Thursday, 28 August 2008

Study: Asset Management Key for Manufacturing Company

A recent study done by the Aberdeen Group has revealed that for manufacturing companies to reach optimum standard, deploying asset management strategies that help reduce operational costs, improve profitability and ultimately improve their competitive advantage are imperative.

Titled “Enterprise Asset Management: Maximizing Return on Assets and Emerging Trends,” the study-conducted by Mehul Shah and Matthew Littlefield, research analysts with Aberdeen’s Global Manufacturing Practice- shows “best-in-class” manufacturing companies are more likely to have implemented Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems and linked those EAM systems with their plant floor and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.

The study also found that “best-in-class” manufacturing companies tend to integrate energy management into their overall asset management strategy to help manage energy costs.

The findings, which were shared by IT company Lawson Software, was collated from surveying some 160 manufacturing executives, showed these “best-in-class” manufacturers, on average, realize 97 percent plant throughput, 93 percent overall equipment effectiveness and 31 percent less asset downtime than other manufacturers.

According to the report, manufacturing companies seeking to achieve “best-in-class” performance should:

• Improve visibility into production and asset performance across the enterprise through the use of asset analytics and dashboards;

• Invest in an EAM solution and establish real time interoperability between EAM and ERP;

• Move from a break-fix maintenance approach to a more predictive approach by adopting advanced capabilities such as Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM).

The full Aberdeen report is available for download at: www.lawson.com/EAMManufacturing