By Olivia Cahoon
Enterprise asset management (EAM) is one of many technologies affected by the Internet of Things (IoT). In the IoT, EAM reduces unplanned downtimes and increases operational efficiency by offering deeper data analysis.
According to a recent report by MarketsandMarkets, the EAM market size is expected to grow from $3.44 billion USD in 2017 to $6.05 billion USD by 2022, at a compound annual growth rate of 11.9 percent during the forecast period.
The Purpose of EAM
EAM is the management of an enterprise’s assets across departments and facilities to maximize their use, save money, and improve quality. It integrates techniques for control and optimization in asset life cycles like design, operations, and replacement.
EAM is used in industries that rely on complex physical assets like heavy equipment, plants, and vehicles. Users include aerospace, energy, government, mining, oil and gas, shipbuilding, and utility industries.
“EAM software keeps your most critical assets and resources operating at maximum efficiency,” says Stephan Biller, VP, Watson IoT Offering Management, IBM. He believes holistic EAM systems can reduce asset downtime in the double digits by helping clients implement comprehensive and predictive maintenance programs. Additionally, they also help optimize labor efficiency through more efficient scheduling, field service deployment, and resource optimization.
With an EAM system in place, maintenance teams can more accurately predict maintenance demands and more efficiently manage vendors to reduce inventory costs, says Biller. “EAM systems help companies improve asset utilization, which can improve throughput and quality through superior maintenance.”
Gregory Perry, CRL, senior maintenance reliability consultant, Fluke Accelix, agrees and says EAM software manages all asset aspects in a facility, from process control and operations to maintenance and inventory. Similar to EAM, computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) manages maintenance work to sustain assets. Perry believes CMMS is 100 percent dedicated to the planning, scheduling, and execution of maintenance activities including asset hierarchy, asset operating parameters, work order scheduling, and generation and inventory management.
“We see demand for direct integration of data to the CMMS so that technicians, managers, and planners do not spend the bulk of their time manually entering data,” says Perry. Data from EAM tools and sensors can automatically integrate with select CMMS systems to streamline processes. While both EAM and CMMS offer functions for industrial maintenance, CMMS typically doesn’t have the same broad capabilities as EAM.
According to Robert Garbus, director of professional services, Mainsaver Software, CMMS systems are adept at providing leading and lagging key performance indicators to help measure the effectiveness of the maintenance organization and evaluate asset repair costs. “In order to do effective asset management there needs to be more levels of data available through the CMMS system,” he explains. The IoT can provide CMMS users with data related to downtime, process variables, and scrap rate in real-time.
EAM in the IoT
The IoT provides sensor data to the cloud that’s ready to be analyzed, creating deeper data analysis for EAM. Sensors measure temperature, pressure, flow rates, vibrations, voltage, or electric current at various points on an asset, says Kevin Price, technical product evangelist & strategist, Infor.
However, sensors might also relay the geo-location of a moving asset or exception events caught in the asset’s embedded software. “Regardless of what is being measured, that information can be processed and stored in an environment that allows for deeper data analysis,” says Price.
EAM systems combined with the power of IoT data from people, sensors, and devices provide warning singles from assets—reducing unplanned downtime and increasing operational efficiency, says Biller. “Connected devices, advanced analytics, and artificial intelligence are changing the way maintenance is conducted.” With this data, EAM enables near real-time visibility into asset usage across multiple sites, extends the useful life of equipment, improves return on assets, and defers new purchases.
According to Price, assets can be huge complex structures as large as an entire plant or railway, containing tens of thousands of sensors. As an example, he says IoT and EAM will play an important role in the development of smart cities which monitor the conditions of critical infrastructures including bridges, streets, water, and electric systems. With EAM solutions integrated into the IoT, industries can optimize maintenance schedules and inventory locations, monitor tool and equipment locations, track asset performance to provide proactive repairs or replacement, and use energy more efficiently.
With the influx of data that industrial organizations now face from smart sensors, mobile devices, and IoT devices, a simple EAM that automates basic maintenance tasks is no longer enough, says Matt Newton, senior portfolio marketing manager, asset performance, AVEVA. Today’s advanced EAM solutions have evolved to support the IoT and are fully extensible and configurable.
“This makes it easy to tailor the solution to the business needs of everyone along with the decision-making chain—from an operator on the floor to an executive in the C-suite,” says Newton. With mobile and web access capabilities, employees are more empowered to make informed decisions. “In the IoT era, an open, hardware-agnostic EAM that easily integrates with existing and future investments is critical.”
Market Size
The EAM market size is expected to grow as companies continue to move into modern EAM software from legacy systems. According to Jerry Browning, senior advisor, asset and service management, IFS, there is currently an abundance of homegrown legacy systems and antiquated CMMS systems being replaced.
Several of these systems are file-based compared to modern object-oriented applications. “These old file-based systems and even most CMMS systems have no rules for your data and no built-in ways for cost of asset management to flow directly into the general ledger,” says Browning. Modern EAM solutions allow users to code objects, work type, and department information to code all of the transactions with no manual intervention.
According to Biller, the EAM market is growing steadily in the single digits as measured by analysts but there are a few areas where there is accelerated growth. This includes the market for SaaS/cloud solutions which is growing in the double digits. There are also several areas adjacent to the traditional EAM market that are growing. Biller offers, “for example, clients are leveraging IoT technologies with existing EAM solutions to build capabilities in asset performance management (APM) and asset investment planning—thinking beyond traditional maintenance and core operations.”
Price also believes the EAM market size will grow, more-so, he believes it will evolve with new solutions developing and maturing including the IoT, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and drones. “Ultimately, the future of EAM will be driven by information exchange between devices, components, and people,” he explains. As more information is delivered into the system from additional locations, that information will be accessible to more people in new ways.
EAM Advances
Recent advancements impact the future of EAM. More companies use mobile devices on the plant floor to record work, add media, and add more timely data to the EAM record. “They are also able to access more data right at the machine, including manuals, tutorials, and live support from experts at a remote location,” says Browning.
He believes IoT will continue to play a role in the move from preventive maintenance to predictive maintenance as data flows, maintenance histories, and predictive algorithms help interpret when and why things will break. “This will help us understand more variables than what alarms coming off the machine can tell us now,” Browning explains. In the coming years, he expects to see more use of augmented reality to add digital data to a technician’s line of sight in the physical world—giving them more information and context as they work.
Designed to increase asset reliability and availability, APM impacts the future of EAM. According to Newton, innovative companies optimize asset management with advanced analytics, predictive modeling, and machine learning. “These technologies provide real results—extending the asset life cycle, reducing unplanned downtime, and increasing overall return on assets.”
The Industrial Internet of Things plays a role in APM by expanding information access across all operations. With this new wealth of data, Newton believes a more holistic APM program is possible whereby asset lifecycles can be managed within the context of operations lifecycles. “This strategy could mean building on the capability of an advanced EAM system by adding analytics or digitizing the workforce with mobile operator rounds or augmented reality.” By adopting APM in alignment with an industrial software platform, Newton believes customers can reduce unscheduled downtime, decrease maintenance costs, and ultimately maximize their return on capital.
EAM Solutions
The latest version of AVEVA’s Enterprise Asset Management was released in February 2018 with full Oracle 12c support. It targets industries like oil and gas, chemical manufacturing, power generation and transmission, water and wastewater treatment, and mining minerals and metals. It offers the ability to forecast the details of asset-related inventory including usage, safety stock levels, quantity, and value and replenishment lead times. According to Newton, price is dependent on installation size and complexity.
Released in 1986, Fluke offers eMaint CMMS, a full-featured CMMS solution with a flexible interface, user-defined fields and layouts, and user roles and rights. It is configurable to allow systems to grow and change with the maintenance team, facility, or plant. eMaint CMMS integrates with Fluke tools and sensors. A free trial is available, and packages range from $33 to $120 per use per month, says Perry.
IBM Maximo is a comprehensive solution for managing physical assets on a common platform. It maintains all asset types, checks asset health in real-time, and streamlines global operations. Maximo has over 3,000 clients across all asset-intensive industries. It offers specialized solutions for industries like aviation, life sciences, nuclear power, oil and gas, transportation, and utilities.
IFS Applications 10 for EAM was released in May 2018. It targets middle markets to enterprise-level asset intensive industries, attractive to both single site and multinational, multi-site operators. With full asset lifecycle support, it includes built-in standard functionality for the IoT, full suite touchscreen support to support mobile devices, and native functionality for user-configurable visual analytics. IFS Applications 10 for EAM is available as a perpetual license on a named user basis or subscription model.
Released in October 2017, Infor EAM targets asset intensive industries of all sizes. It offers concepts in deployment like support for SaaS in the multi-tenant or single tenant capacity, deployment in the on-premise model, and hybrid installations. Other capabilities include an Infor mobile solution, linear asset management, incorporation of spatial views, and basic-to-advanced reliability centered management. Infor EAM built out specific capabilities to support ISO 55000 standards and contributed to several customer successes in becoming ISO 55000 certified.
The Mainsaver Asset Management Software program consists of three major components; Mainsaver Connect, Mainsaver Core, and Mainsaver API. Mainsaver Core contains the core EAM functionality with three primary components; maintenance, materials, and purchasing. Developed, tested, and updated over the past 30 years, Mainsaver Core includes over 1,400 basic functions with user selected parameters that allow flexibility to match company’s maintenance and business practices.
Managing Road Networks
The São Paulo State Transport Agency (ARTESP) regulates and supervises public transportation services for the Brazilian State of São Paulo. 20 private contractors provide services for 30 state highways, covering 6,400 kilometers of road and serving 20 million people in 271 cities. ARTESP’s primary functions are to ensure that traffic flows smoothly, motorists are safe from hazards, and motorists can count on fast assistance from contracted partners at all times.
ARTESP’s private contractors are responsible for day-to-day road maintenance, toll collection, and responding to traffic accidents. However, contractors often differed in how they organized data reports and responded to problems. The inconsistency hindered ARTESP’s capability to manage the contracts proactively and risked jeopardizing road quality.
Without a clear view of traffic and road conditions, it was challenging for ARTESP to prioritize highway maintenance and management activities, potentially causing delays to inspection activities. Giovanni Pengue Filho, general director, ARTESP, explains, “inspectors had to laboriously identify road hazards through physical inspections, and clerks spent hours pouring over accident reports to find correlations between service issues and accidents. This manual effort was increasingly time-consuming and prone to human error.”
To increase safety and efficiency and to shorten average journey times, ARTESP sought a better method to understand the changing road conditions and traffic flows. The company selected IBM Premier Business Partner Magna Sistemas Consultoria S/A to assist in implementing the IBM Intelligent Operations Center and IBM Maximo Asset Management solutions. Together, the two organizations built an information center that equips the agency and its contractors with a customizable dashboard that provides real-time visibility of road and traffic conditions across the state.
ARTESP’s road inspectors were previously required to conduct physical road assessments. With IBM’s Maximo, a customizable dashboard receives sensor-derived data and provides the agency and its concessionaires with a real-time view of roads in their jurisdiction including information about current weather, traffic conditions, and accidents.
“IBM Maximo enables us to prioritize repairs and create better and safer conditions for road users,” says Filho.The solution helps ARTESP and its contractors to correlate road damage with accidents while gaining a better understanding of where to invest maintenance time and effort to produce the greatest impact on road safety.
Filho offers, “a pothole described by a road inspector as small one day might become much larger and much more dangerous. With IBM Intelligent Operation Center, we can now oversee roads in near-real-time and act immediately, prioritizing repairs and diverting traffic if necessary.”
The solution helps ARTESP to prioritize highway maintenance-based feedback from roused sensors, support smarter decision-making for contractors through analytical capabilities, and accelerate identification of traffic issues from hours to minutes. With IBM’s EAM solution, ARTESP proactively manages a vast road network and keeps drivers safe with intelligent analytics.
“The IBM solution has given us a smarter way to manage our infrastructure and understand how it affects the efficiency and safety of the state road network,” says Filho. “As we gather more data, we are building up a rich store of information that will guide our future investment decisions and improve the way we manage future incidents on our roads. Ultimately, the IBM solution is helping us to use public money more efficiently and to improve both the speed and safety of travel on the state road network.”
Smart Asset Management
By supporting the IoT, EAM solutions provide near, real-time visibility into industrial assets across multiple sites. As more companies use connected devices to record work and EAM data, the IoT is expected to transform EAM preventative maintenance into predictive maintenance. SW
May2018, Software Magazine
