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Is it EAM - Enterprise Asset Management or MAS - Maintenance Accounting System?

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quote: What we often do not see is anything related to life cycle cost, operating cost, including energy, design, development and commissioning details, and after the asset is depreciated and used - decommissioning and disposal. In addition we usually see no indications of asset health or asset performance in these Enterprise Asset Management Systems. Terry, if you want to see the data like LCC etc, you have to set it up e.g. in SAP PM, I think one could set it up in PMIS (Plant Maintenance Information System) where one could do standard or customized (user-defined) analyses. Of course, some people opt to do these user-defined anayses in separate softwares and have to link the analysis software with the main CMMS software for data transfer in real time or scheduled data update etc.. I think Meridium is tryiong to provide this kind of external solution. For asset health or performance, this is of course normally tracked by separate softwares offered by various vendors like vibration monitoring, etc. Even some equipment performance are tracked in DCS (Distributed Control System), BMS (Burner Management System) or PIMS (Plant Information System). From my experience, users can do user-defined analyses in SAP PM after some IT programming. Of course the users have to define for IT engineers to program the analyses. For Maximo which is the 2nd CMMS software that I use, the analyses was another part of the package and the management decided to use a separate software to extract data the call it. So I ended setting up the analyses from the standard analyses which were not already available in Maximo main body. As a user I would be very happy to open my CMMS and do the anayses right away without learning how to use the next software to so. No marketing for SAP or Maximo here! I posted the SAP news in another thread just to share. Anyone could choose any software for their improvement programs at their own will! So Terry if you are for aiming for an integrated Maintenance & reliability software, I'm all for it!

What say you Terry?

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quote: Originally posted by Terrence O'Hanlon: From what we see - there is very little managing of enterprise level assets in most EAM systems and a great deal of maintenance accounting. Examples of Maintenance Accounting include: Labor hours Labor cost Parts used Part cost Time between failures Time to repair Failure code What we often do not see is anything related to life cycle cost, operating cost, including energy, design, development and commissioning details, and after the asset is depreciated and used - decommissioning and disposal. In addition we usually see no indications of asset health or asset performance in these Enterprise Asset Management Systems. So while asset owners may think they are getting full Enterprise Level Asset Management with an EAM System - what they are usually getting is failure historian and maintenance cost tracker. So why are they called Enterprise Asset Management? In one word - Marketing. How much management support would be generated by a request for a new $10 million Maintenance Accounting System? The M word is a “dirty” word in most companies and most vendors steer clear! Marketers sell the dream of using EAM to manage assets when it mostly manages maintenance - and really does best when used for maintenance transaction tracking and recording. The great news is that there are many plug in application for most of the elements lacking from an EAM however it is important to have an understanding of Asset Management prior to a leap into a new EAM system. Is it EAM - Enterprise Asset Management or MAS - Maintenance Accounting System? Terry O EAM allows you to offset revenue earned by the asset relevant to when the costs incurred will deliver benefits. When an asset undergoes a major overhaul every five years, a well implemented SAP centric EAM solution will allow the cost of the overhaul to be settled against revenues earned during that time. When you talk about energy, you are talking about cost that is normally incurred directly proportional to the revenue earned and recognizing it should be defined very differently. It should however still be possible to see it as part of the total cost of ownership of the asset. Setting all this up in an EAM Solution, requires a very good understanding of the requirements and how it can be realized in SAP. It requires a very close partnership between the asset owner, the IT organization and a consulting team that understands the overall business environment and SAP’s integrational strength and flexibility. In the greater scheme of things, this is only a small portion of where the true benefits should be reaped and if you believe Terry’s misinterpretation that EAM only addresses accounting and history, then it is probably time that you talk to an expert. A well designed EAM Solution should first of all help the organization to work smarter and continuously get better at what they are doing. It should also allow you to be more pro-active the longer you use it, thus helping you to save money and run more reliable assets year after year.

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