IFS Ultimo, one more Member of your Solutions Team

Traditionally (and still in many environments), maintenance systems functioned as information silos isolated from the rest of the company, so they rarely made transfers with external systems. This is something that is increasingly avoided: today, data leads to the introduction of advanced operations, and companies, aware of this, demand EAMs capable of integrating everything.

What Does Integrating Everything Mean?

Joining systems with others in such a way that there is a fluid communication of data between them. IFS Ultimo, as an EAM, is compatible with any software you have. Acting as another member of the team, it integrates with different pillars in the company, with all the advantages that this entails. Let’s see:

IFS Ultimo + Control Systems

The union of IFS Ultimo with SCADA or IoT devices, classified as control systems, allows knowing the current condition of the assets and, therefore, applying a better maintenance plan and anticipating possible failures.

From this integration arises the concept of condition-based maintenance (CBM), a strategy based on the current state of the assets, that is, on indicators that determine if the asset is about to suffer a breakdown, if it has already broken down, or if it requires maintenance to return to normal operation.

Unlike the conventional one, therefore, CBM is an advanced preventive maintenance, since it uses real-time information from different parameters of the asset, to avoid more serious anomalies and/or reduce the downtime of these.

IFS Ultimo + MES Systems (Manufacturing Execution System)

The conflict between the production and maintenance departments should have an expiration date, and the reason is clear: if both pursue the maximum availability of the machines, why not work together?

In the first, the maximum availability of the machine is sought to produce, while the second aims to guarantee the availability of the asset through preventive maintenance (which, of course, involves a pause in production).

Far from disputes, the integration of IFS Ultimo with MES systems opens the way to good communication between both departments, to understand what the production status is and schedule the appropriate preventive maintenance without affecting the most critical orders.

IFS Ultimo + ERP Systems (Enterprise Resource Planning)

ERP systems assume the management of business resources in different areas: financial, manufacturing, supply chain, human resources, and operations. For this reason, many companies want to integrate them into an EAM to optimize functions such as cost control, including those related to maintenance.

These integrations are usually treated as independent projects, partly due to their complexity but also as a result of the multiple adaptations to be made. In order to avoid this, IFS Ultimo has connectors that facilitate integration while minimizing the risk and the need for engineering hours to execute it. An example is the connector to communicate with SAP and SAP 4/HANA, certified by SAP itself.

IFS Ultimo + GIS Systems

GIS is a geographic information system, used especially in companies with a large number of dispersed assets or for the control of assets in motion. The annexation of IFS Ultimo to these tools makes it possible to obtain information on the geographical location of the asset to group maintenance tasks in the same area.

IFS Ultimo also works on mobile devices as support for field work, which is a very effective way to optimize maintenance and avoid unnecessary travel.

Beyond what has been mentioned above, IFS Ultimo provides integrated email communication, REST API, batch imports and exports, or workflow configuration for integrations, among many other possibilities. All this, added to its certified standard interfaces and pre-developed connectors ready to use, makes it an exemplary companion.