there are at least five potential threaths that primarily contribute to an organization’s failure to optimally

manage their assets: 1) not knowing what they have; 2) over or under maintenance; 3) improper

operation; 4) improper risk management; and 5) sub-optimized asset management systems.

Not Knowing What You Have

1. Develop a list of all the organization’s assets and verify this list with what is in
the field.
2. Establish and configure a physical asset hierarchy. ISO 142242 from the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO) can be used as reference.

Over or Under Maintenance

During the operational phase of the asset life cycle, there can be a problem of over maintaining as well as
under maintaining.

 With these pressures, maintenance departments are constantly struggling with how to balance cost with
the performance requirements for the assets such as reliability and uptime. Cost cutting often wins,
however, in the form of delayed proactive maintenance as well as maintenance technicians lacking the
necessary skills and tools to perform precise work.   

Improper Operation

The best guidance that the author can give with respect to this issue is to: 1) find out
how your assets should be run; 2) understand the effects of operating outside of
design ranges; and 3) if you can’t operate within the ranges, understand the risks or
mitigate the risk (example: resize the impellor to match the operating point).

 Improper Risk Management

1. Establish context
2. Risk assessment: Risk identification, Risk analysis, Risk evaluation
3. Risk treatment
4. Monitor and review

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