What is Enterprise Asset Management and does your business need it?
What is enterprise asset management (EAM)?
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) is the term used to describe the process of managing and maintaining an organisation's assets (including tools, equipment, plant and machinery) throughout their lifecycle to maximise efficiency and quality and minimise costs. Enterprise asset management (EAM) is also sometimes referred to as computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) although many consider CMMS to focus only on the maintenance aspects. In contrast, EAM considers all aspects of managing an asset throughout its lifecycle.
Over its lifetime, an asset will require maintenance to maximise its useful life. Optimising the useful life of an asset is highly desirable for organisations as this is usually the most cost-effective approach to managing assets. EAM includes managing the asset throughout its whole lifecycle, including the following stages: design, commission, operational and replacement.
What is enterprise asset management used for?
Businesses use EAM to manage assets through each stage of their lifecycle. This includes to schedule and monitor the planned maintenance required by each asset over its lifetime. Also, EAM manages and tracks any unplanned maintenance that is needed. When the asset needs to be replaced, this is also something that enterprise asset management caters for.
What is the useful life of an asset?
The useful life of an asset is the amount of time it is economical to continue to use the asset within an organisation.
How long is the useful life of an asset?
The length of an asset's useful life depends on firstly the type of asset and secondly the Accounting Standards in your country. If you're UK-based and implementing enterprise asset management, you can find out more about accounting for different types of assets here.
What types of assets should be tracked and managed by EAM?
- Plant
- Buildings
- Machinery
- Tools
- Equipment Tracking
- IT Asset Tracking
- Vehicles
- Spare parts
What is enterprise asset management software?
Enterprise asset management software is a tool used by organisations to manage all parts of the asset management processes.
This usually includes maintaining a database of company assets, tools and equipment, preventive maintenance scheduling, asset lifecycle management and warranty management. Your EAM software options are no longer hard-to-use, complex systems. Instead, you can use a simple but complete enterprise asset management system with a desktop portal and mobile apps. That way, you'll always be able to monitor your assets.
