4 Benefits of Asset Management In Manufacturing

Manufacturing is an asset-heavy industry. You’d have to track equipment, parts, and even production lines to ensure that everything is working to its optimal capability. To keep operations running at this level, supplies and spare parts always need to be ready for production use or in the case of equipment breakdown.

With all that, it can be understood that implementing asset management is crucial in this sector. Therefore, making the right choice of asset tracking solution is also essential. Asset management customized for manufacturing mainly consists of services, software, and hardware, that enables monitoring of assets over their entire lifecycle from procurement, to disposal.

All of this is only possible when manufacturers implement a robust asset tracking system. Check out this list of benefits that this technology can bring:

1. Tracking and Monitoring of Manufacturing Assets

This is one of the functions that first comes to mind when talking about smart asset management. As stated previously, manufacturing is an asset-heavy industry. Meaning, there are many different types of assets to track, from larger pieces of the production line machinery to the smaller tools in the maintenance section like a hand drill.

With a smart asset management system, it’s much easier to track assets and monitor their current condition and performance. With the barcode and RFID tracking, asset managers will know the location, the use frequency, and the custodian of every asset.

Consolidating the data with other information such as maintenance regulations enables manufacturers to optimize their factory operations further. For example, when you discover that you own four-hand drills and only use two of them, you can make better cost estimation and procurement decisions in the future.

2. Extending Asset Life Cycles With Preventive Maintenance

The data gathered from tracking and monitoring assets allows manufacturers to develop a highly effective preventive maintenance system. With the help of smart enterprise asset management, maintenance can be planned to take place during times that will cause the least disruption.

Having an accurate time list of necessary repairs and inspections, maintenance staff would be able to fit these tasks around their work schedule, ensuring that assets are taken care of before they start to break down. The result helps manufacturers save a lot of money that would have otherwise been spent on dealing with predictable or worse, unpredictable downtime.

Because assets don’t suffer from catastrophic breakdowns, they don’t need to be replaced more often, allowing companies to enjoy longer asset lifecycles and increased reliability.

3. Compliance With Strict Safety Requirements

The manufacturing sector deals with heavy machinery and equipment on a daily basis. This is why companies need to ensure that these types of assets are running correctly and safely. Without proper safety mechanisms in check, accidents can happen.

According to this Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) statistics, the majority of the violations of safety regulations occur in the manufacturing industry. The key to avoiding hefty violations is to tackle them from the roots, which is compliance with general safety standards.

As discussed earlier, a cloud-based smart asset vending system enables manufacturing companies to run regular equipment inspections and perform preventive maintenance to lower the risks of breakdowns. Because every machine is tagged in the system, technicians can be quickly notified and take action when inspections are due.

Managers can also attach safety requirements along with the equipment details. This ensures absolute compliance with all the rigorous safety requirements.

4. Producing Reports Easily and Quickly

Manufacturing companies tend to face a lot of uncertainty regarding cost fluctuations due to several factors like raw materials, demand, labor, and certification and testing costs. This makes forecasting and controlling costs difficult.

A smart asset and inventory management system like Teqtivity can produce accurate reports on current asset values, such as their predicted depreciation and future maintenance and replacement costs. With this, the primary data is easily translated into actionable insights, which significantly benefit the company’s financial department.

These reports can then be used for forecasting future trends based on client demands and the current market fluctuations. The result is an easier way to track and control costs, all the while improving productivity.

Everyone benefits from accurate and reliable reporting because they lead to better business predictions, and better decision making, allowing manufacturers to stay on top of their competition.

Conclusion

The ability to oversee operations at the level that smart inventory management provides helps manufacturers overcome the common challenges in the manufacturing sector, such as lack of interpretation tools for the data, inventory mismanagement, and cybersecurity threats.

Hardware asset management is essential for businesses that want to reduce overall asset maintenance costs, improve their asset turnover ratio, and extend the life cycle of their more important assets like their heavy equipment and machinery.

The bottom line, real-time tracking through an automated asset lifecycle management enables manufacturers to maximize returns on investment by improving their efficiency and productivity.Still wondering how an asset management tool solution can help your business? Contact us and we’ll show you!