Knowledge management on asset management for end of life products

Abstract

Because of considerable high labor cost in developed countries particularly Japan and Korea, the end of life products required manual or semi-manual processes have been relocated to developing countries. In addition, the relocation creates an immediate financial profit on old asset sale while it is revalued to 30 % of its initial value in the new relocated factory. The relocation is not only production location change but also the experience in operation and maintenance process to its Foreign Direct Investment affiliate. Since the old product and process are both nearly at their end of life, it needs to extend the life as long as the product still exists in the market. In order to immediately launch the operation as well as to retain the knowledge, therefore, the asset management and new maintenance modes are proposed at all product, process and people aspects to improve reliability of the old asset and to minimize maintenance cost. The research in this paper was carried out on a Korean relocated electronic factory in Thailand. The result clearly shows that the reliability, quality, cost and intellectual capital are significantly improved.