EAM to assist with recessionary challenges

Increasingly, the requirements from customers to maximise asset management and maintenance effectiveness is coming to the forefront, and given the climate in which manufacturers are operating in 2012, it would be almost impossible to stay in business without a reliable Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system in place.

Infor, the world's third-largest ERP vendor, says that underperforming or badly managed assets can have many far-reaching and negative impacts on the overall health of a company. Asset downtime can disrupt production and lead to lower customer satisfaction. The problem is that asset management isn't always top of the management priority list due to the focus on increasing sales during tough times.

Some of the benefits for implementing EAM include:

• Maximising maintenance effectiveness: Streamlining the maintenance process so customers extend the longevity of their assets and improve productivity
  
• Reduction of inventory costs: Enabling customers to avoid carrying unneeded inventory or experiencing downtime because of inadequate inventory
  
• Increased warranty recovery: Assisting customers to improve their tracking of repairs eligible for warranty claims
  
• Increase equipment uptime: Improving asset performance so customers can avoid costly downtime in production or service operations
  
• Improve reliability and risk management: Anticipating and mitigating asset reliability and regulatory risks

It has been very interesting to witness the massive transformation that Infor has undergone in the past year. There has been much hype about Infor's most publicised offering, Infor10, and in South Africa the company completed a recent visit to talk to local partners and customers about the new outlook and transformed vision for the company and its products. The same is true for many of Infor's other products and solutions, including EAM.

A major focus for Infor is the updated look and functionality of its software to suit the changing needs of the end-user. With the increased adoption of social media tools and aggregation software available, ERP customers are fast expecting the same functionality from their ERP software as they do from their social sites, like Facebook, or desktop applications like Tweetdeck. This thinking has driven the development of Infor applications.

Totally flexible deployment

Infor's EAM system is unique in the fact that it enables totally flexible deployment - whether it is implemented on premises, in the cloud, or both - customers have the same full-featured system, and not a scaled-down version as is seen with other systems. The system also reduces inventory costs by avoiding the carrying of unneeded inventory or downtime because of inadequate inventory.

Whilst a deployment method to suit a business is critical, it is also important to update your system regularly to keep up with industry requirements and trends. One such trend is the ability of an EAM system to monitor, manage and, ultimately, save energy at an asset level. Advanced EAM systems collect data from various sources to assess the effectiveness of a machine. Parallel to this, it is clear to see the amount of energy consumed during the production process and which machines or parts are consuming more energy than they should. In summary, this reduces wasted energy, ensuring that manufacturers can monitor excessive energy consumption and allow for decisions to be made on maintenance or the overall lifecycle of certain machinery or parts.

As this year progresses I look forward to seeing more South African companies embrace newer technologies to keep abreast of their asset performance and, ultimately, improve their profitability to face the economic conditions in better condition.