There is an enduring and seldom questioned belief that assigning criticality to assets is a crucial aspect of effective asset management.

Industry experts agree that an understanding of criticality in organisations is required for several reasons, including prioritising scarce resources, targeting risk-reduction where it matters, informing the failure management program mix, and supporting investment and life-cycle decisions.

But the ubiquitous nature of criticality means that most organisations take the concept for granted and don’t take the time to consider what happens if criticality is poorly configured, which it often is.

People commonly confuse criticality with risk, the probability of failure, and even with mitigating controls. In addition, several authoritative sources, such as RCM (SAE JA1012), FMECA (IEC60812), and Asset Management (ISO55000), define criticality from different perspectives. The published definitions are not wrong, but they add to the ambiguous interpretation of criticality.

All this means that many organisations put a lot of effort into defining their “critical equipment” with poor results.

In this session, Mike will attempt to remove some of the ambiguity and inconsistency pitfalls by mapping a pragmatic approach that consistently employs criticality as a decision calibrator, combined with management accountabilities as defined in “The Requisite Organisation” by Elliot Jaques.