Infor's EAM sees green

The market for software that handles asset and equipment
maintenance has seen plenty of change over the past two to three
years, most notably with vendor consolidation. For example, Infor
acquired enterprise asset management (EAM) vendor Datastream, while
IBM bought EAM vendor MRO Software

The larger trends in the EAM market have been ongoing for many more
years, moving from the days of a computerized maintenance
management system (CMMS) to a broader EAM concept that managed more
and different types of assets (e.g., printers and servers), added
enterprisewide functionality in areas like sourcing, and put more
focus on preventative maintenance and new approaches such as
condition-based monitoring. But even though EAM always focused on
keeping machinery running well, the traditional drivers behind EAM
tended to be around asset availability and uptime, rather than
using EAM to optimize the real-time energy use or carbon footprint
of assets. Now that appears to be changing, with vendors like Infor
coming out with functionality aimed at energy management.

I recently spoke with Rod Ellsworth, VP of global asset
sustainability with Infor. The company now offers an  “Infor
Asset Sustainability Edition” that factors energy use into
various EAM functions. “We factor both energy and carbon emissions
into how you operate and maintain your buildings,” says
Ellsworth.

Via ties to building automation systems or submetering to circuits
for production areas or equipment, says Ellsworth, the solution
gains the near real-time energy “interval data” that it uses to
present energy consumption trends for assets, and generate energy
and emissions key performance indicators. The system can consider
the energy generation mix for a local utility company to arrive at
greenhouse gas emissions trends for a facility. All of this
information helps companies make maintenance decisions based not
only on traditional factors like recommended schedules or asset
performance, but also on whether maintenance steps can drive down
emissions or energy use. Just as importantly given the current
economy, says Ellsworth, the edition also can manage assets based
on energy costs.

“Typically in the past we’ve seen energy allocated as an overhead
cost,” says Ellsworth. “But in many factories, with energy
representing 60 to 70 percent of the maintenance operations costs,
it’s more important than ever to manage energy cost down to the
asset level.”

Infor’s EAM rival IBM has combined aspects of its EAM software and
Tivoli data center management software to enable “active
energy management” for data centers. Thus it’s interesting to
see that the EAM space is turning its eye toward sustainability
concerns, not just raw asset efficiency or uptime. In turning
toward green concerns at the facility level, EAM vendors join plant
automation, plant historian, and plant intelligence software
vendors who also increasingly play a role in solutions for energy
monitoring and management within plants.