Enterprise Asset Management
EAM systems are a combination of software, processes and data used to maintain and control operational assets and equipment. The aim is to optimize the quality and utilization of assets throughout their lifecycle, which can help increase productivity uptime and lower operational costs.
“Enterprise” represents the scope of assets across an organization’s departments, facilities, locations, and supporting business functions like project management, maintenance, MRO supply chain, finance, etc. The assets referred to in EAM are physical: examples of this are machinery, utilities, buildings, plants, ships, vehicles, and moving equipment. Effective asset management is required in asset intensive industries and it needs to be carefully planned and executed in order to achieve positive results.
This is where the EAM software steps in.
EAM Software
EAM, or enterprise asset management software, provides a holistic view of an organization’s physical assets and infrastructure throughout their entire lifecycle, from design, procurement, commission, through to operation, maintenance, disposal, and replacement.
It is the primary technology tool organizations use to do enterprise asset management. It is the central repository for all of the organization’s asset management data.
MRO supply chain management is essential in EAM because materials and components must be secured for building, maintaining or repairing assets. Most EAM software has features for inventory management, materials management and procurement. Demand planning tools can help with forecasting.
Asset lifecycle management is another common EAM software feature. It encompasses the major stages of an asset’s life, from initial design to planning its installation — or construction, if it’s a building or other infrastructure — warranty management, decommissioning and disposal.
EAM software gives you a wide range of management options such as:
- Work Order Management – This will help you diagnose problems and issues, helping you quickly assign specific technicians to the job. Schedule and organize work orders for employees and contractors, and keep track of upcoming work.
- Asset Lifecycle Management – Allows you to hold all your asset data and documentation in your hands, no matter where you are in the asset’s life cycle.
- MRO Materials Management – Helps you control costs with full oversight into inventory procurement and management. Gives you the opportunity to understand the demand for materials at your facility and manage those parts as needed.
- Financial Management – Helps a company gather data on work order costs, and integrates with ERP software to help you manage accounting and spending on a project- by-project basis.
- Service Contract Management – Gives you the ability to control compliance and spending at every turn of the contract lifecycle. You’ll be able to create and manage contracts, as well as service agreements with customers, employees, contractors, vendors, and partners.
- Reporting & Analytics – Allows you to analyze a company’s asset performance to spot issues before they become bigger problems. Collect key performance indicators (KPIs) for your entire facility to make better business decisions.
- Labor Management – Manage assessment, training, and certification for employees and contractors responsible for asset management in your organization.
Why Enterprise Asset Management Is Important
Enterprise asset management is vital for all organizations. EAM is important because it gives organizations the capabilities to track, manage, assess, and optimize asset quality and reliability. There are no limits as it pertains to assets, an organization can have dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions of assets. Due to this, a system is needed to ensure assets are being optimized. These companies rely on their assets and need systems in place to ensure assets are always performing at their highest levels.
Assets can refer to a wide range of different components, which include but are not limited to railroads, pipelines, manufacturing equipment, transportation fleets, windmills, and include virtually any piece of equipment needed to sustain production, services and operations. EAM best practices help maintenance teams gain greater control of complex environments to:
- Centralize Asset Information – EAM software tells maintenance managers where an asset is, what it needs, who can work on it and when. It automates critical asset management workflows and makes them accessible and auditable.
- Monitoring Assets – AI-powered remote monitoring delivers actionable insight into current and expected states of assets. It aggregates data across departments and information silos, allowing for fewer, more accurate alerts and enhanced decision-making.
- Resolving Problems Before They Exist – Enterprise asset management software supports preventive capabilities to maintain equipment for stable, continuous operations. It helps ensure warranty compliance and preempt issues that disrupt production.
- Asset Utilization – Historical and real-time data collected from IoT devices and analytical and diagnostic tools help extend the availability, reliability and usable life of physical assets.
- Asset Management & Infrastructure – Equipment life cycles are extended through more informed maintenance strategies and by embedding risk management into business processes to improve return on investment.
- Maintenance Management – IoT, AI and analytics enhance equipment maintenance practices. Asset tracking and traceability meet increasingly complex environmental, health and safety requirements.
- Consolidating Operational Applications – EAM helps establish a single technology system to manage virtually all asset types. Processes are unified and standardized for wide-ranging asset functions across an enterprise.
Key Features Of EAM
Learn how EAM can help you manage assets efficiently.
- Work Management – Centrally manage planned and unplanned work, from initial request through completion and including the recording of actuals.
- Planning And Scheduling – Graphically view work orders and preventive maintenance schedules on a Gantt chart. Intuitively navigate work order management to help dispatchers manage task and work dependencies.
- Supply Chain Management – Assets and the materials used to maintain them are part of the supply chain. Effective solutions should incorporate IoT technologies that help integrate EAM with supply chain management systems.
- Maintenance Phases – Move from corrective maintenance, when repairs are made after a problem occurs, to preventive maintenance (using scheduled repairs) to predictive maintenance, repairs made because data indicates imminent failure.
- Flexibility – Accomplish more from reading meters to capturing electronic signatures to using barcodes and RFID. Take advantage of smartphone capabilities such as photos and voice-to-text to capture information and deliver tools, documentation and collaboration.
- Analytics – Run extended and enhanced analytics, often with AI technology, allowing an organization to gain operational insights. Optimization models can be used to automate planning, scheduling and work management processes based on data analysis.
- Health And Safety – Document and report environmental, health, and safety concerns. Helps a company reduce risk by utilizing incident analysis, corrective action traceability, and process change management.
- Cloud – Support SaaS, cloud-based deployment or hybrid cloud deployment to control costs, improve system flexibility and decrease dependency on IT.
EAM is Right for All Asset-Intensive Industries
- Energy And Utilities – Transmission and distribution of water, wastewater, gas and electric power requires capabilities for linear assets such as pipelines or powerlines. These systems also need to accommodate complex crew scheduling and consider geospatial information from remote assets.
- Manufacturing – Manufacturing includes an array of sectors: automotive, aerospace, defense, electronics, industrial products, consumer products and more. In these contexts, EAM systems become part of overall process management methodologies such as Lean Six Sigma and complement product lifecycle management requirements.
- Mining, Chemicals, And Petroleum – These industries place an emphasis on integrating safety, reliability, compliance and performance into workflows. EAM systems are needed to reduce costs by standardizing and improving maintenance practices and fostering collaboration.
- Transportation – The focus for these applications is providing details about assets and inventory that enable a service or logistic function. Fuel management, driver logs, spare parts, bay schedules and other data are critical to maintaining rail, road and air traffic operations.
- Healthcare – Healthcare EAM solutions must manage complex relationships between facilities and equipment readiness. They track and locate critical assets, monitor facility conditions, comply with reporting requirements and integrate with operational health information systems.
- Life Sciences – These systems monitor, track and manage equipment, facilities and mobile assets. Management of standards, traceability and e-signature is critical. Documentation packages are used to help meet and validate complex regulatory requirements.
- Nuclear Power – Nuclear organizations stress work and asset management to support regulations through detailed state management, workflows, escalations and e-signature. Solutions consider stringent regulatory compliance for health, safety and security.
SwainSmith helps organizations get the most out of their EAM software system. Our EAM Content Solutions can get your data driving business decisions. If we can help solve your EAM information challenges, please send us an email at info@swainsmith.com. Thanks for reading.