The Next Decade will see a Dramatic Increase in Asset Intelligence and Asset "Self Capability"

For years, we have seen the evolution of asset management, but as we push the agile industrial evolution, the role of a "self aware" asset is key. The need to have stable high operational continuity is key, and this means assets running at performance and reliability while also being able to absorb change.

 There are 3 significant vectors aligning on the evolution of the asset:

a/ Assets are becoming connected to Internet and network, the cost of putting a wireless device, or 3/4G connection on a device is dropping to a point that it is a no brainier for asset agility, and sustainability.

b/ Asset interaction with other "things" around it, e.g.| Other assets, people and systems, being aware of their condition and state, adjusting it' s own operation relative to their state and expectation so the whole of system runs at maximize efficiency.

c/ The dramatically increasing smart/ intelligence in an asset, and in the next decade we going to see this asset develop of “self awareness" becoming more effective.

An example of this was a coal seam gas well, originally it was expected to be approx. 50 I/O between the device and supervisory system, in the space a year this has grown to 680 I/O remember these are not field I/o many are derived attributes from the control, state and operation of the well. Providing a wealth of information on the status and condition, so risk to operations of that well.

These  assets  are  comprised  of  hardware  (physical components,  instrumentation,  and  communications  hardware).    But software, analytics, and ecosystem play increasingly prominent roles.    The software and analytics provide the intelligence and the ecosystem provides additional support and services for individual assets, fleets of assets, or dynamic networks of assets.   With the addition of software, analytics, and an ecosystem; products (physical assets) may be deployed and managed “as a Service.”

 

 

 

 

The diagram above shows the step changes in what intelligence will mean, most assets today are at the "instrumented and analytic" steps. This is already a dramatic step in an asset being able to determine it's own state, and healthy, and exception handle notifications.

The step change is when assets move to “active" that seek to maintain it's self and bring awareness to maintenance early, and adjust operations it's self to sustain. Then to "goal orientated" seeking to self tuning performance and optimization, so gain the most out of the asset relative to it's surrounding assets that make up the process, and relative to the system and people. 

This approach to assets is a paradigm shift from traditional asset management and brings it down to operational real-time environment, to enable decisions in the NOW on a solid foundation value producing assets.