BACKGROUND

Most businesses are heavily invested in physical assets that are employed in the operational environment and that assist to generate the company's revenue. Examples include buildings, plants, equipment, vehicles, tools, and people. It is vital to the long-term sustainability of your business that you optimise the productivity of these assets while ensuring their safety and extending their useful lifespan as much as possible. By achieving this, you maximise your investment in these assets and ultimately become more profitable.

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WHAT IS OPERATIONAL ASSET MANAGEMENT

The way we see it, optimal operational management of these physical assets can be separated into 3 main areas:

 

1. Indoor Asset Tracking
   Many businesses have large quantities of assets within their indoor operational environment. Some of these assets should not be moving at all, while others are moving constantly. Examples of these assets include: 
   
   - People, laptops, PCs, monitors, chairs, tables, etc. in smart buildings.
   - Job trays and/or boxes in manufacturing & assembly. 
   - Tools & equipment in automotive manufacturing.
   - Valuable artwork in an art gallery. 
   - Vehicles and keys in an automotive sales warehouse. 
   - Medical equipment in healthcare.
   - Health & Safety equipment in aviation.
   
   There are many more examples of such operational assets. Keeping track of where these assets are at any given time is critical for both efficient operations, as well as for security purposes. Monitoring and controlling where, when, and why these assets are moving (or standing still) allows your business to have better control over them. Providing the right information to the right person just in time, or even automating certain asset control processes, is Real-Time Operational Excellence (RTE) at its best. 
    

2. Outdoor Asset Tracking
   In some businesses, the tracking and management of assets extend to external environments. Examples of this are:
   
   - Fleets of vehicles in logistics, automotive, and healthcare.
   - People, tools, and moveable equipment on remote sites and mines.
   - Service delivery equipment and vehicles in smart cities.
   - Service vehicles and equipment in aviation. 
   
   Having the ability to monitor and control the movement of such outdoor assets in real time substantially improves the related efficiencies, costs, and security risks. Further enhancing this with real-time data, alerts, and automated controls will also assist the operational team to make the correct, data-driven decisions quickly, which again leads to real-time operation excellence.
    

3. Asset Health & Safety 
   Whether an asset is indoor or outdoor, fixed or moveable, being able to monitor and control the health and safety of these assets becomes critical to maximising their uptime and availability. It is therefore essential to monitor and track these assets in real time. This could include monitoring temperature, pressure, vibration, and a whole host of other measurements. Pre-determined thresholds can be set so that if exceeded, the responsible people are alerted immediately and the appropriate actions are taken. For example, the maintenance team can be dispatched automatically to prevent failure, or the equipment switched off remotely in critical situations. Alternatively, the security team could be notified if the asset is being tampered with or in any danger. This could be extended to the health and safety of your staff during an accident or emergency. The possibilities are endless and the positive operational impact on the business and its people could be immeasurable.

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OUR SOLUTION

FLEX Digital provides comprehensive operational asset management solutions. What sets us apart is our ability to provide passive and active, indoor and outdoor asset tracking and health & safety monitoring through our single, integrated digital platform.

 

We leverage a combination of various innovative technologies to achieve this. Examples include RFID, BLE, UWB, IoT, OT CyberSecurity, and Artificial Intelligence. 

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An example of our smaRTE Assets solution architecture can be seen below: