Denver February 11, 2002 J.D. Edwards & Co. has released a standalone solution for enterprise asset management, offering tight integration with enterprise resource planning systems and enhanced asset utilization functionality.
Enterprise asset management (EAM) technology allows enterprises to maximize asset productivity. This is particularly relevant for asset-intensive enterprises, where unplanned equipment downtime translates to an unrecoverable loss of revenue.
EAM can help companies synchronize operations requirements with maintenance to avoid unplanned shutdowns, select the appropriate technicians for the work, reduce the amount of repairs, and determine when maintenance should be scheduled to minimize interference with production schedules and project deadlines or when an aging machine should be repaired or replaced.
"Current economic conditions are forcing businesses to focus on bottom-line results," stated John Van Decker, program director, META Group. "Asset-intensive businesses that implement EAM solutions can facilitate the scheduling of equipment downtime and the planning of maintenance outages in advance. By doing this, EAM can increase the efficiency of their assets, while decreasing the potential of lost revenue (and increased expense) caused by unplanned equipment failures."
Lisa Fellows, vice president of cross-industry product management at J.D. Edwards, said that regardless of external factors like economic conditions, competition or changing customer demands, EAM drives more value from enterprises' fixed investments. "This is something enterprises can directly control to improve their bottom line," Fellows said.
J.D. Edwards' EAM extends computer maintenance management system (CMMS) technology by integrating asset utilization technology with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. This allows companies to not only manage assets but to relate them to the enterprise, the solution provider asserted. Through EAM, enterprises can gain real-time visibility of assets throughout the entire enterprise, linking utilization and operational information about these assets with their book value, depreciation, and revenue and cost streams.
This integration to other enterprise applications (including workforce management and capital project management) can provide further operational efficiency, synchronizing operational needs with maintenance and enhancing utilization as well, J.D. Edwards said.
J.D. Edwards' EAM solution includes such features as failure analysis, to identify the cause of failures, track them to their causal source and help prevent pending failures before an unplanned shutdown occurs; and intelligent graphics solution (IGS), which provides visual representation of assets or property, making the system easy for employees to learn and use.
Other components included in J.D. Edwards' EAM are fixed asset management, which can improve the accessibility and flow of important asset information for the entire asset life cycle; plant and equipment maintenance, to help minimize equipment downtime by giving users the power to incorporate planned and preventive maintenance strategies into their operations; and service and warranty management, which allows customers to integrate customer and product information enterprise-wide to better respond to clients' needs quickly and efficiently.
Cabot Corp., a global company with operations in chemicals and specialty materials, is implementing J.D. Edwards' EAM technology as part of its integrated global information infrastructure, along with ERP, manufacturing engineering management, supply chain management, quality management and customer relationship management.
"Tightly integrated with our ERP and other business processes in this environment, our implementation of J.D. Edwards' EAM technology for plant and equipment maintenance will be our standard solution for preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance, work order management, and failure analysis," said Craig Bickel, chief information officer of Cabot Corp. "We believe the benefits for improving our operational efficiencies are significant. As we rationalize our stores inventories and part numbers, the integrated system will give us a better ability to stage and appropriately distribute insurance parts and other forms of maintenance inventory to our manufacturing and distribution sites worldwide."
