Leveraging the power of digital asset management in a highly connected world

#iot #smartcities #IAM #assetmanagement #digitaltransformation #technology #innovation #industrialiot #mining #transport

Recently I spoke at the AMPEAK Asset Management Conference in Sydney.?My topic was “leveraging the power of digital asset management in the connected world.”

By all accounts my presentation was received well by the audience, in particular the real-life case studies I shared in the application of intelligent asset management tools & techniques across the construction, mining, ports, transport & smart cities sectors.

Let’s start with a very simple definition of what I term as digital asset management. In short, it is the ability to maintain & service the performance of physical assets with real-time insights employing a range of tools including but not limited to IoT, Mobile Apps, Advanced Analytics (ML/AI).

I see digital, intelligent or remote asset management as pretty much the same thing, with “intelligence” being the key to enable 24/7 data insights for action.

In the past, many asset, site or production managers, reliability & operations engineers have relied on old school telemetry to get data remotely from assets.?To this day, we still see asset managers & technicians going out to sites, many in remote parts of the country, to check a reading from a “sensor” or RTU on a scheduled basis.?

With the advent & rise of secure IoT solutions using low power wide area networks (LPWAN) communications over the past 5 years, these trips could be greatly reduced by using smart sensors in the field reporting data 24/7 back to a mobile or web-based application using a variety of different communications including #LoRaWAN , #nbiot #CatM1 and even low orbit #satellite solutions.?

The total installed base of?IoT connected devices worldwide is projected to amount to 30.9 billion units. In the Australian & New Zealand region, we saw rapid adoption of IoT with spending on IoT products & services forecasted to exceed $16 billion in 2022, an increase of 13% from 2021, according to IDC's latest?Worldwide Semi-annual Internet of Things Spending Guide .

For me, the most interesting trend was where the spending was occurring with labour & asset intensive industries such as manufacturing, utilities & transport making up 43.9% of the spend together. ?

There is also no doubt that COVID19 accelerated the adoption of remote asset monitoring using IoT despite global supply chain shortages. No need to send people out to assets in public spaces unnecessarily. The assets can be remotely monitored using the real time data to better inform the maintenance & repair schedules.

In my own business, Meshed , we have seen a dramatic increase in the use of our managed LoRaWAN solutions over the past 2 years, outside of our traditional customer base of smart cities & infrastructure.?

We now have a strong customer base in the manufacturing, industrial, ports, transport & construction sectors as these asset rich industries strive to do more with less & take advantage of remote asset management.?With now so many remote monitoring use cases, real time data visibility has proven to enable rapid decision-making for asset managers & reliability engineers.

Drivers of digital asset management…

The key drivers for digital asset management are varied, depending on which industry or function you serve.?In our experience through multiple deployments of best of breed real time data solutions, we see many motivating reasons why organisations are incorporating digital asset management as part of their day-to-day operations. These include, but not limited to:

1. Optimise Asset Lifecycle Management – reduce risk & downtime, early warning detection of equipment failure, 24/7 monitoring of performance of assets.
2. Cost management – doing more with less, shifting from time based/schedule to condition based monitoring actions and processes.
3. Sustainability & decarbonisation – management of green assets & infrastructure, energy demand management, circular economy & waste monitoring.
4. Supply chain optimisation - enhanced visibility, better supplier relationships to reduce costs & increase efficiencies.
5. Safety & compliance – reporting, governance & quality assurance
6. Supporting the engaged digital worker – through using mobile apps & tools, managers & workers can more easily have 24/7 visibility on the operations of their plant, factory, precinct, mine etc.

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Standards are enablers….

The good news is standards have kept with pace digital transformation.?We are seeing some of our customers using ISO 5500 Asset Management as an enabler for IoT and digital asset management. Other relevant standards include Enterprise Control System Integration (ISA95), Intelligent Device Management (ISA108) and Wireless Systems for Industrial Automation (ISA100) to name a few.

Using data standards, we can seamlessly integrated real time datasets into asset management & advanced data analytics tools such as SCADA, GIS, BI/ML/AI, digital twins or BIM models.

Some challenges…

However, there are some key challenges with digital asset management that need to be factored into your IoT roadmap.?Such as..

• IoT is not quite plug and play yet.?Hence partnering with a systems integrator is key, not just a data provider but an organisation equipped to work with your internal asset & operational staff to provide end to end management & integrate the data flow from sensors, networks to applications effectively.?
• Effective change management & governance processes in place, by that I refer to ensuring everyone is taken along the journey as they shift from traditional data gathering techniques to IoT. AI & other remote data management approaches
• Having an asset & data management strategy, which covers data management & security as a minimum but also supports true data interoperability. Meaning ensuring data generated from sensors can easily be integrated into the customers’ existing systems or third-party platforms without penalties.?This also brings up the issue of data siloes & the need for greater collaboration between the departments of I.T & O.T.?

Finally, the challenge of the lack of analytical & data science resources. Some organisations are blessed to have these resources in house, whilst others have to contract this important work elsewhere.?

Real life #casestudies

So now to the good part. The case studies I wanted to share with you!

Alpine road asset management for safety & better customer experience.?Working with Transport for NSW , we implemented an end to end black ice & hazardous road remote condition monitoring solution that included installation of a LoRaWAN network & sensors across a stretch of the Alpine Way in NSW.?The sensors included advanced road temperature, weather stations, slow & fast bi-directional traffic & pedestrian counters. The real time data was served to the Meshed cloud hosted dashboard as well as simultaneously to a digital road sign used to inform motorists of the road condition & the need to fit chains onto their vehicles.?

For a major mining company in Western Australia, we have been using remote tracking devices on water craft as they move between the mainland & the outer harbour as well as collecting weather information to better inform of watercraft movements & conditions

Also in Western Australia, for a multi-port facility, we deployed a precinct wide LoRaWAN supported by SLAs. The Future Port initiative saw hundreds of sensors installed as the Port Authority commits to digitising every asset across the port to get 24/7 visibility on asset performance, state & location all assets.

The real time use cases include gps trackers, water & gas metering, controls room occupancy monitoring. equipment voltage monitoring, rail track heat & stress monitoring, hyperlocalised weather & environmental monitoring.??Not only are they using sensor data but deployed drones to capture camera imaging on the condition of hard to reach places such as the wharf piles & underside of the decks/berths. These rich datasets are being seamlessly integrated to the Ports' GIS based digital twin as well as their Power & ERP systems.

And for one of Australia’s largest manufacturing & exporting companies, we have implemented multiple end-to-end digital asset management solutions for each of their production facilities using precinct wide LoRaWAN connectivity to support a wide range of manufacturing & industrial use cases.

Some of these include plant electricity, gas & water metering, rotating machine monitoring (vibration, temperature, acoustics), remote water level & quality, gps tracking of mobile equipment, electrical switch/network room temperature & presence monitoring, high voltage tripping battery monitoring..to name a few. With the live data feeding into their OSI PI connector & data server to Power BI.

Where to next?

Digital asset management doesn’t stop with today’s tools of IoT, #AI & #digitaltwins .

Next generation industrial operations will be looking towards the harnessing the power of the #industrialmetaverse.

What do I mean by this? Essentially, bringing together real time sensor data & machine diagnostics into a photo-realistic physics based digital twin framework, combined with 3D visualisations, XR (VR+AR) environments to allow people to interact & collaborate to solve real world problems.

With next generation metaverse environments we will see dramatic process improvements across the production & product lifecycles within the key industry sectors of manufacturing, automotive engineering, energy & water networks, transport, ports & logistics, mining & resources.

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Summary

Hopefully, you have enjoyed my take on the critical role that digital asset management plays in the operations and engineering of asset intensive organisations.?

For more case studies on how Meshed has helped many major corporate & government organisations with their smart cities, intelligent asset management & environmental monitoring needs, please go to here !?

And if want to know more about how we can address your real time data pain points contact us or connect with me directly on LinkedIn .?

(photos compliments of Southern Ports & Meshed)