Asset Performance Management (APM) optimizes asset performance by balancing risk, cost, and performance, and Asset Health plays a central role in this process. Why? Asset Health directly influences asset efficiency, reliability, safety, integrity, and longevity in 8 key ways.
1. Effective Predictive Maintenance and ReliabilityAsset health monitoring enables timely (predictive) interventions to identify risks and prevent losses before they happen, avoiding unplanned downtime, lowering repair costs, and extending the asset's lifespan.
2. Maximizing Asset Performance
Regular Asset Health monitoring ensures equipment is operating at peak efficiency. Target performance depends on external forces such as market situations, feedstock costs, available resources, changing regulations, and internal forces such as operating conditions, load levels, and equipment conditions. Successfully balancing all these parameters through Asset Health monitoring helps maximize asset performance in an organization.
3. Risk Management
Asset Health directly affects risk management. By regularly assessing the health of assets, companies can identify and mitigate potential risks that may arise from asset failures. This information is used to prioritize critical assets and focus resources where they are most needed to prevent catastrophic failures that can impact safety, operational continuity, and compliance.
4. Cost Optimization
Effective Asset Health monitoring helps avoid costly emergency repairs and unexpected breakdowns. APM strategies integrating Asset Health can reduce unnecessary maintenance costs, optimize spare parts inventory, improve resource allocation, and focus maintenance budgets on assets at higher risk of failure.
5. Lifecycle Management
Asset Health is a key indicator of where an asset is in its lifecycle. Managing asset health throughout an asset’s lifecycle with a digital solution can make it easier to synthesize and act on data-driven decisions regarding asset replacement, refurbishment, or further investment in maintenance.
6. Data-Driven Decision-Making to Define An Asset Strategy
APM relies heavily on data analysis—and Asset Health is a foundation for important asset data. The more data gathered via Asset Health Monitoring (e.g., vibration, temperature, pressure, or wear indicators), the more robust the insights you can gain into asset performance and maintenance needs. These insights inform decisions on repairs, replacements, and upgrades. A data-driven asset strategy, supported by robust Asset Health monitoring, optimizes resource allocation, mitigates risk, and improves cost efficiency.
7. Compliance and Regulatory Adherence
In industries with strict regulations (e.g., oil and gas, chemicals, manufacturing, utilities), maintaining Asset Health isn’t just about performance. It’s about compliance with safety and environmental regulations. With an integrated view of asset health and the associated risks, operating companies can ensure their APM program is risk-aware. Regular health assessments help ensure that assets meet required standards, preventing fines and legal issues.
8. Operational Efficiency
A healthy asset contributes to smoother operations. Poor asset health leads to inefficiencies such as frequent breakdowns, delays, production constraints, and unplanned downtime. By maintaining assets in optimal health, Asset Health helps to ensure continuous and efficient operations, reducing the risk of production bottlenecks.
Asset Health forms the foundation of effective APM. It allows organizations to make informed decisions about asset maintenance, replacement, and optimization, ultimately leading to better performance, lower costs, and improved reliability. With a robust software solution, like the Operational Sustainability® OESuite® Asset Health Module, organizations can help ensure assets are operating at their best for as long as possible, plan maintenance and inspection actions to minimize their impact on operations, and drive a proactive attitude in their asset management processes.