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The challenge

The solution

The outcome

Requirements

• Define business objectives and asset criticality.
• Inventory all assets, including condition, age, location, and ownership.
• Classify assets by risk, performance impact, and lifecycle stage.
• Set maintenance standards, policies, and compliance requirements.
• Choose maintenance strategies by asset type: preventive, predictive, corrective, or run-to-failure.
• Build a lifecycle plan for acquisition, operation, maintenance, renewal, and disposal.
• Establish work management processes for requests, planning, scheduling, execution, and closeout.
• Create spare-parts, tools, and inventory management controls.
• Assign roles, responsibilities, and governance structures.
• Implement an asset information system and maintain data quality.
• Define KPIs and reporting: uptime, MTBF, MTTR, cost, backlog, and compliance.
• Set budget, resource, and workforce plans.
• Train staff and ensure contractor/ vendor standards.
• Review risks, safety, sustainability, and regulatory obligations.
• Use inspections, condition monitoring, and failure analysis to improve decisions.
• Run continuous improvement cycles and regularly review the strategy.

Best practices

• 1. Define clear maintenance objectives tied to uptime, cost, safety, and compliance.
• 2. Standardize asset hierarchies and naming conventions before software rollout.
• 3. Maintain a complete and accurate asset register with criticality ratings.
• 4. Track preventive, corrective, and predictive maintenance in one system.
• 5. Use mobile work orders to capture data at the point of work.
• 6. Prioritize asset criticality to focus resources on high-impact equipment.
• 7. Keep spare parts, inventory, and procurement connected to maintenance needs.
• 8. Measure key KPIs such as MTBF, MTTR, PM compliance, and backlog.
• 9. Ensure the software integrates with ERP, finance, IoT, and sensor systems.
• 10. Build role-based access, approval workflows, and audit trails into processes.
• 11. Train technicians, planners, and managers thoroughly and continuously.
• 12. Start with a pilot, then scale in phases to reduce implementation risk.
• 13. Clean and migrate historical maintenance data carefully.
• 14. Use analytics and dashboards to identify recurring failures and trends.
• 15. Choose a vendor with strong support, industry expertise, and a clear product roadmap.