Asset Essentials™ now leverages IoT to predict equipment failure and reduce downtime

By: Jodi McDermott

This week is big for us and for our clients. As we kicked off our 2022 user conference,
we unveiled a new brand, a new company name, and a new vision for the future! And, amidst all this exciting news, we also announced the availability of Smart Assets – a new module in Asset Essentials (AE) – something I am personally very excited about. To me, the introduction of Smart Assets – available today for AE clients in the manufacturing sector with plans to launch in other verticals this year – represents an important step forward in delivering on our commitment to provide greater connectivity, predictability, and sustainability to our clients all with the goal to further improve asset and facility uptime.  
 
The Burgeoning World of Connectivity 
I’ll get into the details of this new solution in just a moment, but let’s first take a step back and start with a primer on the burgeoning world of connectivity – powered in many ways by the Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), as it is commonly called in the manufacturing space.  
 
For years, the industry has talked about the promise of IoT and connected devices. With recent advances in technology, access to scalable solutions, and an influx in investment in this space, we are starting to see this promise become a reality. IoT connected assets are growing exponentially, with IoT devices set to reach 50 billion by 2030 behind $15 trillion in investment by 2025.  
 
In its simplest form, IoT is defined as the technology that enables connectivity between assets, production lines, vehicles, facilities, and operations teams – all with the goal of optimizing performance, providing real-time analytics for quick decision making, and reducing downtime.  

In other words, IoT allows our assets and facilities to tell us when they need help and attention. For example, is a production asset vibrating outside of tolerance possibly affecting quality? Is a pump running too hot and risking failure?  

Having answers to these questions streamlines preventive maintenance and extends the life of an asset, promoting both greater profitability and sustainability – two critically important goals for operations professionals. For those of you in the manufacturing space, this level of connectivity directly aligns with the industry’s increased focus on and accountability around improving overall equipment effectiveness (OEE). 

 
Smart Assets for Asset Essentials enables Smarter Operations  
This is where Smart Assets comes in. Smart Assets is a cloud-based IoT solution that allows operations professionals to maximize equipment uptime, lengthen asset lifecycle, make smarter operations decisions, and increase profitability.  Although Smart Assets can ingest data from a variety of sources, a major advantage of the Smart Assets solution is the massive catalog of out-of-the-box sensors that can be easily appended to an asset. Once appended, these sensors monitor the assets in a continuous 24/7/365 manner. They automatically and securely transmit detailed operational data via the cloud directly to Asset Essentials, and they seamlessly create triggers when something is not working correctly or requires attention.  

Smart Assets in Action 
The below illustrates how Smart Assets works and highlights users’ ongoing benefits once they implement it.

Getting to Better Operational Outcomes 
Improving your corrective-to-preventive maintenance ratio is critical in lean, efficient, cost-controlled and profitable operations. Asset Essentials is critical to this process, and Smart Assets turbo-charges those improvements. As smart as humans are, we don’t work 24/7 and stand over an asset all day watching for problems the way Smart Assets does! This type of always-on intelligent monitoring of assets helps us realize the promise of IoT and connectivity. More than that, it helps you get to a world of greater predictability, automation, efficiency, and importantly, profitability and sustainability.  

Schedule a call with our team to discuss how Asset Essentials and Smart Assets can light your way to a brighter future.