Navigate SAP EAM best practices by industry to find out how to maximize asset performance across economic sectors.
When an organization decides to adopt SAP Enterprise Asset Management (SAP EAM), it’s a prominent step that implies downtime reduction, optimized maintenance costs, boosted efficiency, and… significant investments. Nonetheless, it’s not enough to purchase the licenses and just install the software. SAP EAM adoption is a fundamental transformation process that can only be completed when the organization obtains its industry’s best practices.
Why Exactly Organizations Need Industry-Specific Practices for SAP EAM
Implementing the solution without a strategic approach can lead to critical risks:
- ROI failure: Without matching the company's internal processes with the work of the software, it will be extremely difficult to materialize the anticipated ROI.
- Complicated integration: If the setup is incorrect, integration with core business systems can fail or require extra workarounds, resulting in data silos.
- Poor user adoption rate: When the new system is illogical, poorly configured, or doesn’t align with real work processes, few users will ultimately use the software as planned.
While facing the same risk types, companies across sectors manage assets in different conditions, with distinct goals. A utility organization, for instance, manages power lines, which are linear assets, while a manufacturing company deals with production lines, which are complex assets.
Industry-specific best practices establish the necessary standards and become the blueprints that help you maintain smooth and productive asset operations in your specific industry, serving as an effective form of risk management and helping you get a higher ROI faster.
Core Pillars of Effective SAP EAM Adoption
SAP EAM is designed to be a game-changer in asset management for various companies. However, it should be implemented according to the following key principles.
Business-first priorities
Solution deployment isn’t a primary objective. You should keep the focus on meeting defined business goals: let’s say you need a 20% reduction in downtime. Technologies remain the tool and not the final goal.
SAP Activate framework
SAP has developed SAP Activate, a specific implementation methodology for its software. The methodology is based on SAP best practices and consists of 6 stages:
- Discover: Evaluating current processes and defining the general solution strategy.
- Prepare: Determining objectives, the scope of work, team members, budget, and a project plan.
- Explore: Aligning a SAP solution with project goals and technical requirements, where best practices are pivotal.
- Realize: Migrating data, configuring the solution, customizing if needed, and integrating the solution with other systems if necessary.
- Deploy: Performing comprehensive testing, user training, and executing the final cutover plan.
- Run: Launching the system and providing continuous support.
Future-proofing for what's next
Business strategies, markets, and asset management plans change. If software lags behind, organizations get stuck. When implementing SAP EAM, or any other business solution, an organization should consider future growth and subsequent system integrations and customizations.
Change management
Even a perfectly designed system will fail if users don’t understand its value and work principles. To ensure a successful transition and user adoption, organizations should take care of knowledge sharing and user training, clearly communicating the software’s purpose, expected benefits, and necessary changes.
SAP EAM Cross-Cutting Principles
Before we consider industry-specific best practices for SAP EAM, we would like to point out that there are several universal principles that form the foundation of professional SAP EAM usage for any organization.
Data-driven management instead of tribal knowledge
In many organizations, decisions still differ depending on the people making them. On the one hand, it can be beneficial if a decision-maker is an experienced professional who brings their own perspective. On the other hand, relying on a single employee is fraught with inconsistency and human error.
Keeping MRO under control
Facility managers should maintain standardized maintenance, repair, and operations processes across the entire organization. Even one empty storage shelf that wasn’t properly reflected in the inventory can trigger downtime and disruption.
Shift to predictive maintenance
SAP provides the necessary opportunities to move from a reactive approach to a proactive one. It means that you can control the state and condition of your assets and take appropriate preventive measures to avoid failures rather than “firefighting”.
Work with AI, IoT, and analytics data
You can achieve more when integrating asset management systems with IoT to receive sensor data and ML/AI models to analyze the complete situation and predict potential failures before it is too late.
Comprehensive asset lifecycle management
The best way to capture all costs is to monitor assets from the day they are acquired to the day when they are decommissioned. By tracking all the stages, you can also maximize the value of the assets in use.
Tailoring SAP EAM to Specific Industries
Apart from the universal principles, SAP EAM optimization depends on the industry in which the solution is applied. Specific asset management challenges require targeted use practices involving particular tools.
Manufacturing
Manufacturing organizations typically manage complex production lines, making it essential to utilize sensor and IoT data to prevent costly disruptions. With SAP EAM, you can categorize assets and carry out preventive maintenance tasks. In addition to that, SAP EAM supports stock-out control to make sure you always have sufficient spare parts for manufacturing assets.
Energy and utilities
Large distributed networks and infrastructure are the main peculiarity of the energy and utilities sector. The solution enables you to maintain substations, pipelines, and grids, ensuring the needed compliance and safety, as well as to introduce preventive plans for power outages.
Transportation and logistics
When companies depend on vehicles, SAP EAM can take care of this equipment. For example, you can track the distance a van has driven and whether its limits are reached. When it happens, the system sends notifications to maintenance specialists. SAP EAM helps logistics and transportation companies track the real condition of their fleet and schedule maintenance to avoid delays. What is more, field teams can leverage a mobile extension for SAP EAM.
Oil and gas
Since oil and gas companies have facilities in remote and often dangerous locations, their asset management should be based on strict and clear safety rules. The SAP solution helps establish the needed level of control and safety. For instance, you can make sure technicians can start working only when the needed safety tests have been completed. Or, you can create and work with digital twins for remote assets to monitor and analyze conditions safely. The main focus of SAP EAM adoption is to protect employees from accidents and eliminate unexpected shutdowns.
Mining and metals
Working in harsh conditions with vibration, dust, and severe weather creates extra risks of equipment failure. With SAP EAM, you can collect data from your assets and get maintenance notifications if anything looks abnormal. By doing so, you can keep the equipment in proper condition and avoid costly breakdowns. The solution is also useful for the planning of inspections and capital repairs.
How to Measure the Success of Your SAP EAM
According to the SAP best practices, you can validate the improvements of your asset management with the help of several KPIs.
|
SAP EAM Metric |
Interpretation |
|
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) |
Measuring the period of asset work before breaking provides insight into asset reliability. |
|
Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) |
Evaluating how quickly assets are fixed gives an understanding of maintenance efficiency. |
|
Planned Maintenance Percentage (PMP) |
When the percentage of PMP is high, it indicates proactive work adoption. Depending on asset criticality, organizations aim to reach over 90% of total maintenance hours for high-risk equipment and under 80% for less critical equipment. |
|
Unplanned vs. Planned Maintenance Ratio |
If the unplanned work ratio is high, it indicates the domination of the reactive approach. |
|
Maintenance Cost as % of Replacement Asset Value (RAV) |
Comparing the general cost-effectiveness with the assets’ worth helps analyze maintenance efficiency. As a rule, the industry benchmarks range from 1.5% to 6% annually. |
LeverX Implements SAP EAM According to All the Best Practices Needed by Your Industry
LeverX is a proud SAP Gold Partner with expertise in dozens of industries, including logistics, manufacturing, and utilities. We are deeply immersed in both the nuances of SAP software and the specifics of different sectors.
When working with SAP EAM, our main goal is to ensure the software complies with the specific standards and regulations of your industry while maximizing the value of SAP EAM for your processes.
Our specialists integrate SAP EAM with your core systems, including advanced analytics solutions, IoT platforms, and mobile software to cover all asset processes that might affect your productivity.
At LeverX, we adhere to the SAP Activate methodology that allows the implementation of SAP EAM according to SAP general and industry-specific best practices, as well as your business requirements.
Our SAP EAM services encompass the following:
- Consulting: Our experts analyze your asset maintenance processes and provide recommendations on the best way of applying SAP EAM and possible process improvements.
- Implementation: We align SAP EAM with your processes and workflows.
- Integration: LeverX helps you start using SAP EAM in combination with the existing digital tools and systems.
- Support: We provide round-the-clock support, monitoring, and issue resolution to ensure a smooth operation of your SAP EAM system.
- Continuous improvement and application management: Our team continuously improves and refines implemented SAP EAM systems, adapting them to changing business goals and long-term asset management.
Bottom Line
SAP Enterprise Asset Management adoption is the right step towards proactive maintenance of your assets. To make the most of it, it’s necessary to focus on executing general and industry-specific best practices, or to find the right partner who can take it over. The result will not take long: organizations note their investments return through minimized downtime and decreased maintenance costs, which drives a notable increase in asset management ROI.
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