Aspire to Simplify Your Asset and Infrastructure Lifecycle Strategy

Platform-Based Asset Management Practices Must Be Embraced to Plan with Foresight and Operate with Scalable Efficiencies, Finds Frost & Sullivan

The industrial market (process, discrete and hybrids) has traditionally managed its plants, assets and systems in siloes. The challenge exacerbates as 25 percent of a total 60 billion connected assets are expected to be housed within industrial environments. More connectivity provides more data, but siloed/broken asset management strategies challenge a customer’s ability to operate efficiently at scale. The focus has always been placed on the operations and maintenance part of the asset management value chain. This has often resulted in several layers of inefficiency and placed undue stress on the system. This practice is gradually changing, with companies beginning to acknowledge the importance of smarter design, planning, building and commissioning in optimizing enterprise-wide asset performance. The industry should simplify and implement an integrated asset performance optimization strategy. Digitizing the end-to-end asset utilization process on a single platform (from engineering to design, build and commission, to operations, maintenance and decommissioning) could potentially increase an organization’s asset performance productivity by at least 10 percent.

Frost & Sullivan’s latest thought leadership paper, Optimize Asset and Infrastructure Life Cycle—Plan, Build, and Operate Efficiently at Scale, details the imperative to change and practical ways in which end users can simplify and drive responsive asset management strategies. The paper further expounds on the relationship between asset performance and operations. In addition to the key imperatives, customers will also understand the benefits of embracing a platform approach to asset performance management.

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“With the emergence of Industrial IoT, Industry 4.0, and convergence of digital technologies, customers across industrial markets are keen to connect, predict, and optimize asset performance. However, present-day information siloes and the broken nature of asset management restrain customers from unlocking efficiencies,” said Ram Ramasamy, industry director at Frost & Sullivan. “Future asset management solutions are likely to leverage data to drive actionable insights and align the insights with business outcomes. The market has a number of asset performance management solutions, but the key is to partner with a solution provider that can modularize monolithic approaches while integrating various information siloes on one integrated platform.”

“As a SaaS subsidiary of Black & Veatch, Atonix Digital builds upon 20-plus years of utility infrastructure expertise by offering software which can be implemented across the asset performance value chain. Powered by their ASSET360 cloud-based platform, the individual products help customers improve the reliability and efficiency of their assets across every aspect of the value chain, thereby delivering rapid RoI,” added Matt Kirchner, director of product management and customer success at Atonix Digital. “The platform aggregates data and then allows the data to decide the mathematical model to be leveraged, rather than the force-fit approach pursued by peers.”

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Overall, industries are widening their focus from operations and maintenance to design, plan, build and commission as they recognize the long-term benefits of digitalizing the asset management processes. Customers embracing the integrated digital platform can:

• Plan Smarter: Visibility into the condition, risk, criticality, and age of various asset classes will help decrease the enterprise’s exposure to asset vulnerabilities and drive planning with foresight. It also facilitates the automation of decision-making by astutely committing capital based on the true condition of assets.
• Build Faster: Stakeholder collaboration and information sharing are vital to success in the building and commissioning stage. This is where maximum inefficiencies emerge. Workflow automation, collaboration, and role-based administration reduce costs and risks while shortening the time to market.
• Operate Efficiently: Diversity, complexity, and varying reliability of asset landscapes put customers in a unique position to balance the trade-offs. Leveraging digital technologies, an integrated digital asset management platform aids rapid resolution of issues.

It is important to not overlook the strategic nature and importance of managing a complex asset and infrastructure landscape in the journey to digital excellence. An integrated digital strategy program starts with digitization (connecting assets), digitalization (making sense of data collected from various assets) and, ultimately, digital transformation (driving new revenues from existing assets). Asset performance management is a lifeline for industries. Predicting its performance will help companies time travel with foresight and optimize at enterprise-scale efficiencies.

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