Everything You Need To Know About Asset Performance Management Solutions (FAQs)
What Are Asset Performance Management Solutions?
Asset Performance Management (APM) solutions proactively monitor enterprise assets to identify, prioritize, and remediate any issues that arise, in real-time. They enable organizations to improve the efficiency, availability, reliability, and longevity of their assets throughout each asset’s entire lifecycle—from planning and acquisition all the way through until the asset is decommissioned. These assets could be anything that the company owns and uses in its daily operations—both physical and logical—but APM tools are most commonly used to manage software, technology, physical infrastructure, equipment, and vehicles. They’re becoming increasingly popular amongst asset-intensive industries such as manufacturing, mining, energy, transportation, and utilities.
To achieve this, APM tools offer remote monitoring, data capture and visualization, AI-powered analytics, and predictive maintenance—all of which come together to monitor and forecast the health and performance of enterprise assets.
By implementing an asset performance management tool, organizations can reduce downtime, remediate small issues before they escalate into equipment or system failures, reduce maintenance costs by identifying issues early on, identify underperforming assets, and extend the life of their assets. Together, these benefits lead to optimized performance and improved profitability.
What Are The Benefits Of Asset Performance Management?
There are several key benefits to implementing as asset performance management solution. Firstly, it helps you reduce unplanned maintenance and downtime. APM solutions collect data on how your organization is using its assets over time. They then use this data to predict future asset failure, which enables you to schedule maintenance. This decreases the likelihood of a complete failure or breakdown that could lead to unplanned maintenance and leads us directly onto our second benefit—reduced maintenance costs.
By proactively monitoring the health and performance of your assets, you can identify and remediate issues early on and carry out remediation actions based on data-driven decisions. This means that you’re more likely to get the fix right the first time around, helping you to avoid carrying out unnecessary—and expensive—maintenance.
Thirdly, asset performance management can help you improve the reliability of your assets. Using pattern recognition and predictive analytics, APM software can analyze metrics such as asset longevity, uptime, and repair times. It can then use this data to influence key maintenance decisions that will help reduce the likelihood of an asset failing. Additionally, by providing you with a holistic, centralized view or your assets, APM tools enable you to manage your assets at an organizational level, rather than individually or departmentally. This means that if an asset does fail in one area of the organization, you’ll have the visibility to see whether you can replace it with another from somewhere else to help avoid disruptions.
Finally, using an APM solution can help you improve your operational efficiency by providing you with continuous, real-time data into asset usage and performance.
What Features Should You Look For In An Asset Performance Management Solution?
There are a few key features that you should look out for when comparing asset performance management solutions:
- Condition Monitoring: Your APM solution should offer real-time monitoring capabilities that track the current condition of your assets. This should include integrations with sensors and IoT devices that enable the solution to collect data on asset health.
- Asset Health Assessment: All strong APM tools should assess the overall health and performance of individual assets or groups of assets. This involves carrying out historical data analysis to identify patterns and trends in asset behavior, and using predictive analytics to identify potential issues before they result in failures.
- Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM): By utilizing RCM methodologies, your APM tool can help you optimize maintenance strategies based on risk, criticality, and performance, and prioritize maintenance activities to focus resources on your most critical assets.
- Asset Lifecycle Management: Your solution should offer comprehensive tracking of all your assets throughout their lifecycle, from installation to retirement.
- Data Analytics and Reporting: You should be able to access customizable reporting tools to generate performance metrics, KPIs, and trend analysis.
- Integration Capabilities: Your APM tool should offer APIs for seamless integration with third-party applications and data sources, including the existing enterprise systems you’re using such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS).
- User-friendly Interface: Like any type of software, there’s no point investing in a great APM solution if it’s simply too difficult for you to navigate and manage. Look for a solution with an intuitive and user-friendly interface for easy navigation and quick adoption, and dashboards that provide a comprehensive, accessible view of asset performance. If your team works remotely, make sure your chosen APM solution has a mobile applications or responsive interface for remote access to APM data.
- Security and Compliance: Your chosen solution should offer robust security features to protect sensitive asset data, and it needs to comply with any industry regulations and standards relevant to your organization.
- Scalability: Depending on the current size of your organization and your plans for growth, you may need an APM solution that can accommodate growing numbers of assets and users, and that offers support for multi-site and global deployments.