Siemens SIMATIC PCS 7 brochure Asset management in production, Benefits of Plant Asset Management

© Siemens AG 2011

Asset management in production

The term asset management comes from the world of finance and economics and refers to the manner in which a company deals with its long-term and current assets. These include the production equipment with its plant components such as ap- paratus, machines, pipelines etc. and the equipment and de- vices for their automation. All these are referred to as assets. In association with production, asset management covers all activities and measures which serve toward retaining or incre- asing the value of a plant. This is called Plant Asset Manage- ment.

Benefits of Plant Asset Management

Plant Asset Management allows the maintenance engineer

•to unambiguously identify and evaluate the assets, this me- ans the production equipment and its components;

•to carry out the appropriate measures in the case of devia- tions from the desired or expected state.

As a result of monitoring, i.e. the recording and evaluation of status variables, the condition of a component or device can be determined.

It can be recognized, for example, that no signal is received from the sensor, resulting in the diagnosis "Open circuit". This result triggers a maintenance request, and maintenance must then be carried out to eliminate the open circuit.

This measure – replacement of a faulty line in this example – ensures that the component is returned to the desired condi- tion and closes the maintenance cycle. This means that Plant Asset Management is the basis for increased productivity.

Maintenance	Monitoring
measure

Maintenance	Diagnostics
request

Introduction 5