Unlocking Efficiency: How EAM Systems are revolutionizing Business Operations

In today's dynamic business environment, organizations must look beyond optimizing current operations and focus on building resilience for the future. Future-proofing operations are essential to maintain competitiveness, adapt to changes, and sustain long-term growth. Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems are key to achieving this.

By effectively managing and maintaining physical assets, EAM solutions help organizations maximize asset performance, reduce downtime, and optimize costs. This, in turn, drives operational efficiency and enables businesses to adapt swiftly to changing market conditions. The growing market value of EAM software underscores its increasing importance. The global enterprise asset management market is valued at US$ 4.7 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach US$ 9.3 billion by 2034, growing at a CAGR of 7%.

To fully leverage the potential of Enterprise Asset Management software, organizations need to closely monitor the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) of their assets. These insights offer valuable information about asset health, efficiency, and potential areas for improvement.

This article explores how EAM systems help in maximizing asset performance, hence future-proofing operations and driving organizational resilience.

Below are some of the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for asset performance:

Let’s explore how these KPIs can be defined and tracked using an EAM System and its various functions.

• Asset Definition & Tracking: The Enterprise Asset Management System works as an asset management software. It allows you to manage the details of the assets such as locations, hierarchies, specifications, health indicators, troubleshooting guides, maintenance histories, and associated documentation.
• Resource Management:
  • Material – This includes the consumables as well as spare parts required as part of the maintenance activities. The availability of inventory & procurement functionality tightly coupled with EAM helps in planning and optimizing the spares and consumables.
  • Labor – Labor can be supervisors, technicians, and mechanics. EAM helps to map each labor resource with the required skill set and level of skill. Also, for each skill & level combination, Enterprise Asset Management software helps define hourly rates.
  • Tools – For each of the tools, the system helps map the hourly rates.
  • Other Resources – which are not classified as Material, Labor, or Tools such as machinery or equipment used in the maintenance activities. The real time visibility on these resources helps in efficient planning of the maintenance activities. EAM helps in the planning and optimization of these resources. 
• Maintenance Management: EAM systems streamline maintenance operations by supporting various strategies:
• Preventive Maintenance: Schedule inspections and routine upkeep to prevent equipment failures.
• Corrective Maintenance: Address breakdowns and equipment failures as they occur.
• Predictive Maintenance: Use data analytics to predict potential equipment failures and schedule maintenance proactively.

Additionally, EAM systems facilitate efficient maintenance management by:

• Scheduling and planning maintenance activities
• Creating and assigning work orders
• Tracking maintenance progress
• Documenting maintenance history

By centralizing these functions, EAM software helps optimize maintenance operations and extend asset lifespan.

• Work Order Management: Enterprise Asset Management System helps create, prioritize, and track work orders for maintenance tasks, repairs, inspections, and other activities related to asset management.
• Optimization of Spare Parts and Consumables Inventory: EAM software manages inventory levels of spare parts and consumables required for maintenance activities, including procurement, stock tracking, and replenishment.
• Maintenance Budget Planning & Tracking: This involves defining and monitoring the expenses that occurred while maintaining the assets in healthy/operational condition. Asset management software helps define budgets for departments, locations, equipment, groups(equipment/location), or based on the type and category of maintenance. Tracking the budgets will help an organization to efficiently manage the expenses and further reduce them based on historical trends.
• Regulatory Compliance and Reporting: Enterprise Asset Management software ensures compliance with industry regulations, safety standards, and internal policies by documenting maintenance activities, inspections, audits, and generating reports as needed. Asset management software can track essential asset documentation and send timely alerts to relevant users when documents are nearing expiration or renewal.
• Integration with Other Systems: This asset management software helps integrate with other systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), SCADA /DCS/PLCs, and Internet of Things (IoT) platforms to share data and streamline business processes.
• Mobile Access and IoT Integration: Enterprise Asset Management software provides mobile access for technicians to access asset information, update work orders, and perform inspections in the field. It facilitates integration with IoT devices to enable real-time monitoring, data collection, and predictive maintenance capabilities.
• Analytics and Decision Support: Enterprise Asset Management software collects and analyzes data on asset performance, reliability, downtime, and utilization. This helps in identifying the trends, predicting failures, optimizing maintenance strategies, and making data-driven decisions such as asset replacements, asset reconditioning, forwarding preventive maintenance activities, etc.
• Lifecycle Management: Managing the entire lifecycle of assets from acquisition to disposal, including depreciation tracking, retirement planning, and asset retirement obligations is done by Enterprise Asset Management software.

Overall, EAM systems help organizations optimize asset performance, reduce downtime, minimize maintenance costs, ensure regulatory compliance, and extend the lifespan of their assets, ultimately contributing to improved operational efficiency and profitability.