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In every plant I have ever walked into — large and small, mature and immature, world-class and reactive — the conversation about maintenance and reliability falls into one of two patterns. Either it is a tactical conversation about firefighting ("why did the bearing fail again?"), or it is a strategic conversation that has lost contact with the plant floor ("we need to mature our asset management framework").
Both conversations miss the point. Maintenance is the operational discipline that determines whether the capital invested in plant and equipment actually delivers a return. It is the difference between a plant that meets its production plan and one that does not. Between a plant that operates safely and one that has incidents. Between a plant that earns the cost of its capital and one that destroys it. And the gap between a top-quartile maintenance organisation and a bottom-quartile one is rarely a question of equipment, technology, or budget. It is a question of system.
The system that produces top-quartile reliability is not a single thing. It is the deliberate integration of eight pillars — strategy, criticality, tactics, work management, defect elimination, performance management, people, and information. Each pillar is a discipline in its own right, with its own theory, its own tools, and its own failure modes. The eight books in this anthology cover those pillars in technical depth, plus the diagnostic toolkit (Lean and Six Sigma) that makes the improvement engine work, and the integration, people, and sustainment work that ties it all into an operating system.
This series exists because, after twenty years of consulting work on industrial and mining sites across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, I had not found a single reference that translated the standards (ISO 55001, SAE JA1011, ISO 31010:2019, IEC 62740) into the language and tools that working practitioners actually need. The standards tell you what; they rarely tell you how. The academic literature tells you why; it rarely tells you what to do on Monday morning. The vendor literature tells you to buy something. None of these is sufficient when you are the engineer responsible for an asset that has just stopped producing.
So, the question I set out to answer — and that this anthology answers — is simply this: what does a working asset management system actually look like, on a real industrial site, in 2025?
The answer fills eight books because the answer has eight distinct parts, each with its own discipline. But the parts are not independent. They reinforce each other. A criticality framework without a maintenance tactics methodology produces a list. A maintenance tactics methodology without work management discipline produces unfinished work. Work management discipline without defect elimination produces stable mediocrity. Defect elimination without diagnostic tools (Lean and Six Sigma) produces paperwork. And none of it survives without the integration, people, and sustainment work that ties it all into a working operating system. And none of it survives without an Operating Model — the governance system that aligns the people, processes, and technology behind the rest.
This is the system. This anthology is the manual.
If you are a plant engineer, a maintenance supervisor, a reliability engineer, an asset manager, or an operations leader — read this volume in sequence. Mark it up. Argue with it. Apply the parts that fit your operation, and discard the parts that do not. The framework is more important than any single tool.
And remember: the goal is not the framework. The goal is reliability. Everything else is a means to that end.
— Johan Nortje, Lead Asset Management Engineer · NJN Consulting
Books I–VIII — the complete framework, in sequence.
Foreword · p. v
Introduction: The Engineering Journey to Excellence · p. xi
Book I — The Operating Model · p. 1
Book II — Asset Criticality · p. 41
Book III — Maintenance Tactics · p. 75
Book IV — Work Management · p. 113
Book V — Defect Elimination · p. 149
Book VI — Asset Performance Management · p. 181
Book VII — Understanding Lean and Six Sigma · p. 213
Book VIII — Integration, People, and Sustainment · p. 245
Consolidated Glossary · p. 297
About the Author · p. 311
An Operating Model is the framework that defines how an organization delivers value through its people, processes, and systems. In asset-intensive industries — mining, utilities, manufacturing, and process plants — the operating model answers a fundamental question:
"How do we ensure that our physical assets deliver the performance required to achieve our business objectives — safely, reliably, and at the lowest sustainable cost?"
The operating model defines the structure within which all asset management activities occur. It is not a document — it is a living system of aligned roles, consistent processes, enabling technology, and accountable people.
Every effective operating model rests on three interdependent pillars. Weakness in any one of them undermines the entire system.
The ISO 55001:2024 standard recognizes this relationship explicitly: asset management is achieved through an integrated system where people, processes, and technology work together to realize value from physical assets.
All eight books in one volume. The complete eight-pillar Practical Asset Management Framework.
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