Your business depends on a host of physical assets to maintain quality, consistency, and continuity. Therefore, the processes, procedures, and personnel dedicated to the upkeep of these assets also play a central role in your organization’s success. These elements all come together to form your asset management program.
Why asset management is important for your maintenance team
An asset management program is a structured approach to managing physical assets through their lifecycle. including critical assets like manufacturing equipment, machinery, vehicles, facilities, and infrastructure. Responsibility for carrying out asset management programs typically falls on maintenance teams.
Together, facilities managers and maintenance technicians will work to maximize the value yielded by these assets by optimizing their performance; reducing the occurrence of malfunction, breakdowns, and downtime; and lengthening their expected useful lifespan.
To achieve these outcomes, maintenance teams will typically take on a wide range of responsibilities including:
- Conducting regularly scheduled inspections
- Performing routine preventive maintenance of equipment
- Initiating corrective maintenance to address unexpected equipment breakdowns
- Managing inventory including monitoring stock levels, initiating reorders when appropriate, and tracking the location of critical resources including spare parts, raw materials, and tools
- Measuring equipment performance through a combination of real-time monitoring and advanced data analytics
- Documenting all maintenance activities, equipment history, and regulatory compliance efforts
While managing these responsibilities, maintenance teams must also navigate various challenges including budgetary constraints, aging equipment, rapidly advancing technology, frequently shifting compliance responsibilities, and often complex data management requirements. The right asset management platform can play a central role in helping your maintenance team successfully navigate these challenges.
What are asset management platforms?
Asset management platforms are SaaS tools designed to streamline, simplify, and automate aspects of your organization’s asset management strategy. An asset management platform can provide your maintenance team with the tools to track, manage, and optimize the performance of your organization’s physical assets throughout their lifecycle.
The role of asset management technology
Asset management platforms have become critical in transforming and enhancing asset management strategies, particularly for organizations with large and complex asset portfolios. While there are many different asset management solutions on the market, most systems perform a common set of core functions including:
- Centralizating asset information and data all on one readily accessible, user-friendly platform.
- Automating routine tasks including preventive maintenance scheduling, work order generation, and task notifications.
- Integrating with inventory management to provide visibility into stock levels, automated reorder triggers, and real-time location tracking.
- Enhancing decision-making around asset utilization, maintenance strategies, and capital investments with real-time condition monitoring and advanced data analytics.
- Improving compliance by facilitating routine inspections, generating detailed reports, providing compliance checklists, and creating a comprehensive audit trail of maintenance activities, equipment history, and current condition.
- Lowering operational costs by reducing the frequency and severity of equipment failures, preventing downtime, and prolonging the life of your assets
Leading types of asset management technology
The right asset management technology for your organization will likely depend on an array of factors including the nature of your business, the size of your organization, and the scale of your asset portfolio. Many organizations will combine solutions to manage assets across disparate facilities. These may include:
- Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) are designed to streamline maintenance operations by automating preventive maintenance scheduling, tracking maintenance history, managing work orders, integrating with your inventory management system, and more.
- Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) software is designed to provide a complete framework for asset management throughout the lifecycle of a given asset, which means that it can include many of the same maintenance management functions that a CMMS will. What differentiates EAMs is that they may also include features for asset procurement, management of warranties, and the discharge and/or disposal of decommissioned equipment. EAM platforms are also commonly used for IT asset management activities including managing vendor contacts, software updates, and renewing of software licenses.
- Asset Tracking Software tools are technology-powered systems used to track the location, status, and condition of physical assets in real time such as RFID, GPS, or barcode scanner, and are often included with more encompassing solutions like a CMMS or EAM platform.
- Predictive Maintenance Software uses data analytics and IoT sensors to predict equipment failures before they occur and initiate proactive maintenance actions. Predictive maintenance software will often work in integration with preventive maintenance systems such as a CMMS.
Asset management platforms: 6 must-have features
However, regardless of the solution you choose, the following are essential features of any high-quality asset management platform:
1. Asset tracking
Your asset management platform should include robust asset tracking capabilities so that facilities managers, asset managers, maintenance technicians, and other key personnel can monitor the location, status, and usage of your assets in real time. Asset management platforms may use a variety of technologies to implement asset tracking including barcode scanning, QR codes, RFID, or GPS locating. These solutions make it possible to quickly locate assets, track their usage, and correlate this usage to inventory demands as well as helping to prevent loss, theft, or misuse of critical assets.
2. Asset lifecycle management
The overarching goal of asset management is to provide a framework for maximizing each asset’s value throughout its full lifecycle. This makes lifecycle management an essential feature of any high-quality asset management platform. This feature allows your organization to track the entire lifecycle of a given asset, including planning, procurement, deployment, maintenance, and decommissioning. This holistic view can help inform decisions about repairs and maintenance scheduling as well as retirement and replacement of assets.
3. Maintenance planning and scheduling
Look for features like automated preventive maintenance scheduling, routine inspection scheduling, and compliance checklists. You’ll also want to seek an asset management platform with automated scheduling for maintenance tasks according to metrics like usage, time, or condition-based triggers. Scheduling features should also integrate with calendars, alerts, and notifications.
4. Work Order Management
High-quality asset management systems will include features for creating, assigning, tracking, and documenting maintenance tasks. Many of the industry-leading asset management platforms today provide automated work order generation as well as task scheduling and delegation. These functions help to ensure tasks are completed correctly, on time, according to the proper safety standards, and with full accountability.
5. Performance and health data analysis
Your asset management platform should include features that allow for real-time visibility into the performance and health of your assets. Top asset management solutions will typically include, or integrate with, analytical tools that monitor, collect and process asset data on performance, usage patterns, and potential issues. This feature makes it possible to identify less-than-optimal performance, utilization, or environmental conditions, and to intervene using the appropriate maintenance strategies before these issues can escalate into equipment failure and downtime.
6. Integrations with other platforms
Leading-edge CMMS platforms should be compatible with any ERP, CRM, inventory management, or IoT systems that are already a part of your organization’s workflows. Integrations are vital for allowing the flow of data between systems, improving cross-departmental communication and collaboration, enhancing reporting capabilities, and ensuring a unified approach to asset management.
Asset management platforms: 6 benefits for maintenance teams
The right asset management platform can drive improvements in every aspect of your operation including production, maintenance, and budget management. Below, we take a deeper look at the benefits of implementing a high-quality asset management platform:
1. Reduced maintenance costs
Your asset management platform will significantly lower maintenance costs by reducing the frequency and severity of equipment failures, lowering overtime labor costs for your maintenance team, and reducing the need for reactive maintenance expenses related to emergency repairs or expedited shipping on critical spare parts.
2. Increased visibility into asset health and performance
Asset management technology provides real-time visibility into the condition and performance of your equipment, vehicles, and other assets. This enables your team to continuously monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), to ensure that equipment is functioning optimally, and to intervene where needed with preventive maintenance efforts before malfunctions can occur.
3. Improved decision-making
Asset management platforms offer advanced data analytics and comprehensive reporting tools that can help your maintenance program make better-informed decisions. Today, advanced asset management technology can combine historical data, performance trends, and real-time condition monitoring to help users identify patterns, prioritize maintenance activities, and allocate resources more effectively.
4. Extended asset lifespans
The right asset management platform will provide a framework for managing your assets across their lifecycle. This approach allows for timely interventions, routine servicing for wear and tear, preemptive parts replacement, and a host of other preventive maintenance activities that ultimately lengthen the expected useful life of your equipment, maximize your return on investment, and delay costly replacements.
5. Safer, more productive facilities
Your asset management platform will help to reduce the risk of accidents, injuries, and fatalities by ensuring that equipment is well maintained, correctly utilized, and always functioning properly. These preventative safety measures will consequently reduce operational disruptions, raise employee morale, and enhance overall productivity.
6. Enhanced regulatory compliance
Features like standard operating procedures (SOPs), compliance checklists, detailed reporting, comprehensive audit trails, and regularly scheduled inspections can ensure that your organization is meeting its responsibilities and avoiding the penalties and legal liabilities that may be triggered by noncompliance.
What’s the best asset management platform for your organization?
The best asset management software for your organization will depend largely on the nature of your business and your asset management needs. A few critical factors can help you identify a best-fit tool:
- Ease of use is essential to reducing the learning curve, preventing bottlenecks, and offsetting the possibility of internal resistance. Look for an asset management platform with a user-friendly interface, customizable dashboard, and relevant learning or training materials.
- Customer support can be a difference-maker when it comes to selecting the right asset management platform. Look for a vendor whose customer support is friendly, informed, responsive, compatible with your availability needs (i.e. 24/7 support or business hours), and readily accessible through phone, chat, and email.
- Scalability is an important factor for any growing business. As your organization grows, you can also expect your asset management needs to evolve. Choose a platform with the flexibility to handle a growing asset portfolio, onboard a sufficient number of future users, and streamline operations across multiple locations without requiring a complete system overhaul.
- Data security is a critical factor for ensuring regulatory compliance; maintaining the privacy of your clients, vendors, and personnel; and ensuring that sensitive or proprietary data on asset performance and equipment history is protected against potential breaches or loss. Look for a platform with robust security features including data encryption, user access controls, and cloud-based data backups.
- Expected ROI is important for justifying the expenditure on an asset management platform. Different vendors and systems offer packages at different price points and pricing structures. Weigh these costs against the financial benefits anticipated following platform implementation such as reduced maintenance costs, improved operational efficiency, enhanced asset performance, heightened employee productivity, greater quality control, and reduced downtime.
Why is Limble the preferred CMMS for asset management?
Limble’s industry-leading CMMS is a preferred asset management tool for organizations across industries thanks to features like:
- A user-friendly interface that simplifies navigation and makes it easy for maintenance teams to access critical information quickly
- Comprehensive asset management through tracking, condition monitoring, documentation, and more
- Preventive maintenance scheduling, calendar, alerts, and notifications
- Automated work order generation, management, and cross-departmental collaboration
- Inventory management tools for real-time tracking, visibility into stock levels, and automated reorder triggers
- Predictive maintenance through a combination of real-time performance monitoring and historical data analytics
- A mobile app, allowing maintenance teams to access asset data and work orders using laptops and mobile devices in the field or remotely
- Robust reporting and analytics tools with valuable insights into asset performance and maintenance operations
- Exceptional customer support including extensive educational resources, ongoing personal assistance, and user-friendly software implementation
- Integration with most other commonly used business systems, such as ERP, CRM, and asset inventory management software
Learn more about Limble’s state-of-the-art CMMS can transform your asset management strategy by taking our product tour.
