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Nooshin Jabiri

Postgraduate Research student
Project Management


School of Civil Engineering, Room 360
Phone: +61 2 9351 ????
Fax: +61 2 9351 3343
Email: N.Jabiri@civil.usyd.edu.au






Research project - Project based Management of Asset Intensive Organizations

Supervisor: Prof. Ali Jaafari
Associate Supervisor: Dr. Bob Platfoot

In the current competitive environment, one of the key challenges facing manufacturing organizations is transformation so as to be able to face global competition, based on customer needs and market dynamics. There is an apparent dichotomy in the sense that capital intensive assets are normally long term and fixed while customer needs and preferences are short term and driven by market dynamics. How to reconcile the long-term nature of Asset Management (AM) and short-term nature of customer needs and preferences requires a sophisticated approach to capital-intensive assets. The challenge is to find ways to reconcile these differing perspectives.

In this regard, Project Management Group at the University of Sydney has commenced a major research program to explore the application of project-based management principles to asset management practices.

At the core of this program is the concept of a new strategic AM framework referred to as Holistic Asset Management. The framework goal is to identify and streamline AM key drivers to link investor’s expectations and customer values to asset capabilities, in an effective manner.

Holistic AM is founded on project-based management principles, allowing organizations to consider different combinations of market opportunities as alternative projects, locating the one alternative that is most desirable in terms of the organization’s goals. This approach has the effect of making assets compete for the most value-intensive and profitable opportunity.
In this regard, each AM alternative considers four key influential elements; (a) preferred suppliers, (b) specific asset configuration, (c) favoured distributors and (d) groups of customers. Figure 1 shows how these elements are linked within an AM alternative. Different geometrical shapes in the manufacturing block show utilized equipment for each alternative.

AM Chart

An AM alternative is a combination of suppliers, manufacturer, distributor and customer.

To evaluate different alternatives, decision makers should define configuration of each alternative separately, and subsequently study the results of the evaluation under different criteria. Holistic AM classifies these criteria under four categories: "Financial", "Asset Performance", "Customer Satisfaction", and "Environmental Sustainability". Each category includes different criteria, for instance, TLCC and OEE are two key criteria under "Financial" and "Asset Performance" categories. Considering different criteria provides an effective competitive assessment system, which implies comparative information about how decisions must be combined to influence the end-to-end performance of the business.

The concept is being developed into a management and decision-support system, named Integrated Asset Management System (IAMS), which will provide responsible managers with meaningful information on the status and performance of their assets and means for exploring how future demands and management policies may influence asset performance in a multi-dimensional space.

Selected Publications

  • Jabiri N.," Project-based Management of Asset Intensive Organizations", PM-day 2005, Vienna, http://www.pmtage.at, 2005.
  • Jabiri N., Jaafari A., Gunaratram D. , “Promoting Asset Management policies by considering OEE in products' TLCC estimation”, IEE International Engineering Management Conference , pp 480-484.
  • Jabiri N., Jaafari A., Gunaratram D. , "Information Technology Applications in Asset Management “, (IT in AM) Tehran International Congress on Manufacturing Engineering (TICME2005) ,December 12-15, 2005, Tehran, Iran.
  • Jabiri N., Jaafari A., Gunaratram D.and Bob Platfoot, “Enhancing Profitability & Competitiveness by Project-based Management of Asset Intensive Organisations”, 19th IPMA world congress, New Delhi.