Companies Must Focus On Global Asset Sustainability Now
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It's no longer good enough to look at each individual asset and determine its efficiency without being able to determine its associated energy performance. There is now an innovative approach to asset management, determined as "global asset sustainability." This all-encompassing approach is able to provide a much clearer definition of efficiency and thus improve financial metrics throughout the company.
Driving a new approach toward global asset sustainability is the ever-growing price of energy and its associated security issues. Energy prices are on a relentless rise and availability is far from assured. Companies realize that this position is significantly affecting their profit margins and unless action is taken, will threaten their very business viability. Along with energy worries is a dual concern -- the environmental impact of consuming energy and producing greenhouse gas emissions.
All elements of the operation must be leveraged if inefficiencies are going to be revealed. We used to look at asset management from a perspective of conventional efficiency by itself. We would simply look at whether an asset was performing and producing according to the specification of its design and manufacture. The fact that the asset may be consuming more energy than it ought to was often invisible, yet this was a real cost and causing a reallocation of budgets from elsewhere in the company.
Global asset sustainability focuses on energy consumption in addition to asset availability, performance and condition. When we consider that, according to the Department Of Energy, typical commercial and industrial companies in the United States spend over 80% of their nonlabor operating and maintenance budget on energy as opposed to maintenance, we can see that the traditional classification of efficiency is far from appropriate.
A new look at managing assets incorporates a four pronged approach. Global asset sustainability was not all-encompassing in this regard, before. As an example, we would determine asset availability as being acceptable if the equipment returned maximum uptime and generated revenues acceptably. We would also look at performance by considering the equipment specification and determining whether we were getting a good return on investment.
Ultimate performance often makes the difference between operating on razor thin margins and making a profit and as such, asset performance is a base metric, with quality control determining market position.
Traditionally, organizations did not counter in the most important factor in global asset sustainability -- energy consumption. When a baseline position is established for each asset, running under prime conditions, each asset can subsequently be evaluated on an ongoing and almost instantaneous basis to reveal ultimate efficiency. Even a slight variation in efficiency can account for a huge operating loss across the distributed enterprise.
Overall equipment effectiveness readings will have to be modified to take into account energy as part of a new approach to global asset sustainability. Energy is and will continue to be the largest cost liability and companies must be in a position to monitor and micromanage it.
Article Source: Articlelogy.com
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