The asset world is evolving. We continue to connect with our physical world. As we do so, more and more opportunities arise to ensure that our assets and processes are performing well, and within regulatory limits. What worked in the past simply does not cut it in today’s asset-intensive organizations. Digital transformation and the Internet of Things (IoT) are continuously pushing companies to utilize data and automate production processes. Having a successful asset performance management strategy is key to staying competitive in today’s market.
In the business world, managing the assets is equal to maintaining their value and keeping them up and running for a long term. We can’t deny the fact that using an enterprise asset management software is easier for maintaining those assets efficiently.
EAM software has been used by organizations as it not only helps in planning, but also in execution, tracking and optimizing crucial maintenance operations. It has great features and can sometimes make it tricky for an user to choose the best software between them.
Let us first understand what EAM Software is.
What is Enterprise Asset Management Software?
Enterprise asset management (EAM) software helps businesses across multiple industries to acquire, maintain, and analyze physical assets. It uses a holistic approach to optimize management strategies by tracking the lifecycle of all company-owned assets. The objective of EAM software is to control and measure asset performance, usage and maintenance costs across the company. This software is mostly helpful for asset-intensive industries such as manufacturing, construction, energy, power plants, and utilities.
One of the primary users of EAM software are maintenance teams who use this software to find out issues and perform inspections. In addition to preventative maintenance and inventory scheduling, EAM brings a more robust, analytical system for managing assets including multiple predictive maintenance methods, lifecycle planning tools, workflow analysis and advanced metrics to identify an asset’s future state and continued reliability.
There are two giants in the enterprise asset management software industry, namely IBM Maximo and SAP. In this blog, we will be focusing on the few features which mark each of our softwares and what makes them unique in the market.
Let’s get started with the features comparison.
Maximo Vs SAP: Features Comparison
IBM Maximo Asset Management is an integrated core module which supports asset monitoring in the enterprise. It lets users to categorize assets using conditional expressions in the asset template and define sequences, class, identity and other features. You can manage material allocation using preventive maintenance triggers and track status updates on inventory, work orders and more.
SAP EAM has strong materials management module of enterprise structure definition and assignments, purchasing, valuation and account assignment. Using this software helps to improve material visibility across plants and enables part reservations for needed materials. Users can classify inventory with SAP standard description for serial numbers, tagging, etc.
But which is better? Let’s compare their individual features:
Asset Lifecycle Management
IBM Maximo Asset Management provides a 360-degree overview of the asset lifecycle management functionality. Asset lifecycle management is the core module of the IBM Maximo software. It provides a centralized information system to track all the asset movements, failure and performance across the enterprise. It follows production, IT, facilities and other processes. This feature helps users to develop programs for preventive and predictive maintenance, improve asset uptime, and decrease unplanned maintenance.
This asset management solution can be used to optimize maintenance across types of vehicle assets such as cars, trucks and buses. It provides critical insights into important vehicle data such as driver logs, maintenance schedules, fuel management, vehicle status, meter history and warranty recovery. It helps users to optimize vehicle life through preventive maintenance.
SAP EAM provides powerful asset lifecycle management functionality with a wide spectrum of features for business processes real-time. The software provides users a holistic view of performance, risk and costs throughout the asset lifecycle with information related to usage of assets, accounting costs, warranties and other processes. It helps to increase asset ROI and enables informed purchase decisions.
Maintenance Management
IBM Maximo Asset Management allows users to build workflows and manage asset performance throughout its lifecycle. It ensures regulatory compliance and lets users make a template for custom report generation. The software helps users schedule maintenance activities and provides reports on shutdowns, outages and turnarounds, thus, improving response times to faults and increasing operational efficiency.
SAP EAM provides strong maintenance management functionality. It consists of asset management and work order management tools and ensures regulatory compliance. It helps keep assets at their peak performance by implementing timelier maintenance and shorter response times. It allows users to create templates for work processes through Work Clearance Management integration (WCM) and create a fault tree list against a part or equipment in the asset master list.
Work Orders
IBM Maximo is a cloud-based system. It 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. IBM’s asset management system Maximo provides robust work order functionality.
The solution helps users to create, modify, print and track work orders, and build work order hierarchies. It automates work order requests through resource planning and material availability. Users can schedule preventive maintenance for asset groups across locations, manage inspections through intuitive Maximo UI and manage push-notifications from anywhere.
SAP Enterprise Asset Management works with assets throughout their entire lifecycle. At first, users can easily enter assets into the program database and track all asset performance in real time. For maintenance purpose, users can set up preventive maintenance schedules to keep assets in top shape before suspecting damage.
SAP EAM allows work order creation and helps users to view and allocate resources filtered by equipment availability. It is integrated with SAP HANA in-memory technology to analyze a huge variety of asset data using machine learning algorithms. Then it issues preventive maintenance triggers through notifications and alerts before a part fails. This helps users to create inspection lists and prevent unplanned downtime.
Integrations
IBM Maximo empowers business operators by providing full integration with IoT and the Watson IoT platform. It means that the solution can capture data from key sources like people, sensors and different devices for integrated real-time visibility into users assets’ performances and health. It is capable of supporting APIs and offers Maximo Mobile Asset Manager for mobile integration. Maximo lets users to create and modify workflows using the Maximo Workflow Designer application and enable notifications that may be required at different levels.
Using real-time analytics tools that tap the Internet of Things (IoT), SAP EAM allows users to improve the health of their assets, improve collaboration and dramatically accelerate performance with integrated enterprise asset management. Users can utilize this direct connectivity with the IoT to adopt a usage-based business model and monitor remote assets from anywhere. It provides integration with mobile for plant maintenance work orders and supports data import and export functionality. The software lets users create workflow and business automation requests to get quick insight into work processes and audit trails.
Inventory Management
IBM Maximo has a modular approach to enterprise asset management that centralizes processes for predictive maintenance and reliability. By bringing data from different sources, users can gain real-time visibility into the health of their assets. It provides master vendor information related to the price of supply, contracts, lead time, etc., thus, ensuring inventory availability at multiple locations. Users can place blanket orders and provide safety and re-order stock point updates. The solution automates purchase requisitions for required parts of inventory.
SAP uses an asset-centric model that empowers users and managers with easier access to the equipment’s most critical information. This all leads to better financial and operational decision-making. SAP provides excellent inventory management functionality through an add-on inventory module. It offers features such as tag and capture assets, access to master data, and other real-time integrations. The software offers a centralized platform for real-time inventory visualization and stock availability across multiple sites and gives access for direct lookup for specific assets.
Reporting
IBM Maximo Asset Management offers both robust reporting and BI features. The software system offers users reporting and auditing capabilities for 150+ types of reports which allow users to visualize and analyze a huge amount of data. They also enable KPI creation within the KPI template and manager application. Maximo provides failure reporting tools to track faults in the asset based on predefined failure metrics.
SAP EAM has an in-built BI module. The software allows users to generate reports with trend analysis and fault tree analysis. It offers statistical tools for asset modeling, data discovery, asset scoring and visualization. SAP allows users to create and download activity reports for the service and maintenance history of an asset and enables creation of strong KPI metrics.
If you are an organization with large inventories in multiple sites and are looking for a comprehensive, centralized solution asset tracking system, then Maximo is the solution for you. Maximo is a highly flexible solution that can suit the needs of most of the businesses. It can be used by small scale businesses looking for a cost effective solution to track its inventory.
For a manufacturing, industrial complex, or an enterprise looking to implement everything according to the principles and standards, SAP ERP solution is their go-to solution. Its comprehensive automation system can be experienced in the cloud and has the ability to handle different departments within the organization.
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 lifecycle of all their assets – Production, Facilities, IT, Transportation & Calibration etc.
We offer our EAM maximo mobile app solution to companies for 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, reduce the overall total cost of ownership.
