We won!

Isn't it great to read through all of the news on the happenings and goings on around the field of reliability and physical asset management?

With very few exceptions the people that you meet in this game are salt of the earth, hard working types. And they all share a real passion about what we are all working on. Great stuff!

But the real underlying message behond all of these news items and posts is that we won!

For years I was wriing articles about how important Asset Management is. We continually spoke at conferences about how we need to be recognized as a strategic center and not just as a cost center to be managed. And every forum lead was filled with complaints about "why don't they (the bosses) get it?"

Well ... if you look around today you can see that the message has been well and truly received. Major organizations all over the world are scrambling to extract as much competitive advantage from their physical asset base as they are able to. Everyone from rail companies to miners to Oil ad Gas giants to petrochemical to process manufacturers. Everyone...

In fact when I hear people bemoaning the "them and us" type of thinking we all used to face 10 years ago or so - I cringe. They are either in one of the last outcrops of industry where they don't get it and it probably won't matter for too much longer. Or the speaker is extremely out of touch. (Too much consulting and not enough doing sometimes leads to this)

Our message now isn't "This is important!" our message now has to be one of guidance, leading and laying the foundations for permanent and continually improving approaches to maximizing asset values.