We witnessed the launch of IoT and Industry 4.0, and these unprecedented business transformation times are proving pivotal for asset-intensive businesses. The new digitally-driven industrial revolution provides promising solutions by Remote Asset Management Software to the many challenges faced by present systems.
Smart industries seek newer and advanced methods to improve business efficiency by boosting asset uptime, reliability, and operational performance. Therefore, the strategies that businesses put in place should provide cost savings and focus on efficiency improvement in operations and maintenance.
Every business looking to transition from a traditional system to industry 4.0 should ramp up its digital transformation strategy by seeking smart asset management systems. The evidence is in the statistics – the global fixed asset management software market is predicted to grow to $ 5.2 billion in 2024 from a mere $3 billion in 2019.
What exactly is asset management in manufacturing?
Generally, asset management talks about operating, maintaining, developing, and selling assets efficiently and cost-effectively.
Every manufacturing company has some form of assets that it has to keep, maintain and track. Regardless of the type of asset – a pickaxe or a robot – assets are the fundamental parts of a manufacturing unit. Asset management requires proper planning, time management, maintenance planning, and money.
Manufacturing asset management aims to increase asset efficiency, reduce unplanned downtime, reduce repair frequency and costs, and improve compliance and productivity.
A streamlined asset management system and digitization allow businesses to operate efficiently and understand the production chain deeper.
Does your organization need asset management?
Although there are many proven benefits of having an asset management system, some organizations are still skeptical about the need for an advanced asset management system. Many manufacturing companies are under the wrong impression that having an ERP system makes an asset management system redundant. But that’s not the case.
Regardless of how advanced your ERP is, it still doesn’t have all the necessary tools and features that can assist you in enhanced asset management. However, with a dedicated system designed to manage an organization’s tangible assets from one place, companies can gain an in-depth understanding of the effective usage of their assets.
Moreover, it is also possible to bring into the fold inventory and logistics with the latest systems, which helps you keep real-time track of your assets.
If you are still not sure if your organization needs an asset management system, answer yourself if you want:
- To track and manage equipment and inventory.
- To predict future maintenance needs and budget the costs.
- Proactively schedule repair and maintenance to minimize costs
- Track the current and historical value of assets
- Reduce equipment downtime due to failure or maintenance issues
- Effective equipment assignment to teams
What makes an Asset Management system effective?
An organization-wide asset management system should be flexible enough to accommodate all the information a business needs and not be confined to a certain limit.
The core functions of an asset management system include,
- Registering all the tangible assets in an organization and recording their parameters
- Maintaining records and documentation of all assets
- Help asset allocation planning by visually mapping assets
- Manage the service plan and take up predictive and preventive maintenance plans
- Track real-time data about the assets and inventory
- Report on the performance of assets in real-time.
The primary purpose of an asset management system should be to keep the non-productive time down, avoid non-scheduled downtimes, help boost productivity, increase sales, and keep the asset-turnover ratio at the preferred level.
How can your organization benefit from an Asset Management System?
An innovative asset management system delivers immense benefits to businesses. Let’s look at a few benefits here:
1. Help Businesses Take Data-based Informed Decisions
Ideally, business decisions should be taken based on hard facts and not on a whim. Smart assets gather data and send it to the centralized repository, which helps businesses analyze and make informed decisions based on the evidence.
When smart asset management is employed by manufacturing businesses, the scope for human error is eliminated. Moreover, real-time data is being collected from remote locations as well. This data is then analyzed for taking operational and strategic business decisions.
Smart asset management also helps develop reports about the current status of the assets and analyze depreciation, maintenance, repair, and replacement costs. Better and thorough reporting helps businesses make better decisions and aids in future planning.
2. Monitor and Track Manufacturing Assets
For an asset-intensive industry, having remote asset management software that can keep track of different assets is important. Every asset – large machinery or small tools – is a critical element in the manufacturing unit. And as such should be tracked, monitored, and evaluated regularly.
With digital sensors, you can create digital replicas of the asset to easily track the temperature, downtime, productivity, and idle time. With Barcodes, beacons, RFID tags, and QR codes, it is possible to accurately identify the location and condition of the tools and machinery even from remote locations.
By bringing together such collected data and aligning it with the training schedule, it is possible to enhance operational efficiency and effective equipment assignment for production runs.
3. Eliminate Unplanned Asset Downtime
Since production depends on the assets, reducing downtime goes a long way in enhancing productivity and ROI.
Smart assets help businesses understand and get an insight into the health of the machinery. By accurately understanding the real-time health of the equipment, it is possible to predict when the asset could break down or require repairs. When such breakdowns happen at unexpected times, it increases the costs of running the production.
The primary focus of asset management lies in the preventive and predictive maintenance of assets. However, proactive maintenance is possible only when accurate and valuable information about the asset’s health.
4. Extend the Life of Assets
Predictive maintenance helps you increase the life of assets. Identifying equipment issues before outright failure boosts productivity and reduces costs associated with equipment failure, loss of person-hours due to idle time, and impacts safety.
With smart asset management, you can plan your staff training and work orders based on predictive maintenance and repairs.
With predictive maintenance, you can plan your work schedule based on the inspections and repairs. But unfortunately, you’ll face unpredictable machine downtime without quality machine health data.
When you track the assets in real-time, you can easily identify whether the machinery is overworked or underworked. You’ll also know if the machine is working optimally or requires repairs. You can also understand staffing and training needs.
One of the major benefits of smart asset tracking is managing, assessing, and increasing the efficiency and life of the asset.
5. Identify Gaps in Production Line
With the information provided by the smart assets, it is possible to understand your production line and asset utilization better.
The manufacturing unit will be better equipped to identify gaps, pain points, equipment shortages, and lack of training in equipment handling. With this information, business operations can be fine-tuned to boost productivity and operational efficiency.
Regardless of how expansive or small, your manufacturing unit is, you can always transform it into a smart factory with advanced asset management software. So get one on board, and become the factory of tomorrow.