Port equipment manufacturers frequently offer the carrot of asset management as an added benefit to the purchase of one of their cranes, but while they have the will they lack the means to offer a holistic asset management solution.
This is where manufacturer-led asset management falls down: all manufacturers want to control their own machinery assets, but they haven’t the ability to manage assets from other manufacturers.
Also as much as the manufacturer wants to push the machinery, does the operator want to give the necessary data that goes with the throughputs to allow accurate assessment of the data?
It’s a difficult situation to manage. For most manufacturing companies, their ability to deploy their offering in terms of asset management is limited because it is inward focused. For manufacturers the data becomes part of the improvement of the crane, rather than the improvement of the throughput per unit cost for the operator. The enormity of what they have to do can stop them doing anything: they may have the data, but they may not know how to use it.
There should be, in my view, a standard created in terms of data transfer for the industry. This would be a great step forward for an industry that is still very much standalone and silo-driven.
Unfortunately, not enough people are thinking of the bigger picture: why can’t we have an open system of data transfer? This allows everyone to start from the same base and means that it is the interpretation of data that sets consultants, specialists and manufacturers apart.
I know where the process starts and stops for the manufacturer and it never goes far enough for the customer. We at AssetRight would like to take this a little bit further; we want to create a de-facto standard for the industry where whether it’s a Konecranes, Cargotec, Terex or Liebherr crane, for example, the customer can easily use the standardised data flow to plan their business more effectively and bring value to their business.