Today, both large, medium and small companies face a major challenge regarding productivity, especially when compared to factories established in manufacturing countries such as China, Malaysia and Singapore.
Given this panorama, Mexico has among its most important challenges the implementation of asset management systems supported by integration technologies related to Industry 4.0.
The digitalization of processes is a trend and, in that sense, tools such as Assent Performance Management (APM) are becoming very relevant.
Now, if you are interested in knowing more about what APM is and what it is for, keep reading.
What is APM?
Asset performance management is a group of technological tools that offer industries the possibility of improving the reliability, safety and performance of their machinery.
By using APM, coherent and improved inspection and maintenance plans can be created, which reduce operational risks, optimize reliability and availability of production in general.
Through the tools provided by APM, there is the ability to discover and address performance problems that may become critical in time.
You can also collect data to track your infrastructure and how it is working.
How can the use of APM help?
Although we have already mentioned some of the uses of this management system, below we mention the most relevant ones.
With this tool you can determine and confirm which assets are relevant to the functioning of operations.
They are also tools used to predict machine problems or failures more accurately, so that corrective measures (preventive maintenance) can be taken before such failures become apparent.
Among the possibilities provided by using an APM is being able to analyze and understand the various alternatives to address or mitigate a problem in production. Thus, it becomes a support for decision making.
Purpose of using APM
The use of technologies applied to production allows processes to be improved and at the same time provides the possibility of monitoring machine functions to avoid stoppages in activity.
Asset Performance Management (APM) has as its main objectives the generation of information and the integration of applications between operations and maintenance, which will provide you with a general overview of the state of the assets and the impacts that they are generating on productivity.
In this context, asset performance management will help you improve the integration between actual production (manufacturing of the product) and the production capacity available.
The different functions of APM can be used in commercial and technological processes and in the organizational structure.
Although the adoption of maintenance as a way to reduce unplanned downtime or forced downtime due to failures is nothing new, relying on technological tools that allow processes to be optimized is new.
How does this management model work?
The goal of APM is to aggregate performance metrics using log files and statistics from hardware components , as well as performance reports.
In this way all information about the assets and their dependencies can be collected. Generally, these types of tools collect information on historical storage platforms from production application environments and supporting infrastructure.
What APM basically does is synchronize production and maintenance, allowing information exchange, making it possible to streamline the actions carried out by maintenance and production personnel to increase the availability of assets for production.
The integration of production applications for asset management, with production execution and manufacturing operations management, will provide a much broader view of actions to achieve greater productivity in plants.
Thus, through APM, issues can be discovered, such as isolating and providing timely and quick solutions to performance problems, which if not identified would result in potential damage to the company's economic objectives.
What are Industrial IoT?
Asset Performance Management (APM) is part of Industrial IoT (IIoT) or Industry 4.0 technologies, which opens opportunities for manufacturers to improve the overall performance of their organizations.
The IIoT is the concept that reflects devices/assets/machines that, connected to the Internet, can be easily analyzed by software platforms for data analysis.
The devices that make the Industrial IoT (IIoT) possible can range from small environmental sensors to complex industrial robots.
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is a subcategory of the Internet of Things (IoT). It is characterized by addressing the infrastructure, equipment, and devices related to industrial production, integrated through information sensors and analyzed and managed in real time by software platforms.
The IIoT is useful to improve operations, mainly in those assets where it is required to monitor 2 or 3 fundamental variables, in real time, and all the time (24×7) to ensure superior reliability.
APM's future visions
Although the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Asset Performance Management (APM) have generated great advances, it aims to add intelligence to automation.
How can AI be used with APM? One of the uses for this combination is to apply it to the thresholds of automated alerts, which would allow critical alerts to be intelligently self-managed by the assets through the analysis of the context of the data emitted by the assets Vs the state of the production.
Additionally, managers could use machine learning to recognize and determine the appropriate threshold for such critical alerts. Thus, as the applications of these systems become larger, Artificial Intelligence will become more useful.
In this way, the application of APM in companies will offer different benefits , allowing them to increase the return on investment, reduce maintenance costs, increase the lifespan of their assets, reduce unnecessary preventive maintenance, identify failures in advance, minimize unscheduled downtime, and guarantee asset availability.
Well, now you know what Asset Performance Management is, its objectives and its benefits for your company's operations.
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Originally published on March 26, 2020, updated on August 22, 2023
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