Over the past decade, the enter­prise asset man­age­ment (EAM) land­scape has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. As intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies have steadi­ly improved and seem more and more imple­men­ta­tions across all indus­tries, the ways orga­ni­za­tions track, main­tain, and fix their assets have steadi­ly mor­phed. Ear­li­er this week, ASUG host­ed ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for EAM, a vir­tu­al con­fer­ence series ded­i­cat­ed to the SAP EAM port­fo­lio of solu­tions and cus­tomer stories. 

“Wel­come to the new age of asset man­age­ment. Con­verg­ing tech­nolo­gies are mak­ing capa­bil­i­ties — once thought to be sci­ence fic­tion — pos­si­ble,” said Paul Kurchi­na, ASUG evan­ge­list and one of the event’s hosts. ​“Main­te­nance folks, it’s time to learn to use these new tools in your tool­belt: AI, ML, IoT, sen­sors, and drones.” 

Atten­dees heard from SAP experts and cus­tomers about the chang­ing EAM field and what the future holds mov­ing for­ward. Here are four high­lights from the event. 

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The SAP Road Map for EAM

One of the main top­ics through­out the con­fer­ence was the direc­tion SAP is tak­ing its intel­li­gent asset man­age­ment port­fo­lio and what the road map for this line of solu­tions looks like. In the first ses­sion of the con­fer­ence, Tom Kurtz, glob­al solu­tions lead for intel­li­gent asset man­age­ment at SAP, and Dieter Haesslein, SVP of glob­al assess­ment man­age­ment at SAP, walked atten­dees through the soft­ware company’s road map for EAM solu­tions. The two empha­sized the impor­tance of max­i­miz­ing the return on an asset. 

Haesslein laid out the five main themes that SAP is focus­ing on that will help cus­tomers as they go about try­ing to set up an intel­li­gent asset man­age­ment sys­tem: a closed loop of main­te­nance strat­e­gy and exe­cu­tion, con­nect­ed assets with Indus­try 4.0, busi­ness part­ner net­works for asset man­age­ment, embed­ded envi­ron­ment health and safe­ty capa­bil­i­ties (EHS), and mobile and aug­ment­ed reality. 

Lat­er, Kurtz dis­cussed oppor­tu­ni­ties in asset ser­vice and main­te­nance that SAP is try­ing to take advan­tage of, includ­ing inte­grat­ing dynam­ic asset per­for­mance man­age­ment with main­te­nance data, con­nect­ing assets with Indus­try 4.0 for pre­dic­tive and pre­scrip­tive main­te­nance, and inte­grat­ed EHS poli­cies. He also walked audi­ences through the new updates and capa­bil­i­ties SAP is build­ing into its EAM solu­tions, includ­ing SAP Asset Strat­e­gy and Per­for­mance Man­age­ment, SAP Asset Intel­li­gence Net­work, and SAP Mobile Asset Management. 

In a lat­er ses­sion, Patrick Cramp­ton-Thomas, glob­al head of Dig­i­tal Prod­ucts and Asset Man­age­ment at SAP, went through some of the new capa­bil­i­ties SAP is intro­duc­ing to some of its EAM solu­tions in 2021. For exam­ple, SAP Asset Strat­e­gy and Per­for­mance Man­age­ment will see inte­gra­tion with SAP S/4HANA main­te­nance and ser­vice oper­a­tions this year, while SAP Asset Net­works and Col­lab­o­ra­tion will see enhanced asset data with SAP S/4HANA, along with col­lab­o­ra­tive work orders, gov­er­nance for shared objects, and inte­gra­tion with the SAP Busi­ness Network. 

Cus­tomer Sto­ry: Agrana Fruit

One of the many cus­tomer sto­ry ses­sions from the con­fer­ence focused on Agrana Fruit’s deploy­ment of SAP Plant Man­ag­er, SAP Asset Man­ag­er, and SAP Intel­li­gent Asset Man­age­ment. Nor­bert Schmitt, head of IT U.S. and strat­e­gy offi­cer of Agrana Fruit USA, was joined by Ez Yaqub, prin­ci­pal con­sul­tant of Evo­ra IT Solu­tions, to dis­cuss the company’s deploy­ment story. 

Accord­ing to Schmitt, Agrana is using these SAP solu­tions to improve some of the company’s EAM capa­bil­i­ties and report­ing across its four pro­duc­tion sites in the U.S. SAP Plant Man­ag­er will be used for inspec­tion, pre­dic­tive main­te­nance, and repairs. The solu­tion is already being used by some of the company’s Euro­pean affil­i­ates. SAP Asset Man­ag­er will be lever­aged to help with work order man­age­ment, includ­ing man­ag­ing noti­fi­ca­tions, time, parts, and mea­sure read­ings while inte­grat­ing with geo­graph­ic sys­tems. Addi­tion­al­ly, the solu­tion is being used because of its cloud-based deploy­ment options, mobile capa­bil­i­ties, and flex­i­bil­i­ty on the back end. 

Agrana was already mak­ing the move to SAP S/4HANA and using some SAP solu­tions, includ­ing SAP Mate­ri­als Mas­ter, SAP Ware­house Man­age­ment, and SAP Sales and Dis­tri­b­u­tion. Ini­tial­ly, the planned go-live for the SAP EAM solu­tions was sup­posed to be in May 2020. How­ev­er, due to COVID-19, the date got pushed back to March 2021. Cur­rent­ly, SAP Asset Man­ag­er, SAP Intel­li­gent Asset Man­age­ment, and SAP Plant Man­ag­er are live in an Agrana loca­tion in Ohio. Mov­ing for­ward, the com­pa­ny hopes to do a roll­out of the solu­tions in North Amer­i­ca before expand­ing across its glob­al oper­a­tions. Schmitt also men­tioned Agrana is plan­ning on imple­ment­ing and lever­ag­ing dig­i­tal twin tech­nolo­gies in the future. 

State of Automa­tion in the EAM Market

Today, automa­tion and intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies are at the heart of EAM strate­gies and solu­tions. Dur­ing his open­ing ses­sion, Haesslein empha­sized the need for solu­tions that allow cus­tomers to do ​“pre­dic­tive and pre­scrip­tive main­te­nance” on assets. This allows cus­tomers to tack­le issues with their enter­prise assets before there’s a prob­lem. This inher­ent­ly leads not only to improved and stream­lined work process­es, but it also improves the health and lifes­pan of enter­prise assets. 

Romeu Sciot­ta, EVP, part­ner, and co-founder of Sig­ga Tech­nolo­gies, lead a ses­sion on the future of automa­tion in the SAP EAM mar­ket. At the begin­ning of that ses­sion, he went through some of the indus­try trends he’s see­ing. Off the bat, the sen­sor mar­ket is incred­i­bly active and prof­itable. Accord­ing to Sciot­ta, it exceed­ed over $20 bil­lion in rev­enue last year is expect­ed to grow to over $30 bil­lion in 2026. While the indus­try is grow­ing, it’s cer­tain­ly not with­out its chal­lenges, includ­ing hur­dles with sourc­ing qual­i­ty sen­sors along with pow­er man­age­ment, secu­ri­ty, and pro­cess­ing issues. 

Sciot­ta also went through some of the chal­lenges that orga­ni­za­tions must con­tend with when imple­ment­ing EAM solu­tions and try­ing to become a part of ​“Indus­try 4.0.” Com­pa­nies need to dig­i­tize their work­flows, while reduc­ing cost­ly cus­tomiza­tions. Addi­tion­al­ly, they are try­ing to low­er TCO while also accel­er­at­ing their ROI. 

Lever­ag­ing Intel­li­gent Technologies

In one of the last ses­sions of the con­fer­ence, Simon Lee, solu­tion man­ag­er at SAP, dis­cussed pre­dic­tive main­te­nance using intel­li­gent tech­nolo­gies such as IoT, ML, and dig­i­tal twin. 

“For the last two years, we have seen a real uptick in terms of cus­tomer inter­est and adop­tion,” he said. 

Lee not­ed that SAP cus­tomers are telling the soft­ware com­pa­ny that they ​“want to be more data-dri­ven” and also want to ​“take advan­tage of the data they are col­lect­ing.” Right now, many com­pa­nies are lever­ag­ing these tech­nolo­gies to plan main­te­nance events, decrease down­time, and low­er main­te­nance costs. Lee said that the ​“next lev­el” of using these tech­nolo­gies is lever­ag­ing dig­i­tal twin solu­tions to sim­u­late asset sta­tus­es and bring advanced warn­ings to asset down­time and maintenance. 

Lee also broke down the advan­tage SAP Pre­dic­tive Asset Insights can bring cus­tomers. The solu­tion brings togeth­er ML, AI, and IoT to help cus­tomers ​“detect anom­alies” and ​“gain insights.” The solu­tion also makes use of sen­sor data, help­ing cus­tomers get a holis­tic, 360-degree view of their assets and how they perform.

ASUG host­ed ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP for Sup­ply Chain on May 11 and 12. ASUG hosts mul­ti­ple events regard­ing SAP for Sup­ply Chain through­out the year. Make sure you are free and reg­is­ter for our events.