Siemens SIMATIC PCS 7

Introduction 5

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.

Monitoring

Maintenance

measure

Maintenance

request

Diagnostics

Maintenance_PA_04_2010_en.book Seite 5 Dienstag, 6. September 2011 9:45 09