The NRX Blog

Building effective bills of material is not an easy task. It becomes a shame when so much is invested into building BoMs that turn out to be ineffective and difficult to use. For some companies, their BoMs becomes so unreliable that they don’t even get used at all.

When used correctly, asset hierarchies become a solid foundation for asset management and helps streamline maintenance and reliability activities.
Many companies struggle with building or reorganizing their hierarchies, so you are not alone if you have this problem. There are a couple reasons why you may be finding it difficult to extract value from your asset hierarchy.

There is no point in using a bill of materials if your materials data is inaccurate. When done correctly, a BoM will help revamp your company’s maintenance strategy by decreasing downtime and increasing wrench time.

With any company, adequate employee training is critical to business performance. Without appropriate training, you leave workers frustrated, confused, and decrease overall morale. This will be very evident in productivity and likely prevent your company from reaching performance goals. The same theory directly applies to maintenance and reliability professionals at asset-intensive companies.

There are many contributing factors to the high cost of constructing BoMs. One of them would be building it out in a spreadsheet and then transferring the data to an EAM system. Starting in a spreadsheet may be simple; after all, everyone is familiar with Excel, right? But it may result in unnecessary extra cost for your company.

The fundamental aspects of managing an EAM/CMMS system are quite a few. One of the key aspects is ensuring asset and maintenance master data is created and maintained accurately to support maintenance operations.

Third party contractors may not have access to productivity tools or cloud-based software. Cloud-based solutions make it easier for asset-intensive companies or third party-contractors to build BoMs. It is easier to track progress, with everyone having easy access. There are also many more tools assisting with editing, reviewing, and even visualizing. Not to mention the opportunity for added security.

Asset data management software is crucial for asset-intensive companies, as operations become increasingly digitized. Some of the heavily dependent industries on EAM software include manufacturing, construction, and oil & gas, to name a few. Enterprise Asset Management software is the future for any and every asset-intensive business. Among HubHead’s customer base, we found SAP Plant Maintenance, SAP S4HANA PM, and IBM Maximo to be the most used asset management systems.

Asset-intensive companies rely heavily on BoMs for work orders and maintenance operations. The accuracy of your work order depends on having the correct parts and quickly identifying those parts. Time is money for every organization. Therefore, maintenance personnel do not need to be spending unnecessary extra time trying to locate equipment.

Data management is the heartbeat of every asset-intensive company. These companies spend billions of dollars on Enterprise Resource Planning, Enterprise Asset Management, and Computerized Maintenance Management systems to adhere to maintenance and reliability standards. Investing in the right tools and technology to manage your data is important but knowing how to apply those solutions to meet business demands effectively is just as important, if not more.