Asset Management

The capital invested in an organisation’s assets requires that maximum benefit be obtained from them throughout their life cycle – an asset out of use is a direct cost to the bottom line. Thus assets must be managed in order to minimize down time and ‘sweat’ the assets for maximum usage. To effectively manage assets requires a full understanding of the asset from an engineering point of view:

• Configuration Control – it is essential to know the build structure of an asset and the configuration standard of the constituent parts, to ensure that the overall configuration is maintained when replacement of a part becomes necessary.
• Maintenance Management – where an asset has predictable wear characteristics, or is subject to degradation of performance with time, the life of the asset can be prolonged by anticipating probable failure and conducting maintenance tasks to avoid the failure. It is also important to record occurrences of random failure to assist in identification of recurring problems.
• Component Lifing – if a component has a known life, this needs to be identified within any software tool that may be employed by the asset manager. Life usage can then be recorded against the component as it is operated, which in turn enables the replacement or reconditioning of the component to be planned into engineering activities for the component or its parent platform.

LSC Group has extensive experience of supporting complex MoD assets for approximately twenty years, and therefore understands the principles and practice of engineering asset management in general and within the defence environment in particular. Based on this expertise, the Repairable Asset Management System (RAMS) is an engineering asset management tool that has been developed to support the management of assets.