As businesses continue to evolve in an increasingly digital world, the need for proper management of assets has never been greater. Enterprise asset management (EAM) systems provide organizations with tools to optimize resources, reduce costs, and improve productivity across all asset-intensive operations.
What is Enterprise Asset Management?
An enterprise asset management (EAM) system is a software-based solution that enables companies to track, maintain, and optimize their physical assets and equipment throughout their lifecycles. EAM systems collect and integrate data from various sources related to asset procurement, maintenance schedules, repair histories, and more. This centralized repository of information allows management to make data-driven decisions about asset usage, replacement, and overall efficiency.
Some key components of an EAM system include:
– Asset registry: A database of all organizational assets including detailed specifications, locations, values, and other attributes.
– Work management: Tools to schedule and track maintenance, repairs, inspections, and other work orders related to assets.
– Procurement management: Modules to handle asset procurement processes from sourcing to receiving.
– Budgeting & forecasting: Capabilities to plan capital expenditures and estimate future maintenance costs.
– Performance monitoring: Dashboards to analyze asset performance metrics, downtime statistics, and more.
– Inventory management: Functions for managing spare parts, materials, and other resources used in maintaining assets.
With EAM, organizations can have end-to-end visibility and control over all asset-related functions, helping maximize financial returns on physical infrastructure investments.
Benefits of Enterprise Asset Management
Some of the key business benefits that EAM delivers include:
Optimized asset utilization
– EAM helps ensure assets are being fully and efficiently utilized through regular performance tracking and workload balancing. Underutilized or redundant assets can be identified and properly reallocated.
Improved maintenance planning
– With consolidated asset condition and maintenance history data, an EAM system enables more proactive and predictive maintenance planning versus reactive repairs. This reduces downtime and prolongs asset lifespans.
Cost reductions
– Through optimized asset usage, efficient procurement processes, reduced maintenance costs and greater asset lifespan, EAM lowers total cost of ownership over time. Savings of 10-15% are common for asset-intensive companies.
Enhanced safety & regulatory compliance
– EAM supports compliance with industry/workplace safety and regulatory standards through features like automated inspection scheduling, permits, and closure of open work orders.
Informed capital expenditure planning
– Budgeting and forecasting tools in EAM arm management with data to make sound decisions around new asset purchases, upgrades, replacements based on actual performance and remaining life.
Streamlined operations
– EAM centralizes asset data to remove information silos across departments and facilitate coordinated workflows for faster resolution of issues. Productivity is enhanced through mobility access as well.
Essential for Large Organizations
The complexity of asset portfolios grows exponentially with organizational scale. That’s why EAM becomes almost a necessity for larger entities with numerous physical locations and thousands of capital assets. Benefits are amplified in such environments:
– A large manufacturing plant may have over 10,000 production and facility assets worth hundreds of millions. EAM provides clarity into such vast, distributed resources.
– A nationwide transportation company with vehicles, equipment and machinery spread across several depots requires centralized visibility and standard processes for consistent asset care.
– Utilities managing critical infrastructure like pipelines, turbines and substations demand optimized maintenance to ensure reliability. EAM supports this through performance benchmarking, parts consolidation and predictive failure analysis.
– Healthcare institutions owning medical equipment worth billions must keep assets in good working order through computerized service histories, calibration schedules and automated work assignment.
In all these cases, an EAM platform pays for itself many times over through savings on inventory, repairs and uptime alone – not counting difficult to measure benefits like safety boosts. The scalability, standardization and control EAM brings for dispersed assets is invaluable to larger corporations.
Future of Enterprise Asset Management
As industries continue embracing digital transformation, EAM capabilities will increasingly leverage emerging technologies:
– IoT/sensors: Real-time condition monitoring of remote assets via sensors will enable even more predictive maintenance based on usage/environmental parameters.
– Predictive Analytics: Advanced analytics of vast asset performance datasets will help forecast repairs proactively and with greater accuracy.
– Mobility: Field technicians will rely on mobile EAM apps for instant access to work orders, technical specs and parts on the go for faster resolutions.
– Integration: Deeper systems integration across EAM, ERP, CRM will deliver a unified view of asset and business performance KPIs for streamlined decision-making.
– Augmented Reality: AR-based user guides, remote assistance capabilities using smart glasses will further increase workforce efficiency on repairs and maintenances.
Clearly, digital innovations will transform the way organizations manage their asset lifecycles end-to-end in the times ahead. As the core platform handling all physical infrastructure, EAM will play a pivotal role in realizing Industry 4.0 ambitions of business continuity and competitiveness through technology.
*Note:
1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it
