IoT is Powering Asset ManagementIoT is Powering Asset Management

IoT-powered asset management is quickly becoming the differentiating factor that allows businesses to stand apart from the competition and gain a competitive advantage over the market. The Industrial Revolution 4.0 is transforming how businesses have operated. And advanced technologies such as IoT are driving business operations and performance.

Thanks to the explosion of IoT devices and fuelled by the need for streamlined asset utilization, IoT-powered asset management is gaining critical importance.

The global remote asset management sector is predicted to grow from $16.1 billion in 2020 at a CAGR of 15% to reach $ 65.13 billion between 2021 and 2030.

This exceptional growth is attributed to the increased adoption of IoT-based devices and low-cost cloud computing services.

But how is IoT powering asset management? Let’s find out.

What is IoT-based Asset Management?

Any successful manufacturing unit has several interconnected parts working cohesively with each other. As a result, a single fault in the operations – in production, procurement, or asset management – can have a cascading effect on the overall efficiency.

Performance, availability, and quality are the key drivers of overall equipment effectiveness for a manufacturing unit. Using IoT-powered devices, businesses can monitor and detect specific issues such as faulty tools or equipment, missing parts, idle time, and repairs and identify areas for improvement.

IoT-based asset management brings a centralized repository of critical asset information. Thanks to this database, employees can access the process-critical data without any time lag or departmental hassles.

With IoT devices, businesses can maintain an updated database of their assets, problem areas, maintenance records, stock, replenishment policies, and asset condition details.

Benefits of IoT-based Asset Management

The tons of actionable data you can gather using IoT-based devices can help improve operational efficiency, asset management and tracking, maintenance, and productivity.

1.    Real-time Access to Information

IoT provides access to real-time information about the assets, which can help strategize plans. This digital capability allows businesses to manage their assets accurately and respond to real-time situations such as equipment failures and detect threats.

2.    Reduced Human Involvement

Since IoT systems gather information using a sensor, there is enhanced accuracy, and human involvement is largely eliminated. The sensors on the devices send real-time data about the asset, such as its temperature, location, acceleration, and more, without human involvement.

For example, IoT devices reduce the frequency of human errors and their impact on the health and lives of people. Connected devices in the healthcare sector are helping craft tailormade health plans to combat illnesses. Since human involvement is reduced to a large extent, easier, faster, and more accurate medical treatment is being delivered to patients.

3.    Asset Tracking and Optimization

Asset tracking is the most important benefit of IoT applications. Asset tracking is critical to the productivity and performance of an organization.

With IoT-based asset tracking, a business can identify critical assets’ exact location, performance, and status. It can also help monitor and track inventory and equipment and maintain operating parameters.

Tracking the assets throughout the supply chain makes it possible to determine if the asset is used optimally and accurately.

For example, asset tracking is critical for locating perishable or essential goods. In addition, accurately pinpointing their location makes it possible to make alternate arrangements when dealing with delays or to change environmental conditions.

4.    Proactive Maintenance and Monitoring

IoT sensors provide root-cause data of machinery, making it easy for businesses to resolve the issues, reduce costs involved in repairs, and make strategic business decisions on time. IoT sensors help proactively monitor asset health by identifying problem areas well in advance to eliminate equipment breakdown, untimely repairs, and service and provide recommendations for asset health maintenance.

For example, IoT in oil and gas industry helps deal with emergency conditions by eliminating sudden equipment breakdowns and boosting worker safety. By measuring values such as temperature, flow, and pressure, in an oil refinery or fluid pumps, the system can schedule maintenance, inspection, or repair to ensure the facility works at its full potential.

Leverage IoT for Enhanced Asset Management

Looking at a typical organization, you’ll find that its IT department manages only a portion of its IoT infrastructure. The rest is managed by the asset and facilities management team. But, how do we bring the entire IoT ecosystem into an integrated network?

Examples of IoT in Asset management

IoT in enterprise asset management and tracking can help businesses stay a step ahead of their competitors by helping access real-time information, predictive analytics, data-backed valuable insights and alerts. Some of the use cases of IoT in asset management are:

Remote Asset Monitoring and Control

With remote asset monitoring, businesses can keep track of assets from remote locations and influence their performance. You can access location, status, and performance in real-time with remote monitoring.

With this, businesses can track their inventory, scheduled service maintenance, and improve staff performance.

Location Tracking

IoT devices help in fleet and location tracking of assets in real-time. Asset location tracking helps ensure the safety, security, and optimum condition of assets. With GPS tracking of assets, automatic location data is sent to the business, which helps fix roadblocks and reduce costs.

Geolocalization helped many businesses adopt IoT asset management to mitigate theft, and delivery delays, understand usage patterns and locate missed items.

Performance optimization

Since IoT devices help capture real-time data, they allow businesses to visualize, interpret, analyze and integrate the insights to improve asset performance, reliability, and availability. In addition, the information gathered from IoT sensors helps understand how assets are run, maintained, and optimized.

In-Transit Condition Monitoring

IoT-based asset management helps in accurately determining the conditions of assets in transit.

When essential goods such as pharmaceuticals or perishable goods are in transit, temperature fluctuations and changes in environmental conditions can drastically impact their usability. It impacts the entire supply chain, and close monitoring is needed to ensure usability in transit and storage.

IoT-based asset management helps keep a close eye on the condition of the assets during transit, and any changes in the temperature or condition can immediately be dealt with in real-time.  A robust enterprise-wide asset management system is the need of the hour, where the IT department can effectively monitor, deploy, manage, and secure assets. An organization can truly embrace Industrial Revolution and digital transformation solutions only when it harnesses the potential of IoT in asset management.

By Anurag Rathod

Anurag Rathod is an Editor of Appclonescript.com, who is passionate for app-based startup solutions and on-demand business ideas. He believes in spreading tech trends. He is an avid reader and loves thinking out of the box to promote new technologies.