How to Integrate an ISO 55001 Asset Management into Your Business Management

Organisations constantly face challenges in managing their vast assets amidst the changes, ambiguities, financial volatility, and uncertainties. They certainly need a robust asset management system (AMS) that can support them with practices for managing, regulating, and optimising their asset performance. An efficient AMS is essentially required to ensure business continuity in any challenging situations by keeping the assets safe and operational.  The ISO 55001 certification is the key to make your AMS efficient as it provides specific practices for organisations to follow for asset management. They help in maximising their asset value to investors, customers, and other stakeholders.

The ISO 55001 standard promotes a set of best practices for AMS that help organisations to take care of their assets during their entire lifetime, i.e., starting from purchase to installation, operational phase, to final decommissioning.  As a result, organisations can reduce their costs of asset management, minimise risks of ownerships and prevent any decline in their values.  No doubt the benefits of having an ISO 55001 asset management system are remarkable for your business’s financial growth. The question remains, how do you implement it? Here are some simple steps to implement the AMS in your business management strategy.

Must-have Steps for Implementing the ISO 55001 Asset Management in Your Business

Preparation and Getting Started

Preparing your organisation for the implementation of an AMS is possible with support and invariable commitment of the top-tier management.  The senior management officials should make employees in all departments aware of the change and engage them with internal communication.  Uniform participation of employees is a mandatory requirement to implement a new management system company wide. The management team is always best at ensuring it.  They should map out an implementation plan, establish a team to head the plan, share roles to employees, and decide timeline/milestones of the process.

Gap analysis

All organisations by default have some sort of practices or a vague management system already present to supervise and manage their assets. To implement ISO 55001, you need to find out the shortfalls in your existing management system and completely improve it to make it eligible for the ISO standard. This is done with a meticulous gap analysis by the implementation team. They inspect your current processes or practices for asset management, including the documentation to identify where they do not satisfy the ISO 55001 requirements. The findings of the gap analysis provide you with a clear idea of the implementation objectives and help decide the timeline required for it.

Implementation

On completion of the gap analysis, you need to create a plan of action and a proper asset management policy to cover all the gaps or shortfalls discovered. You need to ensure that each of the nonconformities against ISO 55001 standard are addressed and a fully competent AMS gets implemented. Employees should be informed about the plan and policy. You can also provide them with a copy of both and conduct a training session to help them understand their specific roles. As the next step is certification audit, make sure you share adequate knowledge about the standard’s principles with the employees and train them to coordinate with the auditors.

After the implementation, the management team should review your AMS regularly and ensure it is effective and continuously serving the policy objectives.

ISO Certification 

The next and final step is to choose an accredited certification body that can provide the ISO 55001 certification. A team of qualified auditors will personally visit your organisation to review the AMS and its documentation. They ensure all processes and practices for asset management are being followed aptly as specified in the standard. If any nonconformity is found, they will point it out to your management and give time for corrective actions. However, such instances should be avoided so as not to cause your certification to be delayed. It is for this reason that internal auditing is recommended before the certification stage where qualified assessors from a third-party consultancy with ISO knowledge can thoroughly inspect the AMS to identify any nonconformity.

When the accredited body is convinced that every aspect of AMS is in accordance with the ISO 55001 standard, your organisation receives the certification.  

Key Takeaway

Achieving the ISO 55001 certification for your asset management system is a remarkable step ahead to improve your asset performance and drive their lifetime value. Undeniably, proper asset management can increase your business’s bottom line by assuring financial stability and minimisation of risks. Clients, partners, investors, and other stakeholders have confidence in your system and are convinced that the value of assets in which they are interested is improved over time.

However, implementation of a big change organisation-wide needs planning and support from the management. The above steps help you to implement an ISO-based AMS seamlessly avoiding mistakes, nonconformities, employee resistance, and higher costs.