Asset management is the area of business that aims to maximize the value of a facility’s assets, from their acquisition to decommission. Effective asset management should result in reliable assets that cause minimal downtime, has long and productive lifespans, and incur low maintenance-related costs. Such effective asset management can be achieved following an evidence-based strategy. With evidence-based asset management (EBAM), you rely on data to make critical asset management decisions.
What is Evidence-Based Asset Management?
The ‘evidence-based’ in EBAM simply means that asset management decisions are based on up-to-date, solid, and reliable evidence or data. In other words, EBAM relies on data gathering and analytical methods to decide on key areas of asset management.
In contrast to EBAM, traditional asset management is based on experience, user complaints, manufacturer recommendations, and other intuitive or unproven methods.
The Essential Steps of EBAM
Evidence-based asset management is a continuous improvement process with the following steps:
1. Utilize Available Data and Information
A great place to start when implementing EBAM, this step is where you gather data and relevant information on your assets
2. Review Evidence
From the data and solid evidence, you analyze and form a deeper understanding of your assets and identify the potential changes or steps to optimize their use.
3. Design Changes Based on Evidence
The evidence should help you design the changes and formulate decisions regarding your assets.
4. Implement Changes and Evaluate Any Effects
This step is where you implement your changes and see if you achieved your expected results. Otherwise, you should go back and repeat step 3.
5. Integrate and Maintain Changes
If the results are as expected based on the evaluation, you can integrate and retain the changes but continue recording data. The data will be useful as you carry on and start again on step 1.
EBAM in Key Asset Management Decisions
To further understand how evidence-based asset management works, here are the four key areas of asset management where EBAM can be applied:
Component Replacement
This area involves deciding when to replace machine parts or components. EBAM can utilize data based on the asset’s maintenance history, helping you decide whether to replace components proactively or let them run to failure.
Inspection Details
Inspection of assets comes with costs, and asset managers should know which assets require frequent and costly inspections and which do not. With EBAM, you can analyze inspection details to minimize inspection costs and focus inspection efforts on assets that need them most.
Capital Equipment Replacement
EBAM can also be useful in analyzing when an asset needs to be replaced. Without careful analysis, an asset’s economic life or service life can easily be confused with its physical life. Replacing an asset that’s past its economic life can be more cost-effective, saving the company on maintenance and downtime costs.
Resource Requirements
Asset management can also benefit from EBAM when assigning personnel, tools, and other resources to an asset. It helps ensure that the right number and types of these resources are available to achieve optimum productivity, reliability, and costs.
A CMMS Provides the Right Support for EBAM
One of the greatest challenges in implementing evidence-based asset management is gathering maintenance data. The complexity of data and its manual recording can also result in difficulty in extracting real-time analysis.
Thankfully, the development of computerized maintenance management systems or CMMS like Redlist has made EBAM application easy and practical. And with Redlist’s cloud-based and user-friendly software, EBAM has never been easier.
Redlist’s custom forms and process-specific tools ensure that maintenance recording, hence, data gathering and analysis is accurate. Also, Redlist’s digitized platform results in up-to-date data, producing real-time analysis. And with accurate and real-time analysis comes logical and evidence-based asset management decisions. With Redlist, you can finally have an accessible evidence-based perspective on the health and performance of your assets.
