The drive for data democratization and AI in heavy asset industries has led to an extensive market of Asset Reliability and Predictive Maintenance software solutions. Several vendors now provide multi-page feature comparison lists for their software offerings, aiming to stand out from the crowd, but this doesn’t make the buying process any easier.
Instead, technology adopters should be laser- focused on addressing the fundamental requirements of Asset Reliability software in their organization:
- What are the business goals and outcomes a solution should address?
- What is the correct balance between building versus buying a solution?
- How should organizational users interact with the insights generated by a solution?
Business Goals and Outcomes: Maximizing Uptime and Reducing Costs
Asset reliability initiatives are typically tied to tangible objectives such as maximizing uptime, reducing maintenance spend, and increasing the lifetime of equipment. These goals will be achieved through identifying value driven use cases where associated analytical insights from data can lead to actionable outcomes which result in measurable return on investment with respect to the core objectives.
How to Tailor Asset Reliability Software for Maximum Impact
The use cases of highest value vary significantly across organizations. So, rather than looking for off-the-shelf analytics, it may be preferential to consider the flexibility of a solution to address specific needs. Ask a solution provider how their software’s configuration process will identify and solve use cases of high business value. Also, ask what options there are for evaluating and scaling such a configured solution. At scale it becomes the job of software to proactively draw attention to issues as they arise. This frees up operations personnel from manual data monitoring and allows them to focus on higher-priority tasks.
Finally, data security needs to be a high-priority consideration. Any asset reliability solution should be appropriately certified to industry standards, including regularly undergoing third-party penetration tests.
Choosing Between Building or Buying Asset Reliability Software
The number of options in the market, combined with the unique digital vision of an organization, may lead to the conclusion that building an asset reliability solution in-house is preferential. The benefit being that the solution will be completely tailored to specific needs while avoiding vendor lock-in and protecting IP. However, the associated risk will be that the organization shifts too much focus from achieving the core business goals of asset reliability to managing software development and data analytics teams.
Building from Scratch: Understanding the Time and Responsibility Investment
Robust and scalable technology takes time to develop, therefore building a solution from the ground up will have a longer lead time before realizing tangible return on investment. Furthermore, maintaining software availability and data security will become the responsibility of the organization itself rather than a clear contractual agreement with service level agreement and security certification requirements.
Existing Technology: Customizing Off-the-Shelf Solutions
There are solutions that can allow an organization to leverage existing robust technology components and tailor them accordingly which can be a good middle ground approach. In this case it is important to be clear how portable any inhouse development, such as analytics, may be to an alternative vendor’s solution should the need require.
User Interface Considerations: Integrating Asset Reliability Solutions with Existing Workflows
Most asset reliability solutions have a dedicated user interface, which typically includes telemetry data dashboards overlaid with relevant analytics information. There will also be some level of alert management functionality for users in operations and maintenance to review the insights generated.
Overcoming Adoption Barriers
In many cases, the user functionality of an asset reliability offering will overlap with that of existing applications within an organization. A common concern is not wanting to have to roll out additional interfaces for teams to monitor and interact with. Often, that concern is valid with low adoption rates of new technology integrations observed. The burden of requiring personnel to log in to an additional application for managing asset reliability can become a barrier rather than an enabler in achieving the desired outcomes. It may also present an increased security risk if that application does not integrate with an organization’s existing single sign on infrastructure and policies.
Integrating Asset Reliability into Existing Systems
The core function of asset reliability software is to securely integrate with data sources, process data to generate analytics insights, and deliver information to an appropriate decision maker who can then take action. If the information can be delivered in existing productivity or work order tools, there is likely a lower barrier to adoption. Solutions which provide the flexibility to integrate into existing systems rather than relying solely on their default user interface may be preferential for organizations with well-established digital technology practices wanting to get to the next level.
What Requirements Matter Most To You?
At Arundo, we are passionate about understanding what heavy asset industry organizations need from technology products, whether it is our own asset reliability solution Marathon, or optimization solutions like Energy Optimizer built on our flexible and secure Foundation technology. We are continually looking for feedback on the core assumptions and what fundamental considerations should drive the development roadmaps of our products.
If you would like to learn more or discuss any of the topics of this article further, please contact us for a meeting now at contact@arundo.com.
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