One of the challenges with Asset Management is that it often viewed as a cost rather than an investment. When markets fall then generally the pressure to reduce costs is often an action taken by companies to stay on the right side of the cost curve. Generally, the easiest place to make the cost reductions is in the area of asset management. This may show up in the form of deferred capital, major maintenance, and removal of some CM/PM programmes. It is often described as deferral of work but do you ever really catch up?

None of us would feel comfortable flying with an airline that had made significant cuts to their maintenance and replacement programmes to save costs so why are companies happy to do this within a production/manufacturing business environment?
The challenge for good asset managers is to shift the focus from cost to that of being a value-add investment in the business, through reduction of risk, increased uptime, improved productivity, and efficiency etc. It should be communicated in a way that identifies and connects the asset management strategy with the overall strategy of the enterprise.

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