Invensys Operations Management today announced a revamped enterprise asset management offering designed for ease of use and visibility that extends beyond typical plant floor assets to areas such as contractor management.
The Avantis.PRO 5.0 enterprise asset management (EAM) release has been in development for two years, officials said. The software uses a Microsoft .NET framework and Windows Forms to create a an interface that can be tailored to a user’s role in the organization. The updated software includes new levels of data-type awareness, which through a “tree map” user interface can display the health of a specific piece of equipment, as well as all of the other assets that equipment impacts, officials said.
The Avantis brand falls under Invensys Operations Management unit, an umbrella organization under which three businesses — Invensys Process Management, Wonderware, and Eurotherm — have been integrated to help customers converge their own operations. The result is an expanded definition of EAM, which traditionally has been dedicated to plant floor equipment such as pumps or boilers, for example.
“For Invensys, the definition of an asset is anything in the plant that you want to manage, be it cost, work history, or statistics,” said Kim Custeau, director of product marketing at Invensys Operations Management, in an interview with Managing Automation. “It is the core assets running the process of the plant. And, all of these assets are linked in a parent-child relationship, which makes it easy to flow cost up” through the equipment hierarchy, she said.
A new feature called the Maintenance Map, for example, displays in real time the maintenance health status of the entire operation, including contractor costs. To that end, the new Contractor Management module manages contractor expenses, prices and pricing rules, and approval and reconciliation of invoices for both current and past projects in order to facilitate collaboration in tracking, estimating, and negotiating contractor costs.
Views can be personalized, and Invensys has built in an analysis capability that can rank the hierarchy of equipment to see what maintenance work is overdue, or what need not be done.
“Because we have an inherent knowledge of the plant floor, we can figure out what is optimal for equipment,” Custeau said. “Sometimes [that might mean] not doing maintenance for a week, but there is statistical data to make that decision, [as] opposed to following a textbook of rules.”
While Avantis.PRO 5.0 is built on a different architecture than previous versions, Custeau characterized it is an easy upgrade for users of the existing software. However, it was built using the Microsoft Office Fluent user interface, which means customers will need Microsoft Office to run the application.
Avantis.PRO 5.0 is currently in use with customers participating in Invensys’ early adopter program. The software will be generally available at the end of the month.