenance accordingly.
Asset tracking is important if you want to schedule your assets more efficiently. It can give you access to accurate and real-time data to boost business intelligence and help you make more informed decisions about the efficiency, productivity, and maintenance of your assets.
ManagerPlus® enterprise asset management (EAM) software can help you bring all this information together. You can create a single schedule for all your assets across the enterprise to help you optimize your asset operations, increase uptime, and extend the life of your equipment.
