Andy Binsley, Vice President of Product Strategy for Oracle Maintenance Cloud, recently spoke about the benefits that Oracle Maintenance Cloud offers to maintenance organizations. He covered trends that are affecting the future of maintenance practices and systems, the benefits of Oracle Maintenance Cloud, and the vision that Oracle has for customers that move to the Cloud.

4 Trends Affecting The Future of Maintenance Practices and Systems

1. “Lights out” automation: The workforce is moving in a direction where people are less necessary as a part of routine operations. Machines are becoming more reliable, and that is resulting in increased automation. More factories are starting to run “lights out” with the only exception being when a person needs to go in to adjust or repair something.
2. Younger workforce: Baby boomers are beginning to retire, and the workforce is getting younger with every passing year. Millennials grew up in the age of computers, and post-millennials grew up with smartphones and technology right at their fingertips. These different experiences growing up results in different expectations of what systems should be and how they should be used. A younger workforce will expect more from systems than ever before.
3. Robots: Robots are one of the emerging technologies that are becoming increasingly popular. It’s likely that the workforce will see more automation of machines over the next few years. Robots can have a wide variety of skills, and they could drastically change the workforce from what we know it as today.
4. Smarter machines: Machines are becoming smarter and smarter. Some have the ability to self-diagnose or self-heal, and that is changing the nature of maintenance dramatically. This moves organizations toward the automation of maintenance and routine procedure and having humans intervene only in unique situations that require problem-solving for an unusual circumstance.

The way these trends are influencing the future of maintenance systems means that systems must become more intuitive and easier to use. They must also have more direct machine integration. Moving forward, Andy shared that systems will likely be used for query and analysis more than for transactions. These trends also lead to changes like the use of Machine Learning and AI for predictions and recommendations.

If systems are deployed in the Cloud, it will make it easier to keep up with technology innovation. On-premise software usually gets updated every few years. In comparison, Cloud software is updated and improved regularly, and customers don’t need to worry about the hardware. The value of Cloud software grows over time.

Benefits of Oracle Maintenance Cloud

There are several benefits that Oracle Maintenance Cloud has to offer to maintenance organizations. Some of these benefits include:

• Controlling costs and improving productivity: An enterprise approach to asset management can result in increased system reliability, extension of the life of current assets and lower service costs.
• Knowledge capture and insight: Powerful new technological capabilities give workers new visibility and insight to capture and optimize maintenance operations and processes.
• Managing risk and ensuring safety: Oracle Maintenance Cloud provides visibility and control over critical assets that affect risk, compliance and business performance.
• Promoting sustainability: Customers can reduce energy use and enhance environmental sustainability by more effectively managing assets.

Vision for Oracle Maintenance Cloud

The overall goal for Maintenance Cloud is to help customers move from a reactive maintenance approach to a prescriptive maintenance approach. Over time, the system will be able to predict and identify problems and causes instead of waiting for maintenance after the system is already broken. There are four different levels of maintenance, including reactive and prescriptive. If you’re interested in learning more about the future of Oracle Maintenance Cloud be sure to check out this Oracle Maintenance Cloud roadmap presentation.

• Reactive maintenance: This is the oldest maintenance approach. With this approach, equipment isn’t repaired until it’s already broken. This leads to costly downtime, higher maintenance costs and safety hazards.
• Preventive maintenance: This approach consists of time-based or planned maintenance. The goal is to maintain equipment in a healthy condition. However, it can be wasteful and may lead to over-servicing or under-servicing and higher inventory costs.
• Predictive maintenance: With this approach, the need for service is determined by the equipment condition rather than time intervals. The goal is to correct the problem before the equipment actually fails. This can save time and money while avoiding downtime and repair costs.
• Prescriptive maintenance: This maintenance approach relies on information provided by predictive methods to identify problems and the root cause of failure. The goal is to identify problems and isolate the source of failure. This approach is the ultimate vision for Oracle Maintenance Cloud customers.