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New App Tracks Energy Efficiency of Assets by Stephanie Neil • Sign up to receive ME Daily News Alerts • POSTED on Wednesday, March 26, 2008 4:27:27 PM |
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Enterprise application provider Infor today announced an asset management application that the company said will help organizations better manage energy costs and reduce carbon emissions within their factories and facilities.
The Infor EAM Asset Sustainability Edition factors energy consumption into the overall measure of the performance of assets, such as facilities and manufacturing equipment, be it a pump, motor, conveyor line, or HVAC system.
The Web-based application, which can be deployed on-premises or hosted by Infor, receives energy consumption data through an asset sub-metering system or via sensors on a wireless mesh network. Using new key performance indicators for energy and gas usage, the software tracks consumption in real time, evaluating it against user-defined conditions. The software can also issue alerts and initiate work orders.
The system enables companies to benchmark the performance of a specific asset to determine the cost of maintaining it at current energy consumption levels — as opposed to replacing it with a newer, more energy-efficient asset.
For example, a $10,000 motor running at 65% energy efficiency could cost a company hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years. "If you don't have visibility into the energy used to operate [the asset], you don't know what you have to spend," said Rod Ellsworth, Infor's vice president of business solutions consulting for EAM, in a recent interview.
As companies embark on sustainability programs, they are, first and foremost, looking for ways to mitigate soaring energy costs. "Assets are one of the primary culprits of energy consumption," said John Murphy, Infor's director of industry & product marketing for EAM.
Indeed, according to the Department of Energy, facilities and manufacturers can reduce energy consumption by as much as 20% through maintenance programs that focus on energy efficiency.
Infor's application can pinpoint not only an asset's energy usage, but also its consumption of water, air, gas, electricity, or steam.
Using graphical dashboards, managers can drill down into the performance of each asset or generate reports that provide an analysis of CO2 emissions — since every kilowatt of energy used generates a certain amount of carbon dioxide.
Manufacturers that understand how energy is used can replace assets with more energy-efficient models that drive consumption down, the company said. "Every kilowatt you don't use as energy goes right to your bottom line," Ellsworth said.
"Companies across the world are facing significant issues with respect to rising energy consumption," Infor's Murphy told Managing Automation in an interview. "Related to that [are] the emissions and the external pressures from competitors, or from the government, or customers, to manage emissions. So, recognizing this, we've added innovations on top of our enterprise asset management solution to allow companies to integrate energy consumption into asset management practices."
The EAM Asset Sustainability Edition has been in development for 18 months and is a separate product from the company's existing EAM application. Scheduled to become available next week, EAM Asset Sustainability Edition is "the first significant innovation" in Infor's green movement, Murphy said. More applications will follow in the areas of optimizing logistics to mitigate energy use, and managing carbon footprint, or the carbon that is emitted throughout the supply chain.
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