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Asset Management Game changing technologies and practices

The CEO and co-founder of Pragma, Adriaan Scheeres invites delegates to his presentation at this year’s SAAMA conference to be held from 5 to 7 June 2017 at the Lord Charles Hotel, Somerset West, Cape Town. Adriaan will address the question: “How will the face of asset management change in the near future?” His presentation will further explore some of game changing technologies and practices in the asset management industry.

The asset management industry stands on the edge of a number of fundamental shifts that will shape the future of the industry. Many asset managers have afforded themselves little time to bring the future into focus and the way in which many of them will operate in 2025 – which will be significantly different compared to today’s methods and procedures.

Adriaan will give delegates a glimpse into the future of asset management. His presentation will be an illustrative insight into how the operating landscape for asset managers will look like in 2025. He will give invaluable advice to asset managers on how they could prepare for some of these exciting but sometimes daunting challenges, and how to successfully turn these challenges into competitive advantages.

Key messages presented as a series of predictions for 2025, will offer guidelines for asset managers on how to prepare operating models, people and processes for the future. The series of predictions will be highlighted around some of the key drivers that are shaping the future of asset management. These include: asset lifecycle management, work and service management, data mining and analytics, mobility, cloud and GIS, industry automation and robotics.

ASSET LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT

“Asset lifecycle management implicates, amongst others, the influence that OEMs will have on how assets will be managed in future,” says Scheeres. “Gone are the days that manufacturers only focus on selling products that have a specific shelf life in order to sell more of the same in a faster turnaround time. The focus is shifting to providing assets that have an extended lifecycle in order to provide appropriate services that not only support the lifecycle of the asset but also prolong it. Some refer to it as ”Assets as a Service” (AaaS). Manufacturers will become big data players and will use the data to develop additional services in support of the assets they manufacture and according to specific customer needs. Data will play a key role in the OEM’s operational strategies and they will have to apply “service thinking” to expand their horizons,” Scheeres adds.

WORK AND SERVICE MANAGEMENT

Another interesting facet of the future of asset management is work and service management. This involves the way in which employees will interact with, and apply technology in their daily tasks. Self-monitoring assets that use machine learning to predict maintenance needs and self-diagnose failures, are envisioned as ‘standard practice’ for the asset management industry of the future. Asset managers, maintenance staff, engineers and risk managers will have to be skilled in mobile technology in order to keep up with the resilient and powerful Internet of Things (IoT).

Says Scheeres: “The IoT is forcing us to approach things differently. It is reversing the roles of man and machine. Machines are now providing the data to which we need to respond. We will no longer enter data into a machine and be able to manipulate the data according to our needs and planning. We will receive data from machines to which we will have to respond effectively in order to prolong the machine’s life cycle. Asset managers will have to be connected, ready to respond and react to data received. Roles are being reversed and jumbled, and we will have to adapt accordingly. Call centers and training interventions will look different in the near future. Virtual reality will take over training and customer service interventions and we will soon interact with each other in a digital world.”

DATA MINING AND ANALYTICS

Due to technological innovations, data mining and analysis tools are becoming simpler. However, more sophisticated techniques will require specialised staff. Data mining, in particular, can require added expertise because results can be difficult to interpret and may need to be verified using specialised methods. Predictive analytics and data mining use algorithms to discover knowledge and find the best solutions. Data mining is a process based on algorithms to analyse and extract useful information and automatically discover hidden patterns and relationships from data. Instead, predictive analytics is closely tied to machine learning, as it uses data patterns to make predictions, where machines take historical and current information and apply them to a model to predict future trends. In essence, the difference between predictive analytics and data mining is that the former explores the data and the latter answers “what is the next step?”

MOBILITY, CLOUD AND GIS

Asset managers, machine operators/end users, maintenance staff and OEMs all have to work together, share and interact in order to ensure optimisation of data. According to Scheeres this will require a new way of thinking as there is still a culture of ”non-sharing” and ”keeping IP secrets” amongst some organisations. ”We will have to learn to share and, fortunately, the cloud will make the process of sharing easier. Operators and end users have deep knowledge of asset performance but lack information about the same assets used by others elsewhere. Asset owners have a vested interest in ‘cradle to grave’ asset performance and maintenance, but usually lack asset technical and operational skills. OEMs have deep knowledge about the performance of components that they produce, but often fail to see their operational contexts. IT specialists keep abreast of the latest developments in their fields of expertise, but lack asset technical and operational experience. Where the one lack, the other fills in. In future, we will have to collaborate for mutual benefit,” says Scheeres.

INDUSTRY AUTOMATION AND ROBOTICS

“More that 70 % of modern car manufacturing plants is now being operated by robots. The city-state of Dubai is preparing to launch an autonomous aerial taxi. Starting in July, commuters will be able to summon the world’s first passenger drone to transport them to their desired destination without having to deal with Dubai’s congested freeways. Unmanned and autonomous machines will soon become the norm,” according to Scheeres. He also concludes by reiterating that the IoT is not some far away idea. It is here and asset managers and other industry professionals should learn all they can about how things will work in future. ”We should embrace the IoT as connected assets that will ‘talk to us’ by sending data which we can all tap into to improve collaboration and asset performance, operations and maintenance.”

More about Adriaan Scheeres – CEO and co-founder of Pragma

As CEO and co-founder of Pragma, Adriaan has an appetite for innovation and a natural sense for business. He pioneered the development of On Key, an Enterprise Asset Management System that competes in the global market, and is the brain behind the Optimum Maintenance Mix concept, a key element in the development of asset care plans for modern plant and infrastructure. Adriaan also had a hand in the development of asset management as a service concept. Adriaan has successfully led Pragma to become a multinational, physical asset management solutions provider. He is one of the founding members of SAAMA and is regularly invited to address audiences at conferences on the future of Physical Asset Management where he breathes life into new concepts and insights. Adriaan holds a Masters degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Stellenbosch. To connect with Adriaan, visit his profile on https://www.linkedin.com/in/adriaan-scheeres-027a583.


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