Why Asset Management Doesn’t Work in the Mining Industry and How to Fix It

Leadership within a number of major mining companies have published visionary statments regarding the role of asset managment that demonstrates a level of understanding of its importance to operating and financial success. Our study shows that, in general, there is a misalignment between the executive vision and execution at the operational level. Further, our results show that improving the execution of asset management to a level performed at many other asset intensive industries will yield major operational and financial improvements. A first step is demonstrating to operational management that asset management is an area worth investment. We propose the notion that operational management within the mining industry is, in general, accustomed to living with sub-optimal asset performance and therefore may be reluctant to depart from the familiar to address the challenges around creating optimized asset performance.