Efficiently managing business critical assets is a challenging task for any organization. Assets are continuously under the risk of threat, loss, delayed delivery or breakdown. Having real time visibility into the location, status, performance and related parameters is extremely critical not only from a service standpoint but also in efficiently managing costs and productivity.
Remote Asset Management is part of Avaali’s Machine to Machine (M2M) Solution Suite. The solutions works with a GSM enabled device attached to the asset, to get data pointers like inventory number, location and various customizable fields for tagging asset details. A typical solution has sensors, device/ gateway, modem, platform/middleware and application layer. Avaali enables data collection remotely and leverage domain specific analytics to deliver actionable business insight.
Remote asset management enables tracking of remote assets and consequently maintenance and quick response to any issues. Examples of such solutions include:
- Vending machine management
- Digital Signage
- Wind turbine monitoring
- ATM facility management
- Cell tower management
- Construction site asset monitoring
- Container tracking
The solution leverages innovation in embedded software, hardware, cloud application and system integration to provide desired business results. In few use cases, technology like radio frequency identification (RFID) and video surveillance is integrated to achieve better results.
The solution not only helps monitoring and tracking movable asset, but also helps warranty management of assets and life cycle cost minimization.
Implementation view
Short life battery is a major concern for power sensors and devices. Therefore, a remote tracking solution to manage assets where the power source is not continuously available requires more sophisticated devices, which could turn out to be a costly proposition. Energy optimization of sensing instruments, and energy harvesting, specially based on rechargeable methods is a research focus and with advancement in M2M we can expect better energy equipped devices for various use cases.
Remote Asset Management solution has several factors and depending upon the specific customer requirement, it is necessary to consider the most optimal sensor technologies, placement of sensor around the asset, data collection and handling, data communication channel, protocol, data format amongst others.
Many a time, the solution needs integration with other solutions like video surveillance. Pattern matching and advanced smart image analytic tools—enabled by cloud computing and conventional CCTV technology along with inputs from several other sensors and devices, will play a key role in the surveillance of assets. There needs to be more focus on optimizers and algorithms to make the infrastructure intelligent, and to facilitate automated decision-making though the captured data, in conjunction with other relevant data from other operational systems.
In Summary
Remote asset management can go long way in improving operations with advancement in device technology. It is time that enterprises start to deploy some of these Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technologies also known as internet of things (iOT), to enable proactive and preventive strategies and derive actionable insights to different stakeholders through data analysis and embark the journey towards intelligent and efficient field operation.
About Avaali:
Avaali Solutions (www.avaali.com) is a company that focuses in the Enterprise Information Management (EIM) and Enterprise Mobility space.
In EIM, Avaali focuses on supporting enterprise customers manage the lifecycle and generate value from un-structured content (contracts, documents, emails, vendor invoices, HR data etc). Avaali has partnered with various Best of Breed vendors in this space including Silver partnership and SAP Competence Partnership with OpenText, SAP reseller partner and Canto Silver Certified partner (world’s leading provider of Digital Asset Management). Avaali’s consulting and implementation skill-set on OpenText is perhaps one of the largest– they’re equipped with consultants who come with strong global implementation experience in SAP OpenText solutions.
Avaali also has offerings for shared services (SSC) where they provide advisory services and implementation services to help set up and scale SSC for enterprises. A company profile can be found here.
Their offerings for shared services can be found here.
In their Enterprise Mobility practice they provide advisory services, enterprise mobile application development and managed services. More about Avaali’s mobility practice can be found here.