Transform your business with intelligent enterprise asset management

The critical role of enterprise asset management in an interconnected, autonomous world.

Across almost every asset-intensive industry — such as energy and utilities, oil and gas, manufacturing or transportation — organizations are challenged with how to maximize asset value throughout their lifecycle. To further complicate matters, technology infrastructures running assets are tremendously complex, typically running applications and data in silos that can limit the effectiveness of cross-organizational operations and efficiencies.

Asset performance and the quality of an organization’s products and services are impacted by the reliability of the asset or equipment. As a result, the increased need for asset maintenance and management can have a direct impact on customer satisfaction. In fact, in a recent survey of asset managers worldwide, more than 75% of respondents cited system reliability as the fundamental reason to invest in enterprise asset management (EAM). This dynamic applies to processes as well. Production, maintenance or service processes age and erode, so end goods or service outputs might not meet the quality standards that were originally specified.

Despite these challenges, your organization’s products or services must constantly evolve to meet customer demands such as increased global commoditization and competition, compliance with industry and government regulations, green and sustainable operations, health and safety in the workplace, and higher costs of doing business.

The ability to adapt to change by improving operations can mean the difference between survival and extinction. Asset management, driven by cognitive insights from IoT data, can have a significant impact. When this framework is in place, you can optimize production and service systems within each site. As a result, your business can wield greater control of the complex asset environments necessary for bottom-line results.

AI tools deliver visibility and actionable insights for today’s dispersed assets.

As you raise the importance, risk, quantity, or cost of corporate, critical, or capital assets, you will often see a corresponding rise in management’s interest to maintain control and visibility of these assets. And with IoT, cloud and AI, there are more opportunities than ever to collect, consolidate and analyze asset information that helps fine-tune performance.

The amount of data around asset management processes has exploded and is invaluable, but teams need to be able to analyze the data to make use of it. By leveraging an EAM system with AI to visually inspect gas pipelines, rail tracks, bridges and tunnels, AI guides technicians as they conduct complex repairs and provides maintenance supervisors real-time visibility into the health and safety of their technicians. Domain expertise is incorporated in the form of data to train AI models. These capabilities improve the ability to avoid unscheduled downtime, improve first-time fix rate, and reduce safety incidents.

How EAM can transform your business

Finally, an intuitive user experience with easy navigation and features can streamline work processes for increased productivity and reduce the need for user training. The ability to geographically visualize the location of work and assets on a map can also help increase workforce efficiency and the quality of customer service.

Maximize asset value to grow your business.

There are petabytes of data generated by intelligent, interconnected and autonomous systems. When combined with AI tools that provide actionable insight, you have the potential to improve every function within an organization, i.e. operations, engineering, quality, reliability and maintenance. With integrated visibility, control and automation across business and technology assets, you can achieve objectives and maximize the value of all assets supporting the operation.

Visibility provides your organization:

• An enterprise-wide view of asset details and processes across the organization
• The ability to respond faster and make better decisions

With better control of assets and asset-related data, your company can:

• Extend asset life, reduce inventory costs and control
• Increase governance and reduce operational risk
• Improve health, safety, and security

Increased automation allows your business to:

• Build agility and flexibility into operations
• Improve asset use with proactive asset management and consolidation of systems
• Enhance operational capabilities by automating workflow and improving inventory data reliability

Growing revenue through increased asset availability and reliability

Increased asset availability and reliability help improve service delivery and grow revenue. As your organization tunes its supply chains to meet demand, asset and equipment uptime and availability must align to these schedules, especially as asset management has a direct impact on profitability.

Whether a good is a hard asset, such as an engine component, or a service delivered to a customer, top-line revenue can be affected if your company doesn’t deliver. Cost control and efficiencies created by better managing inventory and other support services can affect your bottom-line revenue, too. With EAM software, you can intervene in a more timely fashion and improve productivity, reduce materials use, and decrease the cost of doing business.

Another significant challenge is to effectively balance the lowest operational cost with the utilization loads of your asset portfolios. As a result, many organizations commonly overstock equipment and fleets to make sure that they always have the assets they need. Other companies stockpile spares to shorten repair times by eliminating delays. Each of these “insurance policies” comes with high premiums associated with constant upkeep, refurbishment and financial carrying costs that rarely cease.

These strategies can increase, rather than decrease your costs. Using EAM helps control or eliminate overstocking and stockpiling and can also help reduce your fixed capital investment, contributing positive bottom-line results.

Consider that businesses using EAM see:

From capturing and analyzing data to predictive maintenance.

IBM Maximo enterprise asset management software helps you make smarter decisions about asset management by augmenting IoT data with powerful cognitive insights driven by AI. IBM Maximo EAM provides the capabilities for better managing physical infrastructure assets so you can make better decisions around all aspects of asset management and get insights that deliver ongoing value for your organization.

IBM Maximo Application Suite

IBM Maximo Application Suite combines monitoring, maintenance, and reliability applications into a single integrated platform. With expanded access to CMMS, EAM and asset performance management applications, your teams can reach across your business units to unify operations and maintain business continuity, even under rapidly changing or disruptive conditions.

The suite helps analyze asset data with AI to provide insights that help you make better decisions, enhance efficiency, perform preventative maintenance, and maximize investment in physical assets.

Maximo Application Suite offers key capabilities
that include:

An integrated suite
of applications

Simplified licensing including
single contract and pricing metric

Hybrid-cloud
deployment

A comprehensive view
of your assets

The Maximo Application Suite builds on IBM’s decades of leadership in the asset and operations management space, providing a closed-loop model from capturing and analyzing data to enabling prescriptive maintenance actions. It leverages IBM’s deep commitment to data science and AI at enterprise scale, as well as its recognized leadership in IoT platform, hybrid cloud, security and now digital twin technology.

IBM Maximo works for complex industries.

IBM Maximo captures decades of development work in partnership with the world’s largest, most demanding customers who are leaders in complex industries, creating a range of industry-specific solutions for asset-intensive enterprises. Maximo delivers increased integration bringing together both OT data (from sensors, PLCs, DCS, SCADA systems) and IT data (from MES, ERP systems). However, this integration has different impacts on different functions such as operations, engineering, quality, reliability, and maintenance. The result is world-class software options that address the special needs of industries.

Utilities

Provides special capabilities for linear assets, configuration management and crew schedule or dispatching based on geospatial visual management tools. Suitable for transmission and distribution in water and wastewater, gas and electric power.

Oil and gas, mining and metals

Focuses on operational excellence by integrating safety, reliability, compliance and performance into work management. Reduces costs through standardization, collaboration and the adoption of better operational practices.

Manufacturing

Helps industries such as automotive, aerospace and defense, electronics or industrial products, food and beverage, or consumer products manage all their assets and maintenance activities. Uses concepts such as proper Lean Six Sigma terminology and complements product lifecycle management requirements.

Life sciences

Helps monitor, track and manage equipment, facilities, mobile and IT-enabled assets. Integrates with IBM Maximo Calibration to manage tools, traceability and management of e-signature and gold standards. Documentation packages help meet complex compliance requirements from the FDA and provide support in validation projects.

Healthcare

Helps manage the complex relationship between facilities and equipment readiness. Tracks and locates critical assets, monitors facility conditions, complies with reporting requirements and integrates with operational health information systems.

Nuclear power

Helps nuclear organizations manage work and asset management regulations through detailed state management, workflows, escalations and e-signature. Suitable for management of activities within stringent regulatory environments due to compliance, health, safety and security.

Transportation

Provides detailed asset configuration management, fuel management, drivers’ logs and bay scheduling tools to help improve the availability and use of critical transportation assets in organizations operating rail, road and air traffic or logistics.

Service providers

Helps manage profitability and SLAs by linking customer service commitments with field teams delivering services. Related service management activities for multiple customers are managed in a single cloud-based deployed instance accessible by an Android or Apple device.

Civil infrastructure

Helps operators safely monitor, manage and maintain infrastructure assets, predict failures, and prioritize repairs using visual inspection, remote monitoring, predictive maintenance and more.

Learn why Maximo is the choice among operations professionals.

Organizations around the world — all with diverse requirements — trust Maximo with their enterprise asset management. Together, with our ecosystem of IBM Business Partners, clients can get the help they need to reduce downtime and costs, unify asset management processes,  and optimize maintenance operations. Here are a few of their stories.

Civil infrastructure

Learn how Sund & Baelt is using IBM Maximo to manage, monitor and maintain their infrastructure.

Industrial

Watch how Sandvik is putting IoT and AI to work underground to reduce the impact of production breakdowns.

Energy and utilities

See how Oncor uses predictive maintenance to reduce the volume and impact of energy outages.