Effectively managing asset performance has been an unrealized opportunity for asset-intensive industries. As a result, industrial downtime caused by equipment and process failure in just about every industry is still causing an ever-increasing and significant impact on manufacturing EBIT, production, and quality.
Assets and equipment are not being replaced or maintained optimally as they should be, which results in higher risks, larger costs, and adverse impacts on balance sheets. As we emerge from this terrible Covid crisis, this trend of “sweating the asset” is becoming more and more prevalent
Managing asset performance is a foundational capability for asset-intensive industries as they seek to make their operations more efficient, reliable, and safer. However, many organizations still see asset management as simply keeping track of asset data or more advanced maintenance, leading to several siloed applications and failing to demonstrate clear business value. In fact, fewer than 5 percent of companies have achieved an asset performance program that helps to optimize maintenance, operations, and asset investment decisions to achieve financial results. (can you add the source of this data?)
“The way we look at manufacturing is this: the U.S.’s strategy should be to skate where the puck is going, not where it is.”—Tim Cook, CEO, Apple Inc.,
Yet too many businesses are stuck with where the puck is – in terms of siloed views of the current state of asset data in form of graphs, charts, reports, and dashboards.
As we enter a new age of value creation through Industry 4.0 technologies, opportunities to take asset performance to the next level emerge through connected assets, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and artificial intelligence and advanced analytics technologies. For organizations investing in digital transformation, proactively managing asset performance should be a critical component of the strategy; Industry 4.0 revolves around innovations for operational excellence, which cannot be achieved without a proactive strategy towards managing assets.
However, merely implementing APM software will not drive operational excellence that Industry 4.0 envisages or drive the ROI that businesses strive for. Instead, the real value of asset management can be realized only when data from systems across the business are connected and correlated – from enterprise resource planning systems to quality, maintenance, inventory management, and operations systems, and including real-time data from assets. Because asset performance is affected by a gamut of parameters coming out of real-time health, operations, and enterprise systems, companies that fail to take a holistic view of asset management will all too often fail to harness its full value.
Connecting in real-time to assets and other sources, aggregating and correlating the data is by no means simple. But that is the first step in creating an asset management strategy that will deliver a complete understanding of your assets. Benefits include better worker safety and asset availability, less unplanned downtime, and improved throughput, leading to a reduction in overall costs.
Additionally, a holistic approach to asset management also reduces reliance on tribal knowledge. Since asset insights are based on data, they will augment your new workforce as your experts retire, not to mention the benefits of increased employee engagement and developing a data-driven, proactive culture.
But it is the predictive intelligence that is layered on top of the data that gets the leaders ahead of their competition. Rooted in their own data and based on models trained in that data, leaders can predict maintenance activities to postpone or prevent asset failure. Prescriptive technologies take businesses even further along in their journey of operational excellence, giving them the ability to prescribe operational changes to alter how equipment performs.
“Your data can do a lot more than what you think.”
Bring in connectivity. Put your data to work. But be quick in delivering intelligence based on the data. Always integrate the intelligence gains into your process flows. While data is fundamental, integrated intelligence vastly increases your ROI. Do not fuss about accuracy, scalability, or performance. Get started. Deliver value and improve continuously. Because asset management as you know it is changing. Intelligent asset management is where the puck is going.