Protect Your Profit: Use an Enterprise Asset Management System to Save Money and Improve Productivity

Tracking maintenance activities for any company is difficult; but for asset intensive businesses like manufacturers, it’s nearly impossible if you are trying to do it manually. An enterprise asset management (EAM) system is designed to help manufacturing businesses optimize maintenance processes to get the most productivity and life out of their assets.

EAM systems bring manufacturers many benefits, but the most profound way that they will help your manufacturing enterprise is protecting your profit by ensuring smoother operations, preventing unexpected downtime and reducing maintenance costs.

In this post, we’ll give a brief overview of EAM and how it will enhance your company’s profitability.

What Is EAM?

An enterprise asset management system is a software tool that facilitates the tracking and management of operational assets. You will be able to keep tabs on all your assets throughout their lifecycle, from procurement to maintenance operations and through to disposal.

An EAM system will also automate and streamline parts inventory management and schedule maintenance tasks, such as work order management and preventive maintenance tasks. It can also help with regulatory compliance especially for required reporting and analytics.

However, an EAM system might be your most valuable asset when it comes to protecting your profit. In the manufacturing game, your profit depends on increasing revenue and lowering costs. EAM software helps you achieve this. Let’s explore how, now.

1. EAM Systems Increase Productivity

No matter what type of product you make, you need to keep production levels at a maximum because your customers depend on you to deliver orders on time.

EAM system software keeps production consistent and helps you meet your targets because it streamlines and centralizes the maintenance of physical assets. This helps you to stop the reactive break/fix cycle and embrace a proactive, preventive maintenance strategy. Preventive maintenance is a simple concept—it means you are caring for your equipment on a routine, scheduled basis, which helps your assets perform more efficiently. It’s like keeping up with oil changes and other regular scheduled maintenance so that your car will run more efficiently.

To maximize production volume, you need to improve speed of production, ensure the availability of your equipment and maximize yield of good product. If your equipment is running well, you can increase how quickly your team can produce. And if your equipment fails unexpectedly, the robust inventory management tools available within Aptean EAM will ensure that your team has the right parts for maintenance tasks and the right tools and instructions to complete work orders.

Work order management tools ensure that you won’t have to spend hours filling out paperwork. All paperwork and manuals are stored within the EAM solution. This includes repair history, part numbers, warranty information and more. When a machine is due for maintenance, your team will get an electronic notice that a machine's service is due. Then, when the task is complete, they can notate the completed status. This gives everyone on the maintenance team full visibility into the status of all equipment and holds them accountable throughout the workday.

2. EAM Systems Save on Equipment Downtime

Well-maintained machines will run at peak performance and have higher up-time, produce higher volumes and result in fewer defects. With EAM, you’ll have full visibility into your scheduled, preventive maintenance. This means that you can plan for downtime when an important asset needs to temporarily stop production for routine maintenance. That way, you can reallocate resources as needed and keep stoppage to a minimum.

Enterprise asset management systems provide you with a real-time view of all assets throughout your enterprise, no matter the size. You’ll know immediately what’s working and what’s not. You can prevent unexpected downtime because you’ll be proactive with your maintenance strategy and can help avoid more costly repairs down the line.

In addition, EAM improves the lifespan of assets so that they can stay useful longer. You won’t have to replace expensive assets or shut down production to install new equipment as often. Moreover, your team won’t waste time doing superfluous repairs, so they can concentrate on more meaningful tasks.

3. EAM Systems Reduce Waste and Control Costs

Did you know that excess inventory can add an additional 12% to 20% to the original purchase cost? However, if your team doesn’t have the parts they need on-hand when equipment breaks down, it results in additional downtime and paying extra for expedited shipping or stopgap measures. All of which cost you money.

With your EAM, you’ll be able to automatically issue a purchase request once part stocks go below a certain level. This request goes to your purchasing department, letting them know it’s time to buy more inventory and helping to ensure you will always have the parts needed for maintenance. The system has built-in analytics and reporting, providing you visibility into what parts are being used most frequently and at which facilities.

With all asset information in a centralized database, you will know how your money is being spent, and when.

You’ll also save on labor—always a huge expense for any company—because you can plan and prioritize work orders and efficiently use resources with workflow management tools. Once your team arrives to complete a task, the repairs will go faster because they will have the repair/parts/work order information they need available to them within the application.

In the manufacturing industry, scrap and rework can drain your profit margins due to lost production and wasted team hours. And, if you do have to rework, you must spend even more money to meet production goals. It could even mean hours of overtime for your production team. The best strategy to avoid unplanned failures or rework? Using the preventive maintenance schedules in your EAM.

EAM Software Is the Key to Profitability

EAM systems help you plan, schedule and execute preventive maintenance. Again, a well-maintained machine will produce a better-quality product, which means there are fewer defects to fix. Built-in analytics and reporting tools help you track key metrics to optimize plant operations, make data-driven inventory decisions, and eliminate stocking of excess and obsolete parts, while preventing stock outs. You’ll always know where your money is going, and you will have the tools you need to control costs and increase revenue.

With an EAM system, you’ll get maximum visibility into the utilization of assets and you can make intelligent decisions whether to replace or repair older assets. You’ll have a firm grasp on your maintenance schedules so you can allocate your team resources accordingly. For example, let’s say that you have a piece of equipment that needs to be calibrated every three months to follow warranty protocols. Trying to manage that across all your facilities would be difficult using manual processes. But with your EAM, you can set up automated work orders and send someone out before the 90-day mark.

Aptean EAM was designed by maintenance professionals for maintenance professionals - providing real-time visibility of your assets throughout your enterprise. Find and fix problems before they occur. You’ll avoid downtime, save on waste and labor, and keep production operations moving—all of which adds up to more money in your pocket.

To learn more about Aptean EAM systems for manufacturing, contact us today. We also welcome you to request a personalized demo to see the platform in action.