Assets are evolving. Nowadays, asset-intensive organizations are evaluating and procuring enterprise asset management (EAM) software platforms to address their requirements.
EAM has become an umbrella term for lifecycle management of assets and equipment. Organizations want to make sure they use the right kind of software.
In this blog, we will be focusing on a few features of IBM Maximo and Infor EAM which mark each of these softwares and what makes them unique in the market.
What is IBM Maximo?
IBM Maximo is an asset management platform which combines enterprise asset management with maintenance management. Using a single system, companies can track and manage the entire lifecycle of enterprise assets including communications, production, hardware, facilities, software, transportation and much more. This centralized functionality enables users to have control and visibility over assets’ condition and processes, while minimizing downtime.
What’s included in the Maximo Application Suite
The platform enables users to manage material allocation using preventive maintenance and track status updates on work orders, inventory and much more.
Asset Lifecycle Management: IBM Maximo asset management module offers 360-degree lifecycle management features. It is the core module of the IBM Maximo software and brings a centralized data system to track asset movements, failures and performance across the enterprise. Using this asset management solution, you can optimize maintenance across various types of vehicle assets such as trucks, cars and buses. The solution provides critical insights into important vehicular information including driver logs, maintenance schedules, vehicle status, fuel management, meter history and warranty recovery.
Work Orders: IBM Maximo is a cloud-based system that combines asset and maintenance management in one mobile-ready platform. Users can manage and monitor the full life-cycle of all work orders and transactions. It allows users to create, change, track, print work orders and create new work order hierarchies. The platform automates work order requests through material availability and resource planning. And, it helps users to plan preventive maintenance for asset groups in different locations, supervise inspections through intuitive Maximo UI and oversee push-notifications from any locations.
Inventory Management: IBM Maximo offers a modular approach to asset management that streamlines processes for reliability and predictive maintenance. By bringing data together from disparate sources, users can get visibility into their assets’ conditions in real-time. It provides master vendor information regarding prices of contracts, supply, lead-time, etc., ensuring availability of inventory at numerous locations. It allows users to put blanket orders and offers reorder, safety stock point updates and automate purchase requisitions for necessary parts of inventory.
Maintenance Management: IBM Maximo asset management helps users to create workflows and manage asset performance in its entire lifecycle. It ensures regulatory compliance and allows users to create a template for custom report generation. It helps users schedule maintenance activities and showcase reports on interruptions, shutdowns and turnarounds, thus, improving response times to faults to improve operational efficiencies.
Integrations: IBM Maximo empowers business operators by providing them full IoT integrations. It means that you can capture data from different sources like sensors, people and devices for better visibility into assets’ performance. Maximo asset management solution supports APIs and provides mobile asset manager for mobile integration. Maximo lets users create and change workflows using Maximo workflow designer applications and show notifications that might be needed at different levels.
Reporting: IBM Maximo Asset Management offers powerful reporting and BI features. It lets users report and audit capabilities of more than 150 types of reports. Users can visualize and analyze huge data types, take pre-emptive actions, and follow changes to the attributes of the asset. It supports KPI creation within the KPI template and manager application. It enables color-coding and shows KPIs for extra data analysis. Maximo lets users track faults using a failure reporting tool in the asset based on predefined failure metrics.
What is Infor EAM?
Infor EAM is helpful for organizations of all sizes. It helps to track, streamline and organize maintenance tasks. Available on-premise, in the cloud or via hybrid deployment, it can monitor KPIs and generate reports to help you take data-driven decisions. It can function on any OS and can be integrated with various business solutions and has been made available in industry-specific editions to meet user’s specific requirements.
Infor EAM is present in 3 variants: Infor EAM Enterprise, Infor EAM Energy Performance Management and Infor MP2.
Using Infor EAM, companies can optimize the lifecycle and reliability of all their assets with automatically scheduled preventative maintenance and asset assignment. Utility companies can use it to control energy usage, carbon emissions and other pollutant emissions to even track their energy performance.
What’s Included in Infor EAM Application Suite
Asset Management: In the Infor EAM, you can record, standardize, maintain and structure asset profile information such as identity, location, configuration,and maintenance history. You can track asset depreciation, store warranty information and get complete technical and commercial function.
Work Management: This is combination of workforce and work order management into a comprehensive module of
- Managing, planning and monitoring maintenance work and the resources required to complete assigned tasks.
- Creating preventive maintenance plans, scheduling work and assigning work orders to technicians based on the predefined requirements.
- Handling purchase order management, revision control, HR management, reliability management and much more.
Materials Management: You can monitor stock levels of spare parts and equipment to maintain an acceptable level without overstocking. Also, automate the supply shipments and purchase orders, store receipts and keep records organized. It also offers material organization, product grouping, receipt and return management, stock replenishment. It has some procurement features like RFQs, POs, invoices and contract management.
Inspection Management: It allows to simplify the formation of inspection routes, the specific measurement points on each asset, the aspects to be measured, and the collation of results. You can also link with the asset management and work management modules for the listing and creation of work orders. The inspection management module includes risk-based inspection, inspection planning and organization, classification and results, inspection point scheduling, and checklists.
Budget Management: Using Infor EAM will help you automate budget setup and the subsequent capture, monitoring, control, and analyze associated with the maintenance expenditures effectively. You can also calculate the various performance and finance indicators which acts as an input for critical enterprise performance measures.
Project Management: Here you can automate the administration of the complete project process starting from budget initialization, time scaling planning to completion. It also allows comparison of the actual status and progress of work, resource usage, and costs against a project plan.
Infor EAM Enterprise Vs IBM Maximo
What is better: IBM Maximo or Infor EAM software. See this side by side comparison of Maximo and Infor based on few indicators:
| Sl.No. | Comparison Indicators | Infor EAM | IBM Maximo |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Features List | Scalable & Dynamic Easy to Deploy Asset Hierarchy Manage Risks & Reliability with Alerts Modern Asset Maintenance Management System Predict Future Capital Allocations | Asset Health Monitoring Asset Maintenance Project Scheduling Flexible Deployment IoT and Watson IoT Integration |
| 2 | Integration | Infor EAM can be integrated with databases and IT systems such as SAP, Oracle, PeopleSoft, Geospatial Systems. | IBM Maximo can integrate with IoT and Watson IoT Integration |
| 3 | Supporting Devices | Windows, Linux, Android, iPhone/iPad, Web-based, Mac | Windows, Mac, Web-based |
| 4 | Available Support | Email, Phone, Training, Live Support, Tickets | Email, Phone, Training, Tickets |
| 5 | Entry Level Set-up Cost | No | No |
Further, if you want to make more subjective based process, we need to look at few technical factors such as:
CMMS Functionality: Maximo allows customization to its CMMS functionality, whereas Infor allows users to drag and place menus and menu items to the CMMS. Maximo has a strong lead over Infor in this criterion as its functions are offered nativelty.
Maintenance Management: Infor EAM excels in this criteria. It allows customizing elements of screens, reports, GUIs and a lot more functions. Infor has a slight advantage compared to Maximo.
Product Technology: IBM Maximo has no contest in this module.
Inventory Management: For inventory management module, Maximo clearly eclipses Infor as all its features are also available off the shelf.
Purchase Management: Maximo easy edges past this module when compared with Infor Software.
Reliability: Infor EAM slightly leads Maximo in reliability functionality.
Taking into consideration all the points mentioned above, it is not an easy task to determine the best software for your enterprise asset management needs for your company. Although Infor scores quite equal to Maximo in most of the criterias, one has to look at factors like cost, duration, risk, and scalability. Therefore, the buyers have to access all their options clearly before choosing the right software.
Sedin, an authorised IBM partner, through its mobile app EAM360, has been delivering smart Enterprise Asset Management solutions for discrete & process manufacturing industries that leverages IoT and Artificial Intelligence. EAM360, integrated with IBM Maximo, the World’s leading CMMS solution, is the Mobile App for Maximo designed exclusively to manage Asset and Inventory Management activities on the field. Companies can monitor, track, manage the lifecycle of all their assets – Production, Facilities, IT, Transportation & Calibration etc.
We offer our EAM Maximo Mobile App Solution to Fortune 100 companies on a global scale. We share a common belief with our clients that smarter asset management can have a formidable effect on everyone in an organization. With a unique blend of industrial experience combined with IT expertise, our consultants work with Clients to streamline their asset management process to achieve greater ROI, and reduce their overall total cost of ownership.
