OT Asset Management
Why an inventory of all networked devices in production should be a standard procedure in the industry.
Mastering Shop Floor Complexity: OT Asset Management in the Spotlight
In many production facilities, shop floors have become very complex over the years. Continuous growth and the addition of components from different manufacturers often leads to a hodgepodge of OT assets that are operated in different versions. The variety of components therefore makes manual inventory difficult. In day-to-day production, engineers are often unable to maintain a detailed inventory of OT assets manually. As automation on the store floor increases, so does the complexity, making asset management increasingly important.
What is OT Asset Management?
In practice, OT asset management means creating full transparency across the entire system as well as device landscape of production- across device and manufacturer categories. Which individual components make up the networked production in the company, what dependencies and firmware versions are there? This knowledge requires a systematic process. This needs to be as automated wherever possible as well as being a standardized solution for recording and monitoring all networked equipment in the industrial environment.
Manual inventory is simply impossible
It is simply impossible for engineers to take a manual inventory of all devices in large factories. An IT-based asset inventory creates transparency. This makes a real inventory possible in the first place. In practice, this makes it much easier for an engineer to understand, for example, that a certain device has been installed several times but is no longer being sold and perhaps also that the warehouses no longer have any spare parts.
Why is OT Asset Management Indispensable in Production?
OT asset management enables those responsible not only to identify all devices on the shop floor, but also to categorize them as well as to obtain further information. Above all, asset management is the basis for a comprehensive OT security strategy. Only when all devices, their statuses, dependencies, and firmware versions, for example, are centrally visible can managers implement comprehensive security measures on this basis.
Modern solutions for OT asset management help to manage the devices according to manufacturer, device type and model as well as display the respective firmware version of the components. In practice, the relevance of inventorying all OT assets becomes apparent, for example, when outdated software versions or similar risk factors become visible through automatic alarm messages. These can be missing backups, but also other error messages and states of the OT device which could jeopardize smooth production.
OT asset management is crucial for any company with modern, networked, and automated production. This is because the transparency and security provided by asset management not only improves the efficiency and safety of equipment, but also protects against costly downtime and supports compliance. Thanks to solutions such as octoplant from AUVESY-MDT, companies can master these challenges and optimally monitor their OT assets. Thanks to the Asset Inventory, octoplant offers a specialized function to automatically record and monitor devices and controllers in the network.
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