Managing physical assets: a systematic review and a sustainable perspective

Abstract

Contemporary organisations recognise the need for Anthropocene disruptions and transform their business models, restructure their operations, and re-engineer their supply chains to attain greater sustainable objectives and a strong ESG (environmental-social-governance) proposition. Indeed, physical asset management shifted from the negative image associated with asset failure, expensive maintenance, and decommissioning to an enabler of sustainability that allows us to create and capture value from extended lifetime, renewed functions, and increased awareness. In this direction, this study follows a systematic reviewing process enabled by text analytics methods to identify the means and approaches to build a sustainable perspective for physical asset management. Our key contributions and insights are supported by statistics and key features extracted from over 2800 journal articles. We particularly emphasise the research footprint, the evolution, and research trends of the two most asset-intensive sectors (i.e. construction and energy) represented as barriers and enablers of sustainable development. Lacking a unified perspective of the field, this study proposes a conceptual framework that adopts an asset-within-a-system perspective, recognises the links between the stakeholders and holistically integrates the extracted research trends. The knowledge provided here positions physical asset management as a key resource in achieving competitive advantage in the framework of sustainable development.

KEYWORDS:

• Physical asset management
• asset life cycle
• management systems
• energy
• sustainability
• text analytics

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Jean-Pierre Hollevoet (Chief Transition Officer) and Raf Bellers (Chief Asset and Supply Chain Officer) from Fluvius System Operator CVBA, Belgium for their insights and for supporting this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from Fluvius System Operator CVBA. Restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for this study. Data are available from the authors with the permission of Fluvius System Operator CVBA.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Georgiana Sandu

Georgiana Sandu is currently a postdoctoral researcher for the Technology and Operations Management Area at Vlerick Business School, Brussels, Belgium. She holds a PhD in engineering from Université catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. She has been working on sustainable processing and materials for energy-related applications and electronics, particularly sensing. Her research interests come under the umbrella of sustainability, environmental management, sustainable supply chains, clean energy, Energy 4.0.

Olga Varganova

Olga Varganova is currently working for ENGIE Impact as a smart energy consultant. Previously, she was a research associate at Vlerick Business School, Technology and Operations Management Area, working on smart metring rollouts and energy management.

Behzad Samii

Behzad Samii is currently Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Management at the Operations and Technology Management Area, Vlerick Business School. He is the Director of the Brussels Executive MBA Programme. Behzad has received his BSc from the College of Computer Engineering at Sharif University and PhD from the international logistics programme at MIT.