In some of my recent conversations with clients and colleagues, while discussing asset management, we also discussed "green" which was little unusual some time ago in EAM context, but not any longer.
Continue reading "Making Assets Green, as Dollar is Green" »
This is in continuation of my previous blog http://www.infosysblogs.com/supply-chain/enterprise_asset_management_it_asset_management/ on Role of EAM packages in Smart Grid.
This note of mine is focused on debate of ownership issues of Asset Register - where asset date to be kept - EAM system or GIS or both based on data classification.
Continue reading "Role of EAM Packages in Smart Grid - Part 2" »
In many of my recent Work and Asset Management proposals - particularly in utilities, I see a trend of every client requirement mentioning work and asset management functions to be integrated with their GIS, mobile, condition based monitoring etc in addition to omnipresent financial functions. While most of the utility clients, I have seen, have been using all of these applications but they do not have them integrated. Clients have some standalone GIS systems having its own asset master and asset management package having its own, not talking to each other. Mobility solutions would have some sort of integration but not leveraging benefits fully. List is long - some of these applications are CIS, OMS, Meter management etc.
Continue reading "Role of EAM Packages in Smart Grid - Part 1" »
Continue reading "HazMat in SCM Needs to Worry About New Tech Impositions!" »
Continue reading "Modernizing and consolidating EAM applications" »
Guest Post by
Bob Ferrari is the Executive Editor of the Supply Chain Matters Blog, and a periodic guest blogger on the Infosys Supply Chain Management blog.
Efficient asset management has become a far more critical need for asset-intensive businesses and service providers. The cumulative impact to U.S. and other international railroads during the recent global recession, along with changing customer service models are keen reminders to how important enterprise asset management (EAM) process management capabilities have become.
Just before boarding the flight to US for IBM Pulse, Bob Ferrari of Supply Chain Matters had a media interview with me. While the primary objective was to discuss about the EAM sector and what we plan to showcase at Pulse, conversation invariably moved over to a broader supply chain fabric.
Last year, for those who remember, as part of my SCM predictions for 2010, I had stressed on the need for convergence and integration across supply chain. For me, this was achieved through
This year, with SCM being in greater focus as a more visible partner in organizational strategy, my view was on how supply chain can be the driver for
These are sometimes achieved through specific business functions, for eg: indirect procurement program focus on cost management while anything on the sell-side whether its enhanced B2B commerce features or store inventory visibility would drive revenues. How would you use supply chain to differentiate your organization vis-a-vis the competition - at the customer-side, supplier-side and partner-side?
More on my interview with Bob here: http://www.theferrarigroup.com/supply-chain-matters/2011/03/02/smarter-asset-management-interview-with-gopi-krishnan-of-infosys-technologies-part-two/
The highlight of Day-2 of course was our joint session with Arizona Public Services which was part of a Post Implementation Panel: Improving Operational Performance. Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA)'s Donnie Martin went first and then for 30 minutes, Ruchi Mitter from APS, Uma Shankar Padhy from our client services team and Venkat Aduri from the implementation team got to speak on the APS SOAR (not "SORE" as Ruchi reminded everyone) journey which stands for Standardize,Optimize,Automate and Review. I felt our session was a lot more content rich, going beyond program level aspects like change management, incident management and SDLC to more EAM/Maximo/Utility-level specifics.
After reaching Las Vegas late evening on 27-Feb with further delays in hotel check-in and long walks across multiple hotel lobbies in Las Vegas, it was time to start fresh on Day-1 (28-Feb) while fighting massive jet lag - we had multiple meetings scheduled apart from a speaking session for me at the Expo Theatre.
The keynote came from Dean Kamen, entrepreneur and inventor, who outlined the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) initiative, a program to get students interested in engineering, science and technology from high school days. His sincere and genuine presentation (quite a bit like Randy Pausch's famous Last Lecture) drew a series of resouding applauses.
The track kick-offs were next, with Maximo reserving a pride-of-place opening in the Grand Garden Arena of the MGM, a far cry from its "also-there" positioning in a few years back during the first Pulse event post acquisition. As Bill Sawyer said, its a measure of Maximo's importance to IBM driven through its passionate customers that got it here. 300 submissions for white papers didn't hurt either.
Next week, starting Feb 28th till March 2nd, I'll be at Las Vegas attending Pulse 2011 conference. Pulse has been the stage over the last few years where IBM has propounded the use of Maximo as THE one solution for all asset management blues, regardless of asset categories (MRO/facilities/IT), industry vertical you may belong to or modular footprint (work management vs inventory management vs procurement, for eg). We are a Gold sponsor this year and you can meet me and my colleagues at booth # 305. We have a host of activities lined up :
Continue reading "Infosys EAM Team at Pulse 2011 - Annual Maximo User Conference" »
This note of mine is in continuation of my previous blog Asset Management Predictions for new decade. One of the predictions there was about extended use of mobility solutions in asset management domain.
Here, I have some further inputs on this. The use of mobile solution is going to be an important factor in success of EAM implementation for any of the organization which has users in field. Gone are the days when usage of smart phones for accessing the applications by field workers was considered fancy; now it has become a need of the hour.
Continue reading "Load my application on my smart phone and not on laptop" »
Continue reading "Best practices for Master Data Load & Validation - Part 2" »
As we are welcoming the New Year 2011, I tried to figure out what Asset Management software users (mainly Asset Intensive organizations) should look for from their Asset Management implementation in next few years. Based on my experience from some direct & indirect client interactions in last couple of years, I tried putting together a list of trends and here is the synopsis.
Continue reading "Asset Management Predictions for new decade" »
Continue reading "Best practices for Master Data Load - Part 1" »
Recently some of my Infosys colleagues attended MUWG (Maximo Utility Work Group) conference and while they shared their experience about the conference, they mentioned about one of the most discussed topics which was "how to define boundaries for supply chain operations between EAMs & ERPs".
Continue reading "How to define boundaries for Supply Chain Operations between EAM & ERP" »
Continue reading "Strategies for efficiently managing IT assets - Part 3" »
Continue reading "Why my EAM implementation is not giving me as I expected?" »
Continue reading "Will best of breed EAM packages be taken over by ERPs?" »
This is in continuation to my previous blog on Strategies for efficiently managing IT assets i.e. maintaining standby assets at service provider sites nearest to client locations and analyzing the part failure history from immediate past.
Continue reading "Strategies for efficiently managing IT assets - Part 2" »
Gartner & many other analysts have written about "convergence of IT (Information Technology) & OT (Operational Technology)" in past. Here i would try to explain how this convergence would result into intelligent assets, considering some recent industry developments in asset management space like (i) maximo being integral part of IBM's smarter planet theory and, (ii) ABB's Ventyx acquisition.
Continue reading "Convergence of IT & OT - an intelligent Asset Management" »
When asset management becomes core business for you as a service provider, it is imperative to find out innovative strategies to improve customer relationship by quicker turnaround times and providing benefits in cost.
Continue reading "Strategies for efficiently managing IT assets" »
Continue reading "PAS 55: The New Standard for Asset Management" »
Dennis Gaughan of Gartner in his blog dated 29-Jun-2010 wonders whether its time for corporations to rethink their enterprise applications portfolio strategy (http://blogs.gartner.com/dennis-gaughan/2010/06/29/is-it-time-to-rethink-your-enterprise-application-portfolio-strategy/). Well, I think organizations are thinking about it all the time, sometimes when they do their annual planning and are reminded of the morass in their application landscape and sometimes thanks to M&A (esp for financial institutions) forcing them to look at what to sunset and what to fold in.
Continue reading "Would SCM be a differentiator in your Apps Portfolio?" »
Ever since the IBM acquisition of Sterling Commerce (http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/31742.wss), the standard questions I get asked is essentially variations around the theme of suitability and impact on our practice - Wasn't this acquisition purely for the BIS B2B integration piece which suddenly gives IBM access to 18,000 customers? Was the SCM piece of Sterling Commerce some kind of an afterthought or collateral benefit, if you may? If at all, it would fit in, where would it be? And most importantly, what happens to Infosys next, being by far (by a few light years, if I may say so myself) the leading player in Sterling SCM package related services in the SI space?
Let's get to the last question first.
Continue reading "Sterling Commerce folds into IBM - an Infy perspective" »
Continue reading "Smarter Buildings for a Smarter Planet: Johnson Controls Case Study" »
IBM’s annual service management fest Pulse concluded last week in Las Vegas (21st – 24th Feb 2010). What an event! This was one of the most well organized events I have attended thus far. While the attendance was close to around 5000+ customers and business partners (1000+), it felt like being in an Oracle Open World which usually has 30,000+ attendees. Sessions were well organized and distributed across tracks. I especially liked the separation of topics between general session and the track session. The general sessions were very helpful in providing overall IBM’s approach in the service management space.
Continue reading "Smarter planet through smarter asset management – Pulse 2010" »
Continue reading "Automating Accounts Payable for Facility Management Firms" »
Last month, Infosys got a call from Supply Chain Digest magazine, courtesy the editor-in-chief Dan Gilmore to air our views on the key trends for Supply Chain Management in 2010. Supply Chain Guru Predictions for 2010 published earlier this month covered a set of 5 other eminent folks from MIT, Gartner, Descartes and so on, so I was happy for the opportunity to be featured amongst these industry thought leaders.
As primarily a package supply chain enabler, I stuck to my knitting and covered my theme along two lines (a) Improving efficiencies in the back-end supply chain to reduce costs and (b) Enhancing end-customer experience by augmenting the front-end supply chain. People ask me where the relentless pressure to slay every efficiency killer would end up. What next after Multi-channel commerce, end2end procurement, green asset management... whither goes SCM end-state?
Continue reading "Supply Chain Predictions for 2010 - how far are we from our end-state vision?" »
Continue reading "Tesco to Less CO: Can Tesco save the world?" »
We do not inherit the earth from our parents, but borrow it from our children.
On December 7, 2009 global leaders and environment ministers from all over the world will meet in Copenhagen to discuss about climate change. Climate scientists are convinced the world must stop the growth in greenhouse gas emissions and start making them fall very soon. Corporations are discussing the implications of de-carbonizing the economy on their businesses. Some corporations are sincere in taking sustainability on whereas some are embracing it as a pure PR exercise. Whatever the reason, there was never a stronger impetus on sustainability than today.
I recently attended Gartner’s IT Financial, Procurement & Asset Management summit in Orlando, FL (www.gartner.com/us/itam ). In line with Gartner image and spirit of shaping up and defining what’s hot and what’s not in the IT world, the summit was organized to present the current state and trends in IT Fin, Procurement and Asset Management world and would have certainly appealed to IT benchmark and best practice seekers.
Sessions were organized by tracks and during each timeslot, each track had a session going on a specific topic. I think this was done primarily to maximize the participation, which I believe was a good strategy as most of the sessions I attended were full house. I primarily attended ITAM sessions, though would have loved to attend the procurement ones as well (my portfolio included procurement services).
Continue reading "Leveraging Value from IT Asset Management – Insights from Gartner ITAM Summit" »
In my first blog I talked about the ten commandments of Physical Asset Management in which the first rule stated:
Thou shall identify critical equipments that provide goods or services that delight customers
Enterprise asset management was traditionally seen as an internal function of an organization with minimal impact on customer satisfaction. With the advent of the service economy an organization’s focus has shifted on to the customer. There is a paradigm shift in the way asset management is viewed. It now has two important aspects – Critical Assets and Customer Delight. Asset Performance Management is the new buzz word with focus on delivering customer delight.
Continue reading "Critical Assets: Manage them Right for Customer Delight" »
I recently got a chance to go through an interestingly titled research report from Bill Polk of AMR going by the headline "Asset Management Algebra: EAM = ROI". In these times of increasingly deficient attention-spans, reading a 2-pager is always better than reading a 20-pager with authors belaboring the same point in multiple ways.
Apart from the usual benefits of EAM (ROCE, efficiency improvements, structured information etc) and its new found importance (movement from tactical to strategic), an interesting point which I haven't come across in many other places was about "Capturing and preserving data from an aging workforce". While implementing EAM systems, we typically think of labor management (thru the EAM app or via a little help from more high brow "Workforce Management Systems or WFMs") as a way to capture skills of the maintenance personnel thus making sure the right party is assigned to the right work order.
Continue reading "Tapping Collective Maintenance Wisdom - An EAM Route?" »
Air France flight AF447 disappears between Brazil and France with 228 people of board. Investigators suspect that the speed sensors (also known as Pitot tubes) may have been a major factor. Flight 447 had been flying in stormy weather that may have included icing. This can block the Pitot tubes, which then give false information to the pilots causing them to fly too fast or too slow leading to a crash.
One of the major thrusts we have been seeing with IBM of late is the "smarter planet" campaign. Stripped off the hype (justifiable for any marketing campaign), its a terrific way to differentiate oneself from mundane IT related offerings to something truly (in the real sense of the term) transformational. Back in April, CNN Money had am exhaustive article on the same topic titled "IBM's grand plan to save the planet", with the byline "Here is CEO Sam Palmisano's formula for changing the world: Find problems, throw in billions of dollars in R&D, add consultants and an earnest ad campaign - and watch the profits roll in."
Continue reading "Smarter Planet makes Smarter SIs too, especially if it's EAM" »
Continue reading "Rising Energy consumption – do we have a fitting response in Asset Management?" »
A strong maintenance strategy for micro assets may not be the most comprehensive way of ensuring unhindered business operations. Whilst the maintenance manager sweats out on tidying the trees, the CEO is ultimately responsible for the entire woods. What are the things beyond his control? Drought, Floods, Landslides, tsunamis or any other natural disasters. How about arson, terror attacks? Sole policy of paying fat premiums to insurance companies (that can themselves falter and go bankrupt) would not be enough.
Continue reading "Contribute - 3rd of the 3C's of Sustenance" »
Continue reading "Hurricane Preparedness: Pre and Post activities" »
Preventing accidents in an office environment could be as easy as putting a notice in front of a shredding machine that reminds us to secure our Tie ends. But how about this …..stormy night , deep sea oil platform, 13th day of the hitch and a 16 inch rusty valve to be turned ….where should we put a cartoon poster?
