Historical Asset Performance
As an organization develops its asset management skills over time, the data for a detailed performance analysis on each of its assets or asset systems will become available. This data includes:
- Required performance levels
- Actual performance levels
- Asset utilization
- Number of unscheduled outages
- Number of scheduled maintenance shutdowns
- Operation and maintenance costs.
Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the asset base is the foundation for accurate and cost effective service level targets. If the organization does not know what its asset base has delivered in the past, it cannot set realistic targets.
This topic covers:
Asset Capacity
Asset capacity is the scale and scope of services an asset can support. It includes:
- Asset numbers
- Space
- Volume
- Reliability
- Speed
- Power.
Peaks and troughs in the demand for services and their timing will also affect asset capacity requirements.
Asset capacity requirements can be met by:
- Adjustments to the asset portfolio
- Changing the way in which services are delivered to make better use of the assets already available.
Once this research is complete, the asset manager should be able to answer the question "What is the asset's capacity to meet peak, current and future demand?"
Asset Functionality
Asset functionality is the degree to which the asset is suitable for the delivery of the service it is intended to support.
For example, while older buildings may meet their intended capacity, location, and utilization requirements, their heating, cooling, insulation, lighting, ventilation functions may not satisfy currently accepted standards for comfort.
Therefore, asset functionality can change over time due to:
- Changes in service delivery requirements (eg, higher comfort levels or different security or safety levels)
- More efficient methods of delivering services (eg, assets requiring fewer resources such as staffing, energy, etc).
Many asset functionality problems can be overcome by:
- Refurbishment or upgrades to existing assets
- Reconfiguring service delivery using HR and IT solutions.
Benefit cost analyses will help agencies assess alternative solutions to asset functionality problems.
Asset Objectives
Service delivery objectives for existing assets can be identified by answering the following key questions:
- Have the corporate outcomes changed? These are defined in the organizations corporate plan
- Have the asset outcomes changed? These may be defined in the asset's strategic plan, or in the organization's strategic plan or service delivery plan
- Have the organization's customers or target market changed? Answering this question should provide the update of service outcomes, or desired results. In reviewing the service outcomes for a particular asset or asset group, the asset planner should understand the wider socio-cultural, environmental, sustainability and economic issues.
- What will indicate that each of the service outcomes is being achieved? Performance indicators should be reviewed. They should give a clear picture of whether the service outcomes, and therefore the asset outcomes, are being achieved.
This analysis will reveal whether:
- The asset can deliver the type of service it was intended to provide
- The asset is still appropriate to deliver the service
- The service could be more efficiently delivered with some upgrades
- The service it provides is still relevant and desirable.