by Brianna Crandall — May 13, 2019 — Accruent, a provider of physical resource management solutions worldwide, just announced that it is has developed an integration between its Maintenance Connection computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) and its Meridian engineering document management (EDM) software. The company also recently announced a partnership with Tridium focused on building automation.
CMMS/EDM data integration
Using the Maintenance Connection CMMS and Meridian EDM software products together, manufacturers and industrial organizations can provide maintenance teams with fast, on-site access to dynamic asset documentation. Comprehensive and accurate asset information enables maintenance teams to complete work more quickly and cost-effectively, increase asset uptime, and help assure worker safety. As margins are crucial to manufacturers, the resulting cost savings and improved output can have a magnified impact on company success, notes Accruent.
For manufacturers, seemingly small improvements in output or maintenance cost savings can mean the difference between growth and fighting for survival, points out the company. However, a growing shortage of skilled workers (71% of companies surveyed by the National Association of Manufacturers [NAM] in March 2019 indicated that attracting and retaining skilled workers is their greatest challenge) will require managers to seek other methods of assuring operational excellence. Analyst firm IDC predicts that by 2020, 80% of manufacturers will seek to place data at the center of their processes to increase speed, agility, efficiency, and innovation.
One example of placing data at the center of a process is to improve the depth and quality of information provided to maintenance teams and increasing the speed at which such information is delivered. By integrating EDM and CMMS, Accruent provides manufacturers and industrial organizations the ability to deliver on-demand engineering documentation to on-site maintenance professionals via a computer or mobile device.
Providing access to asset data while technicians are on-site:
- Reduces the time needed to complete maintenance
- Lowers the cost of completing work
- Decreases the duration of asset downtime
In addition, this combination provides better data to engineers who can update asset documentation more quickly and accurately. Perhaps most importantly, providing accurate, real-time asset documentation to maintenance personnel allows them to assure their safety while performing maintenance.
Kevin Permenter, research manager, Enterprise Applications, IDC, stated:
Manufacturers are embracing digital transformation to improve operations and maximize returns. One of the key elements of digital transformation in manufacturing is breaking down data silos. Sharing information between engineering and maintenance teams is an example of how having a single source of truth can deliver benefits to multiple departments and initiatives. Manufacturers that are sharing data across these functions are opening up new avenues to improve productivity, maximize the value of their resources, and lengthen asset life.
Accruent’s Maintenance Connection is a cloud-based CMMS that gives users the ability to manage work orders, organize and execute preventive maintenance, predict when assets need maintenance, and manage enterprise assets and equipment inventory. Meridian, Accruent’s EDM software, creates a single source of truth for all engineering information, preserves control of engineering data changes, and manages the exchange of engineering documentation at handover and between internal and external stakeholders throughout the asset lifecycle.
Andy Ruse, chief revenue officer, Accruent, remarked:
Our customers face complex challenges and are constantly seeking to improve operations, increase productivity, and reduce costs. Providing them a platform to make complex and important information available to workers that need it at the moment they need it will help them deliver the results that they are seeking and help their maintenance teams use their expertise to assure their own safety.
Partnership with Tridium building automation for data insight
Accruent also recently established a new strategic alliance with Tridium, a global provider of business application frameworks, that is designed to deliver enterprise customers greater value through the combination of Tridium’s expertise in building automation and Accruent’s vx Observe IoT asset monitoring solution.
Accruent says it will help companies make sense of today’s flood of data produced by connected equipment and building automation devices. To do that, companies need to acquire, normalize and correlate input from as many relevant sources as possible, then be presented with meaningful and actionable insight that drives informed decision-making. This process requires the ability to extract high-value data from assets, to deliver that data to the analytics engine, and to communicate controls and other instructions back to the device.
Tridium’s Niagara Framework is a universal multi-protocol integration engine that enables applications to seamlessly aggregate data from a wide variety of systems and equipment. Operational technology (OT) experts seeking open-protocol interoperability have converged around the Niagara JACE hardware/software solution offered by Tridium’s many OEM and integration service partners in the building automation business. Recently, Tridium has forged partnerships to port the Niagara Framework to non-JACE devices designed for other uses and industries.
Niagara is said to be a natural match for Accruent’s applications that utilize real-time data to help organizations such as retailers, universities, and hospitals transition from reactive asset maintenance to predictive maintenance and perform system-wide asset control actions. Accruent has developed its own driver for the Niagara Framework which will be jointly marketed as part of this new business development relationship. The alliance between Accruent and Tridium will focus on enhanced functionality and co-marketing of Accruent solutions leveraging Tridium’s Niagara Framework, which is approaching one million instances worldwide.
Accruent helps organizations achieve superior performance by transforming how they manage their physical resources. Its innovative cloud-based software and services enable organizations to optimize all stages of real estate, facilities and asset management, from capital planning through to IoT-based monitoring and control. Accruent’s integrated software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based framework and reporting platform have a proven track record for full-lifecycle physical resource management. Austin, Texas-based Accruent serves more than 10,000 customers across a wide range of industries in more than 150 countries.
