First things first, what is the need of an IoT-powered asset monitoring solution? No matter which industries we are talking about, assets will always remain an integral part of the overall efficiency and productivity of the company, thus affecting the revenue generation in one way or another. These asset-intensive industries try to rely on smart asset management and monitoring solutions to track and handle asset operations.
To build the foundation of an effective asset monitoring solution, companies would need the right tools, integrated with the right systems and the right applications. Collectively, this will create an asset tracking solution that enables us to streamline data collection and analysis.
For industries such as manufacturing, utilities, construction, fleet, where assets serve as the backbone of the business, having a highly operative asset base is really important. So, let us have a look at some of the fundamental factors that need to be at the heart of your asset monitoring solution.
Track assets using geofencing
One of the most important factors that any asset monitoring solution is supposed to keep at the core of the entire ecosystem is asset tracking. When we talk about asset tracking here, it is not limited to getting the geographical location in form of lat-long on a map. Rather, it goes into details such as where any particular asset is located on a particular floor of a specific building. Business can feed the floor plans or locations where assets are generally used, after which they can define and assign geofence to each and every asset that needs to be tracked. With geofencing, enterprises can locate any specific asset; monitor their movement; and get notified whenever an asset leaves its designated geofence.
Scale to a variety of assets
The most common issue that asset monitoring service providers face is to scale up when they need the ability to support assets from different manufacturers. Nowadays, assets come with a range of monitoring functionalities, but when your enterprise is using assets from different manufacturers, you will surely face a challenge in controlling a number of assets with different formats. Before choosing an asset monitoring solution, any business should ensure that their solution can scale up no matter how many assets are added and include a variety of assets. The system should be able to manage, register, and understand different attributes and formats to make a feasible solution that fits with your existing infrastructure.
Easy integration
On top of data that resides in the CRM or ERP, an asset monitoring solution will also collect real-time sensor data. Based on this data, the solution can create analytical reports to offer truly situational awareness to the entire asset monitoring environment. Your asset monitoring solution can bring real value to your business if it provides a no-code or low-code setting, which makes it easier to integrate with third-party applications.
Visibility at different levels
Currently, the market offers view-related access levels for users to get details regarding on-going operations and processes. This segregation of visibility levels into enterprise-level, device-level or machine-level view is what prevents different users to make the most of the derived analytics. Analytics is all about getting to know the current scenarios through data, be able to compare different data sets and take better business decisions. Your asset monitoring solution should consider your business-specific metrics and provide a customized offering that is created with all the unique metrics that your business may require in addition to the readily available ones.
Ticketing system for issue tracking
A ticketing system is a must, especially in an industrial setting where there are thousands of assets that need to be up and running to meet the expected productivity of the business. An asset monitoring solution should be able to track all the issues associated with company’s assets and allow the users to access all the information from a single point for better interdepartmental communication.
KPIs supported and customization options
Your business is unique, and so would be the KPIs that you might want to monitor when you think to adopt asset monitoring. In addition to making use of the boxed KPIs that every asset monitoring solution might offer, your business may also require some diverse set of KPIs to track the performance of assets that matter to your business. Whichever asset monitoring solution you choose for your monitoring needs, you need to ensure that they can create a set of customized KPIs as per your business needs.
Predict asset behavior and performance
An ideal solution for asset monitoring will not only monitor the asset behavior but will also detect machine problems based on the deviations in the behavioral patterns and real-time machine data. Businesses can significantly cut costs associated with equipment failure if they can accurately predict the asset downtime. With a series of accurate predictions, businesses can get a predictive maintenance plan to ensure uninterrupted production for more hours. Furthermore, they can also ensure that equipment repair and maintenance is done as and when required to guarantee optimum asset performance and save millions on reactive repairs.
The final evaluation
Once properly implemented, an asset monitoring system can prove to be insightful as well as cost-effective. With this, businesses get the power to precisely know what assets are owned and the current status of each one of them. As the system tracks all the components, retrieval of critical information becomes easier for all the organizational assets. Also, the solution adds a visibility of hardware and software, which brings standardization and confirms legal and licensing compliance. All of these benefits of an IoT-enabled asset monitoring solution when boxed with exceptional economic performance and low risk, makes it a wise choice for most of the enterprises.
