Asset Management is a fundamental for the organization be able to understand the performance of existing infrastructure throughout the asset life cycle. Normally every company has a large number of assets. This encompasses everything from tangible assets like corporate vehicles, land, plant as well as intangible assets like intellectual property, software licensing, copyright and more. However asset costs are associated with the purchase and the carrying out asset management and maintenance of comprehensive asset registers and it consume a significant portion of an organization’s budget. Therefore having tools to assess the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of assets on an organization’s is essential.
Hence asset life cycle management can be indicated as a better way to maximize the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the assets throughout their lifespan. Additionally, an asset lifecycle process aims to break down the many stages in the life of an asset in order for a business to examine how it is being used, efficiency savings opportunities and when and how to replace it when business requirements arise. However there are four stages available in asset management life cycle. Those are,
• Planning stage
• purchase or acquire stage
• operation & maintenance stage
• disposal stage
Planning is the first stage of the asset life cycle and this stage establish and verifies asset requirement and this stage includes why it is required, what it will be used for, what the proposed costs, how is responsible parties and more. As well as in the planning stage define establish asset requirements based on the existing asset and their potential to meet services delivery requirements. Also planning procedure gives the most excellent means of delivering value added asset management. Effective asset planning leads to assessing practical sufficiency of existing assets, ensure resources are available when necessary, recognizing under-performing assets, ensure assets are maintained, estimating options for asset provision, funding asset acquisition and more.
Second stage of the assets life cycle is purchasing. The process of acquiring an asset should only be performed after a detailed and complete planning stage. A variety of processes are involved in acquiring an asset, including studying and comparing available options on the market, participating in demos or trials, and finally purchasing the item and adding it to the organization's fixed asset register. Also acquisition process activities should be completed to meet service delivery and other organizational objectives. However effective purchasing plan lead to reduce cost wastage as well as enhance performance of the organization.
Third stage is operation & maintenance. This stage indicate application and management of asset including maintenance with aim of delivering services. Also this is usually most time-consuming stage of an asset's life cycle and it is the stage which the other three sections contribute actively in order to achieve maximum achievement. The operation and maintenance stage deals with all activities that are related to the installation, testing, deploying and maintenance of the newly acquired or repaired assets. Also operation and maintenance cost like energy cost, cleaning cost, management cost will also incurred during this phase and need to be identified in the life cycle plan for the asset.
Last stage of the asset life cycle is disposal. When asset is reaches its end of a useful life, it can be disposed. Hence at this point, the organization must make decisions relating to how to dispose of asset. Open sale, private sale, trade in and use for the spare parts are the different method using in asset disposal.
Overly, Asset management life cycle lead to organization's assets, as well as their condition, usability, and cost-effectiveness are accurately defined to aid future planning and also. Moreover, enables a company to handle its register in a proactive rather than reactive manner and this allows the organization to forecast potential future scenarios for how its assets are aging, allowing them to adopt proactive and well-planned maintenance and replacement measures. Finally can be indicated asset lifecycle management is a better tool to ensure regulatory compliance of an organization’s asset register.
Reference:
https://kissflow.com/finance/asset-management/asset-lifecycle-management-stages/
