The need for agility in asset management

Abstract

Increasingly turbulent environments faced by enterprises today have reduced the time available to organisations to prepare and respond to change. Organisational agility, characterized by a rapid and proactive response to opportunities and threats, is a source of competitive strength and adaptive capability for engineering enterprises. Asset management can be an effective source of competitive advantage if it occurs within the broader framework of sustained organisational agility. This paper demonstrates how an understanding of the concept of agility, and obtaining a simple measure of the levels required in an organisation, can help managers to incorporate agility into their asset management programs. The Agility Measure described in the paper draws on experience with a large multi-national project, SYMPHONY, in which many small and medium-sized enterprises participated. A key feature of the Agility Measure is its applicability in medium sized enterprises which tend to have limited tools available to managers.