How to Set Up an Asset Monitoring System for Your Manufacturing Business

When running a manufacturing plant, all of your moving parts need to be working smoothly. If even one part of the assembly line stops working, then you run the risk of needing to stop operations.

Instead of just hoping things go well, you can set up a system to help you monitor asset usage. When you set up an asset monitoring system for your manufacturing business, you get data from all aspects of your business. You don’t have to be left questioning if something is going to continue working, or if you need to invest in a different way of doing things. You’ll have everything you need to make decisions that benefit your business.

Common Manufacturing Assets

Depending on what you manufacture, you might have specialty equipment that allows you to create specific products from the materials your vendors provide you. Most manufacturing industries will use one or more of the following types of assets.

Land

The land where each of your plants operates is considered a capital asset. Accounting for the land you own or lease is going to be done differently than accounting for hardware and other assets your team uses for production purposes. They accumulate or depreciate in value depending on usage and time passing.

Buildings

The buildings you either construct or lease on your land can also be seen as separate assets. Along with buildings, specific factories and warehouses can all be counted as manufacturing assets.

Machinery

Machinery fixtures are some of the primary assets accounted for in your manufacturing business. Whether it accounts for your assembly line, laser cutting machines, or forming machines, your machinery is a crucial aspect of your business. It’s what makes it possible for you to manufacture products for your clients.

Smaller Equipment

Machinery isn’t the only asset involved in creating a product. Sometimes, your business will rely on smaller equipment like handheld tools, scanners, and taggers to monitor or personalize what’s created on the assembly line.

All of these types of assets require different types and frequencies of asset monitoring.

How to Use an Asset Monitoring System

Whether you only have one location, or dozens, implementing an asset monitoring system can help your business track manufacturing equipment.

The exact style of monitoring you decide to use can depend on the types of assets you have. Some manufacturing solutions come with onboard technology that connects to the cloud and automatically provides your operations department with data on machine actions. Other pieces of equipment haven’t been upgraded to their “smart” versions, because of cost or difficulty replacing your old equipment.

The goals for setting up this type of system are automation and data gathering. The further you can automate your manufacturing process, the more efficient you can make your process.

As for data gathering, knowing how much you produce, the margin of error, and how products are being distributed are all vital aspects of running your business effectively.

Asset Panda is versatile enough to set up as an asset monitoring system for all of your manufacturing needs. Our flexible database has room for unlimited users. Workers across your company can input data and show you what production looks like from start to finish. When you can create a whole process picture like this, you’ll be armed with the data you need to send products out to keep up with demand.