How Data Insights Fuel Improved Asset Performance

It's a regular day at a plant site. With just a click of a button, a plant manager gets a comprehensive view of numerous pieces of equipment spread across sites, critical asset forecasts, and revenue improvement streams.

No, the operations manager is not looking into a crystal ball that holds answers for the present and the future, but a modern-day tech solution that functions just like one. Accelerated by digital technologies, asset performance management (APM) solutions are redefining the industrial sector by empowering organizations to better manage the asset lifecycle and throughput of every piece of equipment on the production floor, from pumps to a compressor to a turbine and even vehicles on the road.  

What's facilitating this shift? As organizations digitize their plants, processes, and systems, the data generated from their operating environments helps to significantly improve asset value and health. Moreover, the evolution of IIoT, reduced cost of sensors, AI-driven applications, and ubiquitous connectivity are pushing asset performance management to new heights.  

But the foundation of every strong APM strategy depends on one thing—Data. Here's why data is the key to better business outcomes, Industry 4.0, and advanced APM.

1.         A Strong Data Foundation

To get to where you want, you first must understand where you are. Implementing an APM solution is no different. Even with the best-in-class technology, many companies fail to reach the expected value proposition because of inaccurate or incomplete data. In the end, any tool or insight is only as valuable as the quality of the data. Moreover, a lot depends on data integrity, which is all about maintaining data reliability and consistency throughout the data lifecycle.

2.         Optimize Asset Health

Modern day APM systems also offer in-depth insights into the sub-parts that enable maintenance teams to track asset conditions and anomalies effectively. For example, today, APM systems can track minute details such as the location of an asset, sensor status, vibration, cavitation, and pressure statistics, as well as power consumption data. This 360-degree view of operational assets allows engineers to examine assets from every angle and interact with data and explore what-if scenarios in real-time using benchmark data.

3.         Predict Asset Failure

One of the most significant contributions of data insights in asset performance management is predictive maintenance, which is a massive shift from traditional planning strategies such as run to failure and scheduled servicing. By effectively processing historical and real-time asset data, maintenance records, environmental data, and inspection reports, plant operators can now get a view of issues even before they arise.

Predictive insights showcase the exact time and reason for failure as well as prescribe the recommended actions and steps. In other words, companies can now maximize the lifetime value of expensive assets, deliver better customer experiences, take on-the-fly decisions, and massively improve productivity. Predictive maintenance addresses the costliest event in industrial plants, unplanned downtime, which costs organizations up to $50 billion annually according to the major analyst firms.

4.         Remote Asset Monitoring

The right operational insights allow executives and leaders to get a bird's eye view of asset status across locations. Often data insights available through easy-to-use visual dashboards not only forewarn upcoming risks but also reflect if assets are operating sustainably and identify potential savings avenues. Targeted visibility into asset performance empowers executives to take immediate action and plan high-level, strategic decisions with ease.

5.         Meet Sustainability Goals

In addition to digitization, what gives industrial organizations a competitive edge today? The answer is a sustainable business model. Considerable research shows that Gen Z is susceptible to investments in environmentally conscious companies. As a result, modern APM systems offer insights that help design new energy efficiencies, meet energy KPIs, and manage energy costs.

The Power of Yokogawa Asset Health Insights

Yokogawa's Asset Health Insights is a new software as a service offering that provides a unified solution to asset performance management. Unlike most APM solutions in the market that specialize in one aspect of asset monitoring, Asset Health Insights aggregates and refines process data, electrical data, geospatial information, and information from a wide range of distributed assets. Whether a company relies on manual workflows or digital systems, Asset Health Insights easily connects siloed systems and delivers deep operational technology insights through a single intuitive dashboard.

To learn more about the benefits of SMART Asset Performance Management, download the our ebook or visit the website at: www.yokogawa.com/ahi

IA2IA - Industrial Automation to Industrial Autonomy

Currently, all companies are at some stage of digital transformation and automated operations as a starting point. IA2IA is what Yokogawa foresees as the transition from Industrial Automation to Industrial Autonomy. We help the process industries to set and redefine their smart manufacturing goals in applying digital transformation technology to manufacturing operations, as we believe that autonomous operations is the destination you should be heading.

Watch a small clip about the evolution of process industries towards a future with autonomous operations.