Advanced Asset Performance Management and Its Impact on the Workforce

Executive Overview

Asset Performance Management (APM) has become a primary enabler of digital transformation for asset management among industrial companies. Modern APM combines traditional practices with new digital technologies for transformation advances in reliability, maintenance execution, and business performance. Advanced technologies of today, including predictive maintenance (PdM), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and cloud computing have pushed APM limits and helped end users bring in many improvements such as lowering maintenance costs, decreasing unplanned downtime, and improving profit margins. 

While business benefits are very well recognized, what remains to be understood is the impact of advanced APM technology adoption on the industrial workforce. With advanced APM technologies, the way people work and manage their assets is changing. Certainly, expectations are growing as well. Industrial companies are investing a significant amount of their time, money, and resources to adopt these newer solutions, but are their expectations met? How well are they able to realize the benefits out of their advanced APM investments? What is the impact on the workforce? To better understand this, ARC Advisory Group recently surveyed over 500 industry practitioners to learn about industry leaders’ expectations from their advanced APM programs and how the adoption of advanced technologies is impacting the industrial workforce.

Key findings from this research include:

• The three top reasons end users are investing in advanced APM solutions is to improve maintenance practices, reduce safety incidents, and improve employee job satisfaction. The majority of the users are able to realize these benefits as per their expectations.
• Employee satisfaction and retention are two areas where a greater number of participants indicated that the benefits they realized fell short of their expectations.
• One key challenge associated with PdM has been scaling. The survey highlighted that the majority of the participants are able to see a measurable impact of their PdM program when they expand the program to four or more sites.
• APM projects can be complex and may take a few months to implement before users are able to start seeing return on investment. According to the survey, the majority of the participants, over 57 percent, started seeing benefits between the 6 months to 1 year period.
• The majority of survey respondents indicated that they are able to bring in continuous improvements to their asset management processes and practices as they have adopted advanced PdM practices. About 90 percent of the respondents indicated that since the adoption of advanced PdM programs, they were able to add more assets to their asset management programs.
• The majority of survey respondents felt process optimization and PdM are two areas that will significantly benefit from AI enhancements.

Table of Contents

• Executive Overview
• APM Workforce Research Survey and Methodology
• Growing Expectations from APM
• When Can I Start to See Benefits?
• Expectations from PdM
• Recommendations
• Appendix

ARC Advisory Group clients can view the complete report at the ARC Client Portal.

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