What are assets and what role do they play?

Assets are items of value owned by a company or an individual, which can produce some future economic benefit. They represent the resources controlled by a company from past events from which future economic benefits are expected to flow to the company or to the individual.

Assets role in manufacturing industry

Manufacturing is the process of conversion of raw material into product, which meets the customers’ requirements. It involves 6M’s namely – Manpower, Machinery, Materials, Method, Milieu (external environment) and Measurement. It involves the use of various assets which can be in the form of tools as well. There can be hundreds or thousands of tools present in a facility and it gets hard for the management to manage these tools and measuring instruments, i.e., gages. These tools and gages play a very important role in product creation and inspection. Any sort of mismanagement of these assets may result in a huge cost for the company, as it would hamper the whole production process.

Manufacturing process involves 6M’s – Manpower, Machinery, Materials, Method, Milieu & Measurement.

Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa

Why is tool / gage calibration important?

Various measuring instruments lose their accuracy, and this is due to wear and tear due to their regular use. Calibration of the tool is done to make the tool reading accurate by using a standard (device of known accuracy). If tools are calibrated timely, the overall tool life increases, and this results in savings in expenditure in future. Calibration also results in reliable measuring instruments, thus the measured data is accurate and the final product matches the quality goals. MetEQ Gage & Asset Management software is perfect economical solution for taking care of all gage and asset management needs.

Asset management challenges and solution

Asset management is an overlooked problem in most of the industries. Industries rely on old practices like excel spreadsheets to track gauges and tools in their facilities. These practices results in manual errors, misplaced assets, thus leading to an increase in overall cost. These techniques are usually time consuming and sometimes there are issues related to theft of assets as well. Due to the presence of ghost assets, companies spend excess money on taxes and insurance for those assets. Studies have shown that 65% of organizations having asset data on spreadsheets are facing issues like data incomplete or inaccurate or altogether missing. There is also a study showing 94% of spreadsheets data is prone to manual error. These small errors and missing data can lead to devastating cost for the company. Usually this problem is overlooked, and people continue to follow the old practices. During the maintenance process in a company, it is important that the right tool is present at the right place, so that maintenance can be completed within time, or else it will result in an increase in downtime. There’s no shying away from the fact that these kinds of problems are not easily noticeable, because of other responsibilities on management. The problem is widely visible when change is brought in traditional methods and the results are way better than the past ones.

SME’s nowadays are switching to smart technologies like Asset management software to manage and track all their assets. They come with lots of features that were needed to fill the voids in the old traditional methods. You can add your company assets like gages and other tools, with their respective details. It helps in scheduling tool/ gage calibration, which results in better measuring accuracy of tools, increase in tool life, reduction in cost of buying new tools, and good quality products. One can track the real-time asset status and react accordingly. Also, the problem of misplaced tools and theft is also minimized. If you are expecting an increase in ROI, you need to increase your production, and for that you need uninterrupted workflow, which can be achieved by proper asset and gage management. This can be achieved by a Gage and Asset management software which is smart, economical, time saving and comes with strong and secure user management.

– By Sharad Mishra