Asset Performance Management (APM) is a market of software tools and applications for optimizing operational assets (such as plants, equipment and infrastructure) essential to the operation of an enterprise. Organizations invest in APM tools and technologies to reduce unplanned repair work, increase asset availability, minimize maintenance costs and reduce the risk of failure for critical assets. These products can also improve an organization's ability to comply with regulations that prescribe how assets are inspected and maintained. APM uses data capture, integration, visualization and analytics to improve operations and maintenance timing, and to identify which maintenance and inspection activities to perform on mission-critical assets.
Enterprise asset management (EAM) is a business application used most comprehensively by asset-intensive industries to execute, track and optimize inspections, maintenance and repair of industrial plants and equipment. Examples of these industries are heavy discrete and process manufacturing industries, oil and gas, rail, and power and utilities. An alternative term used for EAM is “computerized maintenance management system (CMMS),' which generally consists of small-scale, single-site applications with less functionality around parts management and resource scheduling.
The global industrial IoT platform delivers multiple integrations to industrial OT assets and other asset-intensive enterprises’ industrial data sources to aggregate, curate and deliver contextualized insights that enable intelligent applications and dashboards through an edge-to-cloud architecture. The global industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) platform market exists because of the core capabilities of integrated middleware software that support a multivendor marketplace of intelligent applications to facilitate and automate asset management decision making. IIoT platforms also provide operational visibility and control for plants, infrastructure and equipment. Common use cases are augmentation of industrial automation, remote operations, sustainability and energy management, global scalability, IT/operational technology (OT) convergence, and product servitization of industrial products. The IIoT platform monitors IoT endpoints and event streams, supports and/or translates a variety of manufacturer and industry proprietary protocols, analyzes data in the platform, at the edge and in the cloud, integrates and engages IT and OT systems in data sharing and consumption, enables application development and deployment and can enrich and supplement OT functions for improved asset management life cycle strategies and processes. In some emerging use cases, the IIoT platform may obviate some OT functions.
Manufacturing process management (MPM) and model-based manufacturing (MbM) bridge the gap between the virtual design realm and the physical product/process manufacturing realm as part of an organized software architecture. These technologies are not only applied within the four walls of a plant or a corporation's multiple manufacturing sites. They can be applied holistically, with workflow to manage multiple recipe variants and labeling change/requirements, and/or handle certificates of compliance (CoCs) and certificates of analysis (CoAs) from suppliers.
Gartner defines manufacturing execution systems (MES) as a specialist class of production-oriented software that manages, monitors and synchronizes the execution of real-time physical processes involved in transforming raw materials into intermediate and/or finished goods. These systems coordinate this execution of work orders with production scheduling and enterprise-level systems like ERP and product life cycle management (PLM). MES applications also provide feedback on process performance, and support component and material-level traceability, genealogy and integration with process history, where required.
MDMS products are IT components of the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). The core MDMS is responsible for cleansing, calculating and providing the data persistence of commodity consumption data. Additional MDMS capabilities now include disseminating metered consumption data for internal as well as external use. Meter data can be used to support billing, as well as analytics use cases, such as load profiling, consumption tracking, forecasting, asset loading and revenue protection, including the detection of tampering, theft or leakage. Beyond supporting internal utility needs, MDMS plays a role in open consumption data by supporting the sharing of consumption data with customers, partners, market operators and regulators. In most markets, data sharing is done with standardized data exchange formats.
Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software is essential for industries such as manufacturing, energy and utilities, transportation etc. to control the processes, collect & monitor real-time data, and communicate system issues. The software communicates with devices such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) to interact with industrial equipment and processes. SCADA software can be run virtually, which allows the operator to supervise the industrial processes even from a distant location. The software provides real-time data insights through Human Machine Interface (HMI) to maximize efficiency, reduce overhead costs, and streamline operations. The software also warns the operator of any hazardous conditions such as blocked processes and failing systems.