A S S E T
M A N A G E M E N T
Machinery & Equipment MRO
April 2021
ASSET MANAGEMENT - WHAT IS IT AND WHERE DID IT COME FROM? Over the last few years, a new term has become more popular in the world of maintenance and reliability and its asset management. BY CLIFF WILLIAMS
O
¥en, it is difficult to tell the difference between asset management and maintenance and reliability, as they o¥en seem interchangeable. This begs the questions, “are they the same things, what is asset management?”
To answer these questions we need to understand where the term “asset management” came from and what it entails. Asset management is not a new term, but its context has changed. An internet search 10 years ago would
show links to financial institutions or plans. Today, those still show up, but spread amongst them are links to organizations or articles about “effectively manage existing and new assets to deliver value.” When adding “holistic” or “physical” to the search, the number of financial links drop off dramatically. So why the change? The events that prompted the change in context, started in the U.K. during the 1980s and 90s. It was when the U.K. government privatized industries (steel, utilities, infrastructure and railways) that had previously been government owned. By the late 1990s into the early 2000s, problems started to occur within the utilities and infrastructure in the U.K. These problems were related to the failure of assets. It was recognized that this could not continue, and there appeared to be a systemic problem related to how the assets were being managed. Asset related failures ultimately led to the issue of Publicly Accessible Specification for the optimal management of physical assets or PAS55 in 2004 – issued by the Institute for Asset Manage-
Photo: WrightStudio / Adobe Stock
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