Simplifying Your Industrial Asset Recovery Process

Industrial asset recovery (the process of maximizing the value of unused or end-of-life assets through effective reuse or divestment), is crucial for maintaining efficiency and cost control in the industrial manufacturing space.  In fact, it is one of the first areas that are being looked at as organizations start to explore what enabling a circular supply chain in their company could look like. More recently, it’s also been highlighted as a great program to help reduce overall waste. However, industrial asset recovery it can also be a complex and time-consuming concept. By implementing simple yet effective best practices, companies can streamline their asset recovery process and, achieve significant cost savings, while meeting sustainability goals.

Let’s take a look at some of these industrial asset recovery best practices:

1. Conduct inventory audits: Regularly reviewing and updating inventory records can help companies identify assets that are no longer needed or are not being used efficiently. This can enable them to quickly recover and repurpose these assets, avoiding unnecessary holding and maintenance costs.

1. Implement a system to track all assets: This can help companies keep track of their assets in real-time, enabling them to quickly identify and recover assets that have been misplaced or are no longer in use.

1. Develop a clear asset recovery policy: Having a clear and consistent policy in place for recovering assets can help companies ensure that the process is carried out efficiently and effectively. This should include guidelines for identifying and getting the surplus assets ready for disposition, as well as procedures for tracking and reporting recovered assets.

1. Ensure buy in on your industrial assets recovery strategy: Encouraging employees to be proactive in identifying and recovering assets can help companies ensure that all assets are accounted for. This can be done by involving employees in the inventory audit process and making everyone accountable. Be sure to provide training on your asset recovery policy and processes with clear documentation.

1. Report on all your efforts: Asset recovery becomes really effective when you can quantify how much you’ve saved or recovered.  Luckily, it’s one of the easiest metrics to track.  You can measure the impacts on your program through looking at book value vs recovered value or simply add up your total recover value over a set period of time. These numbers can start to become a baseline for companies to track progress and make optimizations.

Many organizations do not realize asset recovery can be quite simple when you create a process (even a basic one) to ensure consistency and accountability. 

For those that look at the above steps and say to themselves: where am I going to find the time to do all this? Or how do I get started in getting an audit kicked off? Don’t worry – there are options.

There are some great software and platforms that have started to emerge to help organizations start the transition to a circular supply chain.  Many good ones will contain functionality akin to the above to help users automate and streamline as many of those steps as possible.  There is usually a process to establish a baseline which helps set a path for ongoing and consistent asset disposition that requires very little maintenance. From redeploying surplus assets back into an organization to reselling the assets through online auctions, pretty much everything can be automated, which helps reduce errors and keep things simple.  

By implementing these best practices, companies can ensure there is a simple but ongoing process to advance their asset recovery strategy, achieve significant cost savings and reduce their carbon footprint. 

Ready to get started on simplifying your asset recovery efforts? Talk to us – we’d love to help!