Challenges in Asset Management
The key challenges in asset management are as follows:
- Unplanned downtime, outages, and decreased asset availability and reliability.
- Low return on assets, lack of compliance and risk management, and inefficient maintenance spend.
- Inaccurate asset master data that can cause inefficiency and incidents.
- Data and information stored in multiple information systems.
- Decision-makers and workers not enabled with decisive knowledge at hand.
To transform, businesses must pursue the following strategic priorities:
- Manage cost, risk, and performance holistically.
- Balance operating expenditures (OPEX) and capital expenditures (CAPEX).
- Monitor and predict performance of assets, people, and processes.
- Bring operational data in a business context and create decisive knowledge.
- Collaborate with engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) suppliers, manufacturers, and service providers.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition: Overview Asset Management
The SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition Asset Management solution allows organizations to manage their asset-related cost, risk, and performance holistically.
Organizations can implement proactive maintenance strategies that are enriched with the analysis of real-time data, as well as predictive and other forecasting methods, to increase the return on assets and reduce unplanned downtimes. The solution helps in bridging the operational silos by integrating processes from top floor to shop floor, as well as managing the complete asset lifecycle.
Some of the key benefits of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition Asset Management are:
- Provides real-time insights into asset performance data for timely, relevant decisions.
- Enables use of prediction, simulation, and analysis to evaluate asset behavior, plan budgets, and forecast maintenance cost.
- Provides a common view of Information Technology (IT) and Operational Technology (OT) data for a holistic asset management system approach as outlined in ISO 55001.
- Supports and promotes proactively managing asset-related risks to minimize disruption.
- Enables access to one common view on process risks related to workers, assets, or the environment.
- Facilitates the use of analysis, prediction, and simulation, to achieve greater insight, for example, converting incident reporting and risk assessments into actionable knowledge.
- Integrates fully with the capabilities of S/4HANA Enterprise in the areas of finance, human resources, manufacturing, materials management, and so on.
SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition: Asset Management Value Proposition
Accelerate and simplify the adoption of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition for faster time to value, using best practice business processes with the knowledge of being legally compliant in different countries. The SAP Best Practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition provide preconfigured content for core business processes in EAM and other modules such as finance, sourcing and procurement, manufacturing, sales, and supply chain. In addition, the cloud offers SAP Best Practices for integration to other cloud solutions, such as SAP SuccessFactors Employee Central, SAP Concur, SAP Fieldglass, and SAP Ariba.
The benefits of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition include the following:
Reduce cost of operations by using standardized processes.
Manage multiple geographies, divisions, subsidiaries, and ledgers with global and country specific content.
Drive operational efficiencies and comply with regulations.
Empower business and IT users equally with guided configuration.
Allow a first-hand experience of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition with instant guided trials.
Update and change customer specific configuration using SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition lifecycle management tool.
Overview: Asset Operations and Maintenance Flow
Asset Management handles all maintenance activities like to find the damages, identify causes, and take actions to repair technical objects as well as perform preventive maintenance. To perform these activities, it contains sub-modules for the following:
Management of technical objects and equipment master record.
Planning of maintenance task.
Management of workflow notifications and work orders under maintenance order management.
Asset information is needed in many different departments and is fundamental for many business processes. An enterprise must have a common system of reference to identify all of its assets, for example, to fulfill corporate governance regulations. This is done by creating unique master records for each technical object and is the base for structuring asset data and information.
Key Features in SAP S/4HANA Asset Management
SAP S/4HANA Asset Management enables you to plan and perform the maintenance of operational systems, such as machines or production installations. It comprises the inspection, maintenance, and repair measures that need to be taken to keep your assets in working order. These activities are typically performed by maintenance planners and maintenance workers.
Watch the video to learn more about the key features in asset management.
AI in SAP S/4HANA Asset Management
Generative AI
Generative AI refers to artificial intelligence models designed to generate new content in the form of written text, audio, images, or videos. Applications and use cases are far and wide. Generative AI can be used to create a short story based on the style of a particular author, generate a realistic image of a person who doesn't exist, compose a symphony in the style of a famous composer, or create a video clip from a simple textual description.
To better understand the uniqueness of generative AI, it is helpful to understand how it differs from other types of AI, programming, and machine learning:
- Traditional AI refers to AI systems that can perform specific tasks by following predetermined rules or algorithms. They are primarily rule-based systems that can't learn from data or improve over time. Generative AI, on the other hand, can learn from data and generate new data instances
- Machine Learning enables a system to learn from data rather than through explicit programming. In other words, machine learning is the process where a computer program can adapt to and learn from new data independently, resulting in the discovery of trends and insights. Generative AI makes use of machine learning techniques to learn from and create new data.
- Conversational AI enables machines to understand and respond to human language in a human-like manner. While generative AI and conversational AI may seem similar – particularly when generative AI is used to generate human-like text – their primary difference lies in their purpose. Conversational AI is used to create interactive systems that can engage in human-like dialogue, whereas generative AI is broader, encompassing the creation of various data types, not just text.
- Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) refers to highly autonomous systems – currently hypothetical – that can outperform humans at most economically valuable work. If realized, AGI would be able to understand, learn, adapt, and implement knowledge across a wide range of tasks. While generative AI can be a component of such systems, it's not equivalent to AGI. Generative AI focuses on creating new data instances, whereas AGI denotes a broader level of autonomy and capability.
Predictive AI
Predictive artificial intelligence (AI) refers to the use of machine learning to identify patterns in past events and make predictions about future events.
Predictive Artificial Intelligence is a computer program's ability to use statistical analysis to identify patterns, anticipate behaviors, and forecast future events. The field of statistics has long been used to make predictions about the future; predictive AI makes statistical analysis faster and (theoretically) more accurate via machine learning and access to vast amounts of data. While its predictions are not guaranteed to be correct, predictive AI can help businesses prepare for the future and personalize experiences for their customers.
SAP Asset Performance Management (APM) - AI Based Predictive Maintenance
SAP APM empowers asset owners, plant managers, and reliability engineers to optimize maintenance strategies, to measure and improve asset performance, and to follow through on your sustainability objectives.
It minimizes the risk of asset failure and allows to make faster, more-accurate maintenance decisions. With SAP APM you can analyze IoT sensor data and maintenance records, monitor equipment behavior remotely, and gain greater insight through AI.
AI-based predictive maintenance includes:
- Determining the failure curve of equipment based on failure probabilities
- Estimating the remaining useful life of equipment
To learn more about the SAP APM solution follow the learning journey for SAP APM from the link.https://learning.sap.com/learning-journeys/managing-sap-asset-performance-management
To learn more on the SAP AI services and in general about AI refer to the linkhttps://help.sap.com/docs/ai-serviceshttps://help.sap.com/docs/artificial-intelligence
What's New in SAP S/4HANA Asset Management
SAP is continuously improving the features of SAP S/4HANA Cloud by enhancing existing features and adding new ones. From time to time, we also need to renovate features and therefore replace and deprecate old apps or objects. To keep you informed about such changes to your application, we use What’s New information to communicate the changes.
The What’s New Viewer is an interactive table that provides a first overview of all information about innovations, changes, and deprecations available for a specific version of SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
In the Short Description column, you will find a link that leads you to the What’s New document. This document includes information already available in the What’s New Viewer table, as well as more detailed information on the changes and required actions, giving you an overall picture of what you need to know.
The What's New can be accessed from the SAP Help Portal or from the direct link for What's New https://help.sap.com/whats-new/4328a3353fb14ef6ba3345697ac9ecc3?Business_Area=Maintenance%20Management&locale=en-US
the same can be accessed from SAP help portal using the link https://help.sap.com/whats-new/4328a3353fb14ef6ba3345697ac9ecc3?Business_Area=Maintenance%20Management&locale=en-US
