What is APM: Asset Performance Management?

Currently, no business activity escapes the fourth industrial revolution, or Industry 4.0, characterized by the digitalization of processes thanks to the extraction of a large amount of data (Big Data) from different areas of the company.

A digitalization, we might say, that is very necessary: simultaneously having more interconnected systems, greater flexibility and adaptability, greater criticality, and more information in general provides companies with a clear view of their different processes, which makes them more efficient and effective.

Undoubtedly, the implementation of different advanced technological solutions is vital for the growth and development of any company that wants to evolve and not be left behind, and the field of maintenance is no exception.

What is APM?

Asset Performance Management (APM) refers to the management of asset performance. It is a business strategy that, based on the implementation of a set of technological solutions aimed at optimizing assets, helps modern organizations to have the ability to achieve and improve the objectives of reliability, safety, and performance of their equipment.

In order to determine the maturity of an organization within industrial maintenance 4.0, there is a conceptual pyramid that provides a quick visualization of the state in which an organization finds itself.

In organizations, a high maintenance maturity is synonymous with obtaining greater availability of their assets, reducing unplanned downtimes, and having a more optimized and efficient maintenance strategy.

Fig 1. Maturity pyramid in maintenance

In this sense, the objective of the APM discipline is to increase the availability but also the utilization of assets, while reducing costs, to achieve the maximum economic performance of an organization.

When the appropriate solutions are implemented, and the operations, maintenance, engineering, and management teams have the necessary information to make informed, collaborative, and timely decisions, the execution and profitability of operations begins to improve significantly.

However, this should be seen only as a first step in the process of optimizing asset profitability: the key point comes with the union of the two perspectives of maintenance and operations to provide a combined performance view, and when real-time financial and operational metrics provide the convergence mechanism.

We could say that Asset Performance Management (APM 4.0) is the great ignored and unknown opportunity for industries with a large asset load. Now, thanks to the framework of digital transformation, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and connected smart assets, new doors are opened to foster an APM strategy. Technologies that provide organizations with a large number of benefits, with the ultimate goal of increasing the economic return on their assets.