Industry Agnostic EAM Solution Showcased at ARC Industry Forum Asia

At the online annual ARC Industry Forum Asia titled Accelerating Industrial Digital Transformation and Sustainability on July 12-14, 2022, Hexagon participated as a Platinum Sponsor. This Forum saw registrations of 1,600+ delegates for the two language tracks – Japanese and English.

In the session on Asset Management Advances, Kevin Price, Technical Product Evangelist, VP Portfolio Strategy and Enablement EAM Segment at Hexagon spoke about the company’s industry agnostic Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solution. Supratim Mukhopadhyay, Director of Sales (EAM), Hexagon joined him and the other session speakers for the panel discussion.

This blog captures the key points of the presentation and Supratim’s views at the panel discussion. The entire session and lively panel discussion can be watched on YouTube.

About HxGN EAM

Hexagon purchased the Infor EAM product line in October 2021. Now called HxGN EAM, it is a cornerstone asset management solution that has been added to Hexagon’s Asset Lifecycle and Intelligence portfolio. Kevin’s role in the organization helped establish the strategy both from a product and a go-to-market perspective. In his live presentation, Kevin reviewed the Hexagon solution, the different approaches, and applications in diverse industry verticals as an industry agnostic enterprise asset management system.

“The focus is on the E in Enterprise Asset Management, which means that assets of any type and kind (componentized, structured, linear, rolling etc.) can be managed,” explained Kevin. HxGN EAM provides the tools to help solve critical asset performance challenges. From its cloud-native foundation, with a robust asset data structure to device-independent work orders with barcoding, and GIS (Geographic Information System) or BIM (Building Information Modeling) capabilities, HxGN EAM provides the information when and where it is needed, to make better, more strategic decisions that extend asset life, ensure safety, and optimize profitability. “HxGN EAM has about 3,500 plus customers in its portfolio, which means that the company is looking at a wide array of assets in a wide array of industries,” he said.

Industry Agnostic HxGN EAM Solution

Looking ahead, this product line should be useful for next-generation asset management. Different market trends are visible: a shift to SaaS, a resurgence of interest in reliability, predictive analytics, and advanced capabilities around sustainability. There are different types of solution integration needs; and different types of Internet of Things, connectivity, artificial intelligence that goes with the machine learning expansion out into the field within mobile solutions. These advanced types of capabilities and market trends are customized by Hexagon in a very specific manner by understanding the real world in a digital way and producing a digital twin. Within that, computing power, experience, and technique can be applied - essentially that is artificial intelligence that everyone wants to have. This helps to understand when issues are going to occur and have a proactive and predictive approach. It would be advantageous to know that your asset is in a certain risk variable before it occurs and take preventive measures to avoid future risk – laying the foundation of the smart digital reality.

“In a way that brings autonomous capability,” added Kevin.

HxGN EAM synchronizes the visualization, analytical, connection tools and even the location tools to help bring new value within any asset type and is useful to customers across industries. This was explained via a video of an industrial facility that showed drilled down views, 2D & 3D views and the next steps (overlaying, hotspots, etc.). This is a huge EAM opportunity – the image and the mapping can be related back to the enterprise, enabling visualization of the history and metadata, providing a “true view.” This helps customers focus on asset utilization, ensuring that they get the most out of those assets in the most efficient way through cost optimization. HxGN EAM combines not only the technical aspect of operation from a design and engineering and the throughput of production perspective, but also from a maintenance and operation perspective. This is possible, because what it enables is not only the real-world definition of new assets, but existing assets as well; and this is done through the scanning engines and tools. Visualization of assets in industries, such as transportation, manufacturing, oil & gas facilities, enhances operational levels. Moving forward, this type of transactional tool combined with a visualization tool and built-in artificial intelligence can be done autonomously.

The focus is more on new developments around optimizing work capacities, people, materials, and tools. “Getting the right people in the right place at the right time is something that we've always been able to do. The hard part is doing it for the right reasons,” said Kevin.

All these aspects were highlighted through successful case studies across diverse industries, such as tissue paper, water & wastewater, and shipping. HxGN EAM provided comprehensive solutions for all their assets, with data visibility and accessibility down the line. Customers moved from a reactive approach to a preventive and predictive one to optimize processes. Sustainability issues were also tackled. “Right tools at the right time in the right place is what was required,” explained Kevin.

Viewpoints

Summarizing Supratim’s views at the panel discussion.

What will next-gen EAM look like in 5 – 7 years’ time, and what is Hexagon doing to achieve that goal?

The focus has been on bringing the real world and digital world together from an asset management perspective. Hexagon has been in the digital projects space for about 50 years. With the acquisition of Infor EAM, it brings us closer to the operations and maintenance of the digital asset. In addition to that, Hexagon has sensor software technologies and reality capture technologies, so bringing all of that together in the asset management realm and connecting it to the asset is one of the key focus areas. EAM has evolved more into asset performance management (APM) with key capabilities from other solution providers. From an industry agnostic solution perspective, Hexagon will probably integrate these technologies, but its main philosophy will remain providing the right information to the people who are doing the work in an easy way.

Is risk management making a comeback?

That depends and varies from region to region depending on APM maturity levels. Not so much of a resurgence, but a realization of risk management from an asset management perspective. In the Asia-Pacific region it is at a lower stage but catching up soon. We are going to move from reactive to preventive before moving to proactive. Besides the technology, the processes and people have to come along before moving up the maturity curve.

Open approach of integration for the future of asset management.

In terms of deploying architectures etc. the capabilities must be available in the cloud as it’s not possible to run those simulations on-premises, and HxGN EAM has been a cloud-native for about 20 years. That’s one of the critical areas in terms of which technology is adopted in an organization to help them on the maturity curve.

Concluding the discussion Supratim said that finally it boils down to interconnectivity because to get the desired outcomes, it’s not one system that can provide it – systems and processes have to be interconnected.