IBM Asset and Facilities Management Blog

"Migration Use Cases with the Migration Manager" Redbooks is now available!

2013-01-25T09:41:47-05:00

In one of my earlier posts It is time to update the "Migration Use Cases with the Migration Manager" IBM Redbooks! I had mentioned that we were going to update the Migration Manager Redbooks for Tivoli process automation engine V 7.5. I am happy to inform you that the new version of the Migration Use Cases with the Migration Manager Redbooks has been published as a draft on the ITSO Redbooks website. In this new revision, we updated all chapters from the previous book to reflect the changes in Tivoli process automation engine V 7.5. We also covered all major new features available with V 7.5, such as the Migration Collections, Migration Comparison, etc. Check out the content outline below:

   Chapter 1. Migration strategy
   Chapter 2. What is new in Migration Manager?
   Chapter 3. Migration collections
   Chapter 4. Migration Manager Comparison
   Chapter 5. Migrating the data dictionary
   Chapter 6. Migrating security configuration data
   Chapter 7. Migrating escalations including automation scripts
   Chapter 8. Migrating applications and Start Centers
   Chapter 9. Migrating workflows
   Chapter 10. Migrating classifications
   Chapter 11. Integration Framework migration
   Chapter 12. Migrating Service Level Agreements
   Chapter 13. Migrating service offering content
   Chapter 14. Migrating a service catalog
   Chapter 15. Common topics
   Chapter 16. Troubleshooting

In addition to the Redbooks, as part of this project we published a new Solution Guide about the Migration Manager and shot a video with the Migration Manager Lead Architect Sampath Sriramadhesikan. Sam was also part of the residency team. So check out the new book and let me know what you think in the comments section below. By the way, this has not been through the ITSO editing process yet -- so if you see errors in grammar and such, you can assume our editors will take care of that. I expect the final version to be available by the end of February 2013. Enjoy your new book!

How are you getting the most out of IBM Maximo?

2013-01-15T09:30:41-05:00

This IBM-sponsored survey is your opportunity to join experts from IBM, IFMA, Maximo Business Partners and industry thought leaders to compare data on the use of IBM Maximo.

Take a brief benchmarking survey on your organization's use of Maximo and help build the 2013 Maximo Industry Benchmark Report.

In exchange for the few minutes the survey will take, you will receive an exclusive participant’s copy of the 2013 Maximo Industry Benchmark Report.

All information submitted will be held confidential. No individual's or organization's names will be included in the benchmarking report. Click here to take the survey.

Health & Safety – Front and Center

2013-01-14T10:31:12-05:00

Today's blog entry comes from Terry Ray.

Each year, IDC Energy Insights publishes its top predictions for the Oil & Gas and Utilities industries. I like to review their predictions in order to gauge whether or not IBM’s Industry Solutions address customer needs. It certainly appears that way, especially based on one of their top predictions for the Oil & Gas industry in 2013 – the one focused on Environmental, Health and Safety.

IDC Energy Insights predicts that there will be a shift from Environmental, Health and Safety compliance to prevention and that this will require more sophisticated analytics. Without question, the relationship between Environmental, Health and Safety and equipment and asset reliability is increasing. We are seeing a number of companies inquiring about this and they are looking for solutions that connect Environmental, Health and Safety and Enterprise Asset Management.

As many of you know, IBM launched Maximo Health, Safety and Environment Manager about a year ago and several companies have already stepped forward and are realizing the benefits of having their Enterprise Asset Management and Health, Safety and Environmental (HSE) applications use the same physical asset structure. Most HSE applications use asset structures that are different and unique. The key advantage of linking the applications is the ability to integrate safety, maintenance and operational related processes. Most HSE incidents originate from managing maintenance work.

Let us know how you and your company are addressing the shift from compliance to prevention and the HSE and EAM connection.

Until next time.

The Countdown Begins To The Best Pulse Yet

2013-01-07T14:45:17-05:00

For Pulse 2013 we have the strongest curriculum yet in our Smarter Infrastructure stream. This stream will include Enterprise Asset Management (Maximo), Integrated Workplace Management (TRIRIGA), Smarter Cities, Smarter Buildings, and a new track for Smarter Infrastructure Innovation.

For Maximo users, all the familiar EAM tracks of years past are embedded into this stream including Best Practices, Implementation & Upgrades, Operate and Maintain, Technical Sessions, and Industry Case Studies.

For TRIRIGA users, there will be over 30 dedicated sessions including Industry Case Studies, Technical Sessions and “Lunch & Learn” session on Tuesday and Wednesday.

The Maximo momentum at Pulse begins with our Industry User Groups on Sunday, March 3^rd from 3-6pm. This provides a great way to get a head start on networking and learning from colleagues in your industry. The agendas are strong and fast paced with industry content delivered by clients, partners and IBMers. Seven Maximo Groups will be meeting at Pulse:

Maximo Airports User Group
Maximo Facilities Management User Group
Maximo Life Sciences User Group
Maximo Manufacturing User Group
Maximo Oil & Gas User Group
Maximo Transportation User Group
Maximo Utility Working Group

And, this is just the beginning. Things heat up on Monday morning in General Session immediately followed by the Smarter Infrastructure Track Keynote. We expect over 2000 asset and facilities management centric attendees to join this session which will run from 10:00 -11:00, don’t miss this session featuring how innovative clients are taking advantage of a Smarter Infrastructure. From there, it's off to the breakout sessions. Over 125 client presentations fill the Smarter Infrastructure Pulse 2013 curriculum. Please visit the Pulse site and take advantage of the on-line agenda tool to customize an agenda that meets the needs of your role, industry, and technology needs. We look forward to seeing you in a few short weeks.

Asset Life Cycle with Maximo for Transportation

2012-12-31T12:30:00-05:00

Today's blog comes from Vito DeMalteris.

The Asset Life Cycle is an important process to monitor for any industry. All asset owners make some attempt at monitoring this cycle in order to develop enlightened, informed decisions regarding maintenance strategies, spare parts requirements, operational procedures and repair/replace options. The key requirement in making these decisions is knowledge and information. Some of this will come from the manufacturer, some from user experience but the most significant source is from the operating and maintenance history of the specific asset. As you read this document, review the features in the Transportation page.

Maximo for Transportation provides significant detail related to the asset history. The asset application contains information related to that specific asset so that it is made readily available for the user, and in one location in Maximo. Information about warranty coverage, a significant process in the transportation industry, is displayed so that the user will always know what the warranty status is for each asset without having to look for it in the warranty applications.

Advanced Metering capabilities enhance the usage and Preventive Maintenance processes to further the maintenance strategy for your assets. Each asset record has a history option which provides a view into the asset including Work, Preventive and Predictive schedules and history, meter readings history, status change history, condition status history, move history, usage history for motor pool assets, Telematics reading history, activity history, axle position reading history and a chronological history of activities. All of this information is made easily accessible.

Utilizing the Depreciation Schedule provided in the Asset application allows the user to track the monetary value of this asset up to the current date. This information, used in conjunction with the maintenance and meter history of the asset, can be used to help make the repair/replace decision that is inevitable in the transportation environment.

To help the organization prevent unnecessary work, Maximo for Transportation will display any recent or repeat repairs on the asset whenever a work order against that asset is created. This feature not only helps eliminate duplicate work orders but also helps identify recurring problems which may be an indication of other issues related to the asset, its environment or perhaps training for the technicians performing the work. All of this helps extend the asset service life by pushing valuable information to the user.

In summary, Maximo for Transportation provides detailed information concerning the asset to enable the user to extend the asset life cycle and provide the data needed when the time to replace that asset is near. Hear this information for yourself from one of our Transportation clients (Royal Boskalis Westminster). Link to video.

UK Ministry of Defense and Facilities Management

2012-12-27T11:17:52-05:00

Today's blog comes from Jim Li.

Real Estate and facilities are critical for organizations to deliver services and products to their customers. Under today economic environment, executives emphasize facility management to expend asset life cycle and maximize return on assets. IBM Facilities Management Solution can help organizations to 1) know organization locations, personnel and assets are or should be; 2) track and maintain utilization, density, vacancy rates, security, and proximity information; 3) assign space to individual or multiple organizations; 4) analyze historical use of space allocations and configurations for future decisions; 5) manage the moves, additions or changes of personnel, assets, and organizations; and 6) automatically generate and assign projects and work tasks and track associated costs.

An IBM customer, the Defense Infrastructure Organization (DIO), the UK’s Ministry of Defense property and services provider, has recently implemented IBM TRIRIGA solution to support its information management system.

Andrew Manley, DIO Chief Executive, said: “…. (TRIRIGA Solution) will allow us to work more efficiently and effectively in providing a Defense estate which meets military needs and supports our Armed Forces.”

For details, please read the article by click here.

Working with Maximo Asset Management in a Validated and Compliant State

2012-12-24T12:30:00-05:00

Today's blog comes from Eric Luyer.

Managing a critical information system like Maximo in typical regulated industry,such as life sciences/pharma and food & beverage, is not an easy task. Every change – major and minor – must be evaluated for product risk and validated to comply with stringent regulations from governmental bodies such as the US FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) and their counterpart regulatory bodies all over the world.

We, at IBM are always working with our customers to take advantage of new functionalities available in the latest releases of new software versions, but customers in these regulated industries often have to wait for a long time in order to justify the efforts associated with implementing and validating a new software version. This exercise requires a significant investment in resources, time and money simply to upgrade to the latest software version.

However, both the “regulators” and companies in regulated industries are slowly rethinking their approach to compliance and validation. We see now a shift to embrace a so-called “risk-based” approach to validation and compliance.

Using this approach, companies can analyze a functional system and determine the risk levels of individual functions so that testing can be appropriately scaled to risk. This approach differs with the traditional approach where every piece of functionality is tested with the same rigor, regardless of level of risk.

In the age of limited resources, FDA is now supporting and encouraging the implementation of a risk-based approach to validate a computerized information system. This approach would provide benefits from increased productivity, reduction validation cost and lead time of the whole process, while managing the risk upfront.

The implementation of this new thinking is in practice a slow process. It takes time to evaluate the impact and to gain valuable input from organizations or customers in these industries to incorporate this new approach and take possible actions to take advantage and still stay compliant!

IBM has taken specific steps to support the regulated industry in implementing these new risk based initiatives. For the last 2-3 years IBM has developed a new program building on the strong relationships with customers using the IBM software in regulated environments.

To build upon our partnerships with (key) customers in this industry, IBM has launched the Maximo Quality Partner Program (QPP). The primary purpose of the QPP is to reduce the resources and time associated with validation efforts by implementing a collaborative testing, verification and validation strategy. This program makes it possible for customers to get valuable insight and documentation of IBM’s quality processes to support this Risk-Based initiative.

Key customers involved in the program include Abbott, Eli Lilly and Covidien, as well as a Business Partner Strategic Maintenance Solutions (with valuable expertise in validation projects with Maximo) and Life-Science Industry Analyst firm Axendia, who all are actively participating and have already provided valuable input to the IBM Software Quality Assurance team.

The positive outcomes of this Quality Program for our customers in regulated industries are:

Delivering a higher quality release while reducing costs.
Reducing risk & increase productivity.
Reducing the time, and resource associated with upgrades and new releases
Obtaining information on best practices in test automation
Survey proposed new functionality, as well as upcoming fix packs

Other benefits for customers include the opportunity to review and provide input on IBM’s Software QA process and get more insights around Maximo software QA test efforts and to have support of the IBM Maximo software QA team to establish test priorities, review test plans & test cases.

Results of this initiative were recently presented in Life Sciences Maximo User Group meetings and will finally be included in the “Maximo Risk Based Validation package” as new content in the Compliance Assistance Documentation package that is available as part of the industry solution for Maximo for Life Sciences.

Let me know if you have specific questions on this topic and I’ll recommend you to read the newly updated whitepaper on validation and compliance in regulated industries: link

Thanks for reading and please look out to my next blog, which will be focused around activities planned for next year, varying from the Pulse Conference in March 2013 to User Group meetings for Manufacturing and Life Sciences and possibly a next User Event for Healthcare/Hospitals.

MAP-21 impacts on Asset Management for State Departments of Transportation

2012-12-10T16:59:49-05:00

On July 6, 2012, President Obama signed into law P.L. 112-141, the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (MAP-21). MAP-21 is the first long-term highway authorization enacted since 2005, funding surface transportation programs at over $105 billion for fiscal years (FY) 2013 and 2014. A significant portion of the act establishes the National Highway Performance Program (NHPP) which targets the condition and performance of roads and bridges. NHPP requires each State to develop a risk-based asset management plan for the National Highway System (NHS) to improve or preserve the condition of the assets and the performance of the system.

Broadly this means that each State must establish and follow a program to define their risk-based, asset management strategy that results in a list of projects (work) that would make progress toward achievement of the State targets for asset condition and performance of the NHS. States must explicitly address all pavements and bridges but are encouraged to include all infrastructure assets within the highway right-of-way in their risk-based asset management plan. Those other infrastructure assets could include pavement markings, culverts, guardrail, signs, traffic signals, lighting, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) infrastructure, rest areas, etc.

MAP-21 requires that a State asset management plan be in a form that the Secretary determines to be appropriate and that it also include:

a summary listing of the pavement and bridge assets on the NHS in the State, including a description of the condition of those assets;
asset management objectives and measures;
performance gap identification;
lifecycle cost and risk management analysis;
a financial plan; and
investment strategies.

This combination of requirements is typical of what one expects to see in a long range capital planning exercise, because in this context that’s exactly what is meant by asset management. So the combined elements of the plans will likely be managed by a combination of systems including GIS, Asset Management, Finance, and Business Analytics programs. While the Act does not provide funding for the performance of bridge, tunnel or highway inspections, it does compel the state to complete those inspections on a defined timeline. So in addition to there is definitely a need for a work management program both for the upfront PM/Inspections as well as for the planning and execution of projects output by the process.

A significant investment will be required by the States for the integration of new and existing systems to support the creation of an appropriate asset management plan. The good news is that the cost associated with obtaining, updating, and licensing software and equipment required for risk-based asset management are eligible for federal funding.

More information is available at the Federal Highway Administration website: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/map21/summaryinfo.cfm

Holistic view for Utilities is the theme of this Maximo Mary's Microphone interview

2012-12-10T09:09:29-05:00

Southern California Gas Company recently upgraded from IBM Maximo Asset Management 5.2 to 7.1 to manage over 50K assets and 3500 miles of pipeline. Read a summary and watch the Maximo Mary's Microphone interview with Lev Berkovich and Dmitry Aniskovich from the Sempra Energy Utility Division of Southern California Gas Company at the GOMaximo conference: http://ow.ly/fXUi6

EAM Tech Sales Interview: India Series – Day 2

2012-11-26T04:10:38-05:00

This blog is the second part of interview with Pradeep Lamba, IBM Software Group Tech Sales Team, India.

Alok: Welcome back!

Pradeep: Thank you, Alok!

Alok: I understand that Maximo is best EAM solution; but I still would like to know about the key features of Maximo industry solutions that puts it atop in market today?

Pradeep: I would start with one of my favorite features of Maximo Spatial that is the GIS integration. Other EAM solutions have poor integration with maps while Maximo gives exact location of your assets along with its profile, their work orders, historical and future maintenance schedules and that helps in minimizing the down time and in turn increasing productivity and revenues.

Maximo Asset Configuration Manager accurately tracks the current and historical changes of the configuration of assets and their components. It provides a real-time calculation of both an asset's build and a component's life, with benefits such as improved compliance regulations and reduced operating costs.

Maximo for Utilities not just gives a holistic view but Supports work and asset management for transmission and distribution in water, gas and electric utilities. It helps increase asset and resources effectiveness by providing a platform to support all types of asset classes and all types of work in water, gas and electric utilities.

And the list goes on.

Alok: What would you like to say about Maximo Mobile?

Pradeep: Its fantastic. I see a lot of users raving about Maximo Mobile – the benefits are many including: reduced data entry errors, helps you work smarter and safer with data in-hand, it captures more data. It provides immediate update on the fly, you can receive immediate feedbacks, and you get access to additional supporting data. Helps better manage work, improves service levels, better inventory tracking, lowers operating costs and it also gives you compliance.

Alok: Which Maximo solution is in great demand in India?

Pradeep: Maximo for Utilities, Maximo for Transportation is in great demand.

Alok: Thanks again, Pradeep.

Pradeep: You’re welcome! Have a good day!

Learn more on Maximo for Transportation and Maximo for Utilities or follow me on twitter @AlokChander

EAM Tech Sales Interview: India Series – Day 1

2012-11-20T02:46:09-05:00

I recently had a chance to interview Pradeep Lamba, who is part of the Software Group Tech Sales team, specialized in Maximo and TRIRIGA in India. Pradeep has over 19 years of strong experience in Asset Life Cycle Management using various technologies like GPS\GPRS, RFID, Barcode, Maximo etc. He has experience in working on many projects including IAF-eMMS, PNU (Princes Nura University- Riyadh). He was also chosen Technology speaker, Asset Life Cycle Management, in various conferences. He has represented IBM in ESRI conference.

Alok: Good Morning Pradeep! Thank you for giving me this opportunity.

Pradeep: Good Morning Alok, It’s a pleasure to be talking to you.

Alok: I have been trying to analyze the market trends in India specifically for enterprise asset and facilities management. I would also like to understand your take on the readiness of the market, challenges that you face and about your overall experience while pitching to a prospect.

Pradeep: One of the challenges that lingers is around the awareness. Not many businesses know the power of Maximo. They often consider Maximo as one of the ERP solutions. However in reality it is industry best Enterprise Asset Management Solution, which is so powerful and user-friendly that most of the prospects get amazed looking at the capabilities of the solution. Maximo Asset Management has many industry based solutions like Maximo for Oil and Gas, Maximo for Transportation, Maximo for Healthcare, Maximo for Utilities, Maximo for Nuclear, Maximo for Government. And each of these solutions is unique in its own way.

Alok: How do you help create awareness around Maximo? Who all are your audiences?

Pradeep: I have a varied set of audience. Like if I am going as a speaker in an event or a conference. I may have CFOs, CTOs, Technical Leads and End Users as audience. I would talk about Maximo’s robust and secured integration features with legacy system to a Technical Lead; while I would talk about ease-of-use and getting-to maximum output with minimum clicks to a CTO. I am often asked questions with hypothetical situations to answer by a CTO and I would give them real-life cases/examples that will help them understand it better. While if I am to face a CFO, I would talk about the ROI benefits; how they can save millions of dollars of maintenance; I would give them a cost structure and savings structure.

Alok: What makes Maximo a hit among the users?

Pradeep: I have interviewed some of the Maximo users and they talk about the ease-of-use and the ease-of-customization as key features. Maximo is not just a user friendly solution but it can be very easily customized based on the user’s requirement, which makes it a hit amongst the users. I remember in one of my recent discussions one of the users said – Maximo follows General Ledger accounting system which makes it very easy to use for accounting purposes. Similarly the screen can be very easily customized for a different requirement, say stores, which is very different case from the financial accounting as a whole.

Alok: Can you brief me on how Maximo helps our clients realize their potential?

Pradeep: Maximo is an enterprise asset management (EAM) solution for tracking and managing asset data through its entire life cycle. Maximo solutions provide maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) services for: asset management, work plans, materials management, purchasing, contracted services and health/safety/environment assurance. Maximo complements and extends IBM PLM product design and manufacturing for plants and post production service-after-sales. We are committed to our client’s success. The whole value proposition is around our client’s success.

Alok: It was a great discussion! Thank you for your time today!

Pradeep: The pleasure is mine.

Download the free whitepaper on the importance of Smarter Infrastructure or follow me @AlokChander

Pulse 2013 is coming. Time to talk supply chain…work management…linear…

2012-11-12T11:36:24-05:00

Today's blog comes from Kevin Buonagurio.

I love this time of year. Yes, we have the holidays coming up, a time for sharing and giving thanks for what we have and those we love. But this is also the time of year where Maximo folks start thinking about the upcoming Pulse conference. IBM Pulse 2013 will be held March 3-6 in Las Vegas NV.

If you’re a past attendee you know what a valuable resource Pulse is for information sharing and networking with IBM’ers, business partners and customers alike for all products in the Tivoli portfolio. If you’re considering attending for the first time, you won’t be disappointed. There is so much to squeeze in that it may be a bit overwhelming but certainly worth it.

Pulse is a time for Tivoli to showcase our products and people….and our customers. I am pleased every year to work with a customer and copresent on a hot topic. Fortunately for me, business has been great! Everyone has been talking about supply chain the past few years. As a designer for Maximo’s supply chain functionality this has kept me very busy. In 2011 we released Maximo version 7.5 which includes the most comprehensive addition of supply chain functionality in any single release since probably version 2! My Pulse 2012 sessions were filled to capacity with attendees and lively with questions and discussion.

For Pulse 2013, I have the pleasure of working with a customer from one of the largest power generation corporations in the USA. We are still working out the final details of our submission, but if selected you can plan for her to share a success story of Maximo supply chain in action. I will compliment this presentation with information regarding some of the new features that came about in version 7.5.

And the success stories should not stop there. If you are interested in sharing your Maximo success story, be it for work management, asset management, supply chain, scheduling, etc then consider submitting a presentation proposal for Pulse 2013. If selected, in addition to a host of other benefits, speakers receive free conference admission ($1995 value).

But don’t delay! Submissions must be received by 11/16!

For more information on submitting a proposal for Pulse click the following link.

The difference between Change Management and Management of Change

2012-11-08T11:11:07-05:00

Enterprise asset management is impacted by the effectiveness of both Change Management and the Management of Change. To view the interview with Ron Leonard from Life Cycle Engineering about this topic, go here.

PLM vs EAM for MRO

2012-11-05T11:18:07-05:00

Today's blog comes from David Turner.

First let's start with the definitions:
Definitions:
1.    PLM - Product Lifecycle Management is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its conception, through design and manufacture, to service and disposal.
2.    EAM - Enterprise Asset Management means the whole life optimal management of the physical assets of an organization to maximize value.
3.    MRO - All actions which have the objective of retaining or restoring an item in or to a state in which it can perform its required function. The actions include the combination of all technical and corresponding administrative, managerial, and supervision actions.

Now the Question: Why should an organization use an asset management system (EAM) versus a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) system?

Historical Overview
PLM software is used by manufacturing and construction organizations and is designed from the ground up to support all aspects of design and manufacturing. EAM software is designed to support all aspects of maintaining physical assets. In recent years, PLM systems have added some MRO (maintenance repair and operations) capabilities to support manufacturing organizations that also provide aftermarket services to maintain equipment in the field. This is not the predominant solution for aftermarket service providers and most large aftermarket service operations choose to simply integrate EAM software to their PLM systems to support maintenance and logistics. This approach is even more widely adopted by aftermarket service providers that service more than one OEM brand of equipment (and therefore multiple PLM systems are considered).

Differences between PLM and EAM functionality
The most basic difference is simply that EAM (Maximo) is designed to support maintenance and repair while PLM is built to support manufacturing and construction. A few other core differences are outlined in the following table. Note hyperlinks are available to references in quotes.

PLM	EAM (Maximo)
Focuses on design and manufacturing.	Focuses on maintenance, repair and logistics. “Maximo® Asset Management software unifies comprehensive asset life cycle and maintenance management on a single platform.”
Built with proprietary technologies (various).	Built with J2EE architecture.
Integration approach is a “you integrate to me” philosophy, using my platform.	Integration approach is flexible. “Scalable service oriented architecture with a flexible business process configuration platform that adapts to your changing business requirements and easily connect with the rest of your enterprise systems.”
Approach to support customer-specific business processes usually involves product customization.	Designed to be configurable. “The Application Designer provides a graphical user interface for configuring applications without editing a line of code.”
PLM systems grew out of complex CAD, CAM and CAE systems with complex user interfaces that engineers may be comfortable with, but can be intimidating to maintenance personnel that don’t have extensive backgrounds in CAD, CAM or CAE.	Maximo is designed to be deployed to a variety of users, from engineers and maintenance planners to front-line maintenance personnel with a wide variety of options for deployment on mobile computing platforms with simple user interfaces.
Customization requires extensive IT competencies. Prerequisite knowledge often includes Programming (MQL/Tcl); Java or C++ (OOP); Knowledge of HTML (Hypertext Markup Language).	Configuration does not require extensive IT competencies. Many configuration training courses state so… “This course does not require Java knowledge”
Scalability - Because of the way PLM systems are designed, they are not scalable in the same way as EAM. PLMs are not designed to carry asset information - they were designed to carry a huge amount of design information that is, in most cases, pretty irrelevant in the asset life-cycle world. A mechanic is unlikely to want to know the computational fluid dynamics properties of a bracket - he just fits what he is told to fit - if it breaks he replaces it with another, approved bracket - end of story - so why load the MRO system with this type of information.	Scalability – EAM is designed from the outset to support the asset life-cycle and therefore is able to scale accordingly. There are Maximo clients in full production supporting large numbers of assets and large numbers of work orders. Scalability test results, case studies and references are available.
PLM systems don't handle real time data - taking feeds from intelligent assets is something that is just not considered in the PLM world - so, condition-based and predictive maintenance is quite alien in the world of PLM, where as in EAM it is fundamental.	Maximo has metering and condition-based maintenance modules specifically designed to support integration to data acquisition and trend analysis systems and “smart” assets, thereby enabling condition-based and predictive maintenance capabilities.

Why Maximo is a better fit for MRO
1. Built to support maintenance and repair operations and is the market leader. There are no PLM vendors even considered in Gartner Magic Quadrants ARC Advisory market studies.
2. Readily integrates with existing business and engineering systems through it’s integration framework that supports old and new integration technologies (flat file to web services).
3. Provides a “platform” for continuous improvement and potential absorption of other stove-piped systems.
4. Multiple options for deploying on mobile devices, both connected and disconnected.

Why Maximo is a less costly solution than PLM software for MRO
1. Very flexible and configurable, allowing us to implement incrementally and achieve early results and returns on investment.
2. Vast partner network affording us reasonable implementation and support options. In other words, finding good Maximo technical talent is not difficult or expensive.
3. Does not require as much IT technical resources to implement as a PLM solution.

To gain a perspective from ARC Advisory Group, register for this "IBM EAM enables higher stakeholder value" whitepaper here.

Smarter Cities webinar will feature Steve Klepper from the City of Corpus Christi

2012-11-01T15:37:24-04:00

Steve Klepper from the City of Corpus Christi will be the speaker at the November 8, 2012 IBM Enterprise Asset Management for Smarter Cities webinar. Steve is the Manager of Strategic Planning - City of Corpus Christi, and will discuss the importance of having visibility into critical asset data for improving utility and public works services to the city’s constituents. This new insight to operations has helped the City of Corpus Christi build a Smarter City through the following:

Improved citizen services, including faster response time and increased percentage of citizens with continuous utility service
Reduced operational costs with ability to accurately forecast labor requirements and increase percentage of planned work.

If you've heard Steve before at IBM Pulse or in the video below, you know that he has a lot to share about the great things IBM Enterprise Asset Management solutions are doing to make Corpus Christi a Smarter City. Watch the video below and then register for the webinar.