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New Aberdeen study says asset management initiatives are maturing The global economic downturn has put additional pressure on asset intensive companies to pull more value from their existing assets. Increasingly these companies view asset management as a competitive advantage, and are focused on leveraging advanced asset management capabilities such as reliability centered maintenance (RCM), condition based maintenance (CBM), analytics and asset performance monitoring. "People are starting to tap into real-time data," says Mehul Shah, research analyst at Aberdeen Group. "Best-in-class companies increasingly have access to information about the condition of their assets in real time, and can make decisions based on that data." A new study from Aberdeen, "Asset Performance Management: Driving Excellence through a Reliability Approach in Real Time," evaluated and classified manufactures based on three key performance indicators: overall equipment effectiveness, complete and on-time shipments, and unscheduled asset downtime. Best-in-class companies in the study achieved 89% overall equipment effectiveness, 97% complete and on-time shipments, and just 2% unscheduled asset downtime. According to Aberdeen, top performing companies are two times more likely to adopt a risk-based approach to assess the health of an asset, four times more likely to establish centers of excellence to promote best practices across the enterprise, and six times more likely to provide on-demand asset lifecycle information to maintenance and production employees. "The main goal of asset performance management is to synchronize operations, maintenance, IT, and corporate goals to improve profitability and shareholder value. This requires visibility into all aspects of the asset lifecycle in addition to having real-time information about the asset condition," Shah says. "Best-in-class companies are leveraging dashboards, analytics, risk management, and remote monitoring devices to ensure that asset and production information is available to their employees and is integrated with business systems to enable timely and informed decisions." Those companies also established strategies to increase collaboration between the production and maintenance departments. "APM is not only focused on maintenance, but also on how maintenance and operations interact to optimize both functional areas," Shah says. "Companies are taking a broader and higher-level approach to figure out how they can make those groups work together toward common goals. "If you have a senior-level executive responsible for the success of the initiative, that goes a long way in making sure it is successful," Shah adds. "If engineering and maintenance are evaluated based on common goals, it is easier to achieve that collaboration. The traditional walls between departments begin to fall down." There were a number of key technology components that helped companies improve their asset management programs. Best-in-class companies are more likely to adopt asset performance management (APM), enterprise manufacturing intelligence and business intelligence solutions. They were two times as likely to adopt a mobile/remote monitoring solution as other companies. These companies are able to successfully implement advanced asset management strategies such as RCM and CBM through the use of performance monitoring tools, automated workflows, analytics, dashboards, remote monitoring, and risk management tools. They are also more likely to implement Master Data Management (MDM) tools to manage data from engineering, maintenance, operations, and suppliers, providing them with on-demand information about the complete asset lifecycle. It's important for companies to establish standardized but flexible processes across their facilities for managing assets. To do this, companies must capture best practices to optimize asset performance across facilities, and dynamically update and implement them. "If a new process is established but not updated, it can be a bottleneck," Shah says. "These top companies understand that they have to capture those best practices, but as they change those changes must be included within standard operating procedures." According to Shah, companies are increasingly aligning their asset performance metrics with their financial metrics in an effort to understand how operations and maintenance area affecting their overall performance and shareholder value. "These companies are connecting the performance on the plant floor with the impact that has on financials," Shah says. Aberdeen recommends that companies: * Establish support from the executive management for asset performance strategies across the enterprise. * Invest in Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) and Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) to proactively monitor and manage asset performance. * Invest in analytics to truly understand the value of asset and production data and enable effective decisions. * Align operations performance to financial and corporate performance by integrating EAM solutions with business solutions such as Business Intelligence (BI) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).
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