Preparing for Asset Performance Management (APM)

In many companies today, maintenance is not treated as a strategic business function. Over the last decade, however, it has been clearly shown that maintenance has tremendous impact on a company’s profitability.

In cases where maintenance has been managed as a business function, it has been a positive impact. In other cases, where maintenance has been an afterthought, a necessary evil, or a non-core business function, the impact on profitability has been negative.

In cases where maintenance doesn’t seem to contribute to a company’s profitability, it’s usually due to the fact maintenance is never developed strategically. Many companies try to implement maintenance improvement as a “Program of the Month”. They fail to view the components of a maintenance strategy as an interdependent solution.

This often leads to conflicting priorities for the maintenance, operations, and facilities personnel. The failure to integrate the components of a maintenance strategy also leads to excessive expenditures and a subsequent drain on profitability.