Why asset management is crucial for any size of organization?

Most organizations view asset management as a cost-intensive process and they do not want to spend more on maintenance. But they do not realize that this will cost them more in the long run because asset management assists in extending the life of the assets, minimize costs and boost efficiency. It typically represents processes where a company monitors and coordinates its material assets and processes. In the energy sector, which is continuously evolving with digital technologies, asset management is a crucial step to keep up with the rapidly changing environment.

The energy industry today is increasingly employing more and more digital technologies, which make comprehensive asset management possible, including data integration, data management, distributed control systems, and optimization applied to asset maintenance. The emergence of the industrial internet of things (IIoT) is significantly transforming the traditional approach to asset management processes in the modern energy workflows.

Asset management simply provides businesses the answers regarding their assets’ location, their value, what and when maintenance actions need to be performed on assets, and the spending on maintenance of assets.

Energy companies these days are re-evaluating the traditional factors they use to determine the efficiency of assets. By turning to digital asset management, they may substantially obtain cost optimization, minimized risks, improved operations flexibility, streamlined maintenance processes and maximized effectiveness, and extended assets lifecycle. In addition, this also covers the financial, administrative and commercial activities required to ensure the optimization of the entire asset lifecycle.

In the energy arena, consistent data collection is one of the major parts of any effective power plant asset management system. Thus, managing lots of assets requires to work with voluminous amounts of data. For this, an effective tool for data collection is essential. Moreover, to make the right decisions regarding the health of a plant’s asset, asset managers need detailed data analyses. They also must consider the challenges of managing energy use and growing public and government concerns about carbon emissions and others while the maintenance of assets.

There are numerous software companies providing advanced tools to supervise energy consumption at the asset level to support maintenance, replacement, and process control decisions, as well as behavioral change. These tools draw energy demand management with traditional asset management functions, resulting in the reduction of waste for better operational efficiency, lower energy costs, and improved regulatory compliance from lower carbon emissions.

Traditionally, energy companies analyzed factors like availability, performance, and quality to determine overall equipment effectiveness, with the aim to maximize uptime to ensure availability, and performance of an asset. Many organizations nowadays are also focusing on the optimization of asset performance for energy efficiency, enabling them to scale individual asset performance, as well as accomplish an enterprise wide view of all asset performance that help lower energy waste and the associated costs.