(Houston, TX) –  ABSG Consulting Inc. (ABS Consulting), a leading global risk management company, and Itus Digital (Itus), today announced that they will team to provide clients with a powerful end-to-end asset management solution that maximizes performance and longevity while minimizing maintenance costs based on asset criticality. This alliance combines ABS Consulting’s extensive suite of asset reliability services with Itus’ cutting-edge APM software to operationalize asset strategy via existing data, ultimately providing a clear path to asset management excellence.

The Itus Digital solution is an intuitive and practical application that operationalizes asset strategies by actively managing failure risks​ and working to more effectively maintain and mitigate emerging threats​. The platform is enabled by an asset library that contains more than 200 asset twin models covering common industrial equipment classes, including base failure rates.​

“The Itus platform enables our clients to effectively prioritize and manage their maintenance strategies based on asset criticality,” says Joe Woods, ABS Consulting Vice President of Risk and Reliability. “The combination of our deep domain experience and reliability expertise, alongside the Itus platform, sets our clients up for long term success.”

“We know the current enterprise-level asset performance management, digital twin and industrial AI solutions are expensive to license, challenging to implement and resource-intensive to use,” says Joe Nichols, Co-Founder and President of Itus Digital. “We’re redefining how organizations of any size can manage asset and operational risks; this includes the recent launch of the Asset Risk Analyzer, a free and easy to use solution to assess industrial asset risk and criticality.”

Risk, reliability and maintenance professionals continue to operate under increasing pressure to maximize asset availability and production while minimizing both costs and risks—a goal that has historically lacked a standardized solution industry-wide. This alliance provides data-driven APM solutions across the asset lifecycle through a systematic and affordable process, supported by technical experts that continue to lead the development of key industry guidelines.

The post ABS Consulting and Itus Announce Asset Optimization Partnership appeared first on Itus Digital.

Roanoke, Va. – August 1^st, 2022 – Itus Digital today announced the general availability of Asset Risk Analyzer, a free and easy to use solution to assess industrial asset risk and criticality.  The solution analyzes maintenance history, calculates operational risk, and identifies assets not performing to industry benchmarks.

Designed for risk, reliability and maintenance professionals, the solution analyzes data across large populations of assets and calculates the operational risk due to equipment failure.  The insights generated help asset managers prioritize and justify improvement efforts by answering key questions such as:

• Is my current asset performance aligned with industry norms?
• Which assets are likely to fail during my next planning or production cycle?
• What assets will drive the biggest impact if performance is improved?

Asset Risk Analyzer is an ideal starting point for any reliability improvement initiative by identifying critical assets which are candidates for optimized asset strategies.  In a seamless workflow, Asset Managers can quantify their operational risk and deploy mitigation strategies through failure prediction, predictive maintenance, and asset health management use cases.

“Ensuring industrial assets are productive, safe and efficient through optimal asset strategies is core to our mission, “said Joe Nichols, President, Itus Digital.  “By offering this capability free, it is now possible for anyone to quickly pinpoint risky assets and implement asset strategies to ensure optimal performance.”

The solution is immediately available to asset operators, service providers and OEMs looking to start or reenergize stalled asset performance management initiatives.  Accessible from any internet connected device at: www.assetriskanalyzer.com there is no software to download, and registration can be completed in minutes.

“Operations as well as maintenance managers are under increasing pressure to maximize asset availability and production while minimizing costs and risks,” said Malavika Tohani, Verdantix Research Director.  “With Asset Risk Analyzer, firms can optimize their asset maintenance planning strategies by prioritizing which maintenance tasks need to be carried out in what order as the solution quickly analyses the work history to identify the riskiest as well as the most critical assets; thereby improving asset reliability, efficiency and environmental performance.”

About Itus Digital

Itus Digital is a team of industrial software veterans maniacally focused on optimizing the performance of industrial assets by fusing apps, industrial engineering expertise and analytics within simple to use and scalable software solutions.

The post Itus Launches New Solution, Asset Risk Analyzer™ appeared first on Itus Digital.

Itus Digital and Wabtec are partnering to deliver Asset Performance Management, APM solutions, for the mining industry by combining Itus’s APM platform with Wabtec’s mining equipment expertise. This dynamic combination enables mining organizations to deliver predictable production, optimize maintenance activities, and reduce operational risk.

Mining Industry Challenges

The mining industry continues to see cost volatility, tight margins, and high demand. This situation requires mine sites to maximize their industrial asset use to meet business objectives.  APM solutions help miners address these challenges. How? By empowering them with optimal maintenance strategies, managing equipment health in real-time, and driving proactive corrective actions when they detect failure risks.

“A key objective for our customers is increasing throughput while managing operating costs. Consequently, Asset Performance Management has become a key approach to driving competitive differentiation,” said Henro Van Wyk, VP & GM of Wabtec Digital Mine.  “Itus Digital has one of the most experienced teams in the APM sector and their solution reflects their expertise. This partnership allows us to deliver a practical, fit-for-purpose solution to our customers and enable them to maximize their return on capital.”

Digital Asset Twins for Mining Equipment

The Itus platform models and manages failure risks, preventative maintenance plans, and condition indicators. Specifically, it leverages digital Asset Twins for mining equipment such as haul trucks and conveyors.  And, it offers a real-time view of operating conditions and work history while providing prescriptive actions to avoid failure upon threat detection. By working together, the result is a practical APM solution that addresses the unique mining industry needs.

“Wabtec’s equipment expertise, sensing capabilities, and global reach to the mining market are a perfect fit for our APM solution,” said Joe Nichols, President, Itus Digital.  “Key enablers to ensuring rapid ROI include access to equipment data, embedded domain expertise, and close collaboration with customer asset management teams. In all, this partnership delivers on all aspects.”

About Wabtec:

Wabtec Corporation (NYSE: WAB) is focused on creating transportation solutions that move and improve the world. The company is a leading global provider of equipment, systems, digital solutions, and value-added services for the freight, transit rail, mining, marine, and industrial industries. Wabtec has been a leader in the rail industry for over 150 years. Its vision is to achieve a zero-emission rail system in the United States and worldwide. The company has approximately 27,000 employees located at facilities in 50 countries throughout the world. Visit Wabtec’s website at: https://www.wabteccorp.com/ .

The post Itus Digital & Wabtec Announce Strategic Partnership appeared first on Itus Digital.

Roanoke, Va. – May 19^th, 2021 – Itus Digital announced the availability of new capabilities that allow industrial organizations to implement Asset Performance Management (APM) techniques on their equipment in minutes.  The approach lowers the risk of unexpected equipment failure while optimizing maintenance activities. Best of all, it does so without the cost and complexity required of traditional processes.

The Asset Twin Marketplace provides Itus subscribers with direct access to Asset Twins that model the failure modes, preventative maintenance activities, analytical protections, and prescriptive actions for the most common industrial equipment types.  Further, it provides a platform for the secure collaboration and sharing of asset strategies across industrial stakeholders.  The Marketplace solves the current challenges associated with fragmented and proprietary libraries that are difficult to leverage and implement.

“We have seeded the Marketplace with our Asset Strategy Library. Any subscriber can securely leverage, share, and extend our models to their specific use cases,” said Joe Nichols, President, Itus Digital.  “This approach expands industry coverage and use of Asset Strategies to fast track any APM initiative or solution.”

Asset Twin Builder

Itus is also introducing the Asset Twin builder, which directly accesses the Marketplace and allows Asset Twin activation in minutes.  The builder provides a simple process to apply, connect, tune, and activate twins. And it monitors assets and quickly mitigates failure risks.

“Many organizations see the value in APM programs but cannot justify the cost and effort associated with implementation,” said Nichols.  “We have unlocked the potential for anyone operating or maintaining equipment to reduce asset operating costs and improve availability.”

Malavika Tohani, Research Director at Verdantix, noted, “While Industrial firms are investing in APM software to improve asset reliability as well as reduce maintenance costs, they still face multiple challenges in terms of usability, scalability, siloed IT systems, and getting quick ROI. Itus Digital provides the ability to quickly replicate the failure modes and protections across hundreds of assets. Simultaneously, the Asset Twin Marketplace offers an environment for equipment OEMs, service providers, and asset owners to exchange best practice APM strategies.”

About Itus Digital

We are industry veterans maniacally focused on practical asset performance management. Our approach focuses on increasing profit margins while improving asset safety and reliability. By leveraging digital asset twin technology, we help companies define their asset strategy, detect emerging threats, mitigate asset risk, and extend the asset lifecycle. And our mission is to protect people, the planet, and profits.

The post Itus Digital Announces Asset Twin Marketplace appeared first on Itus Digital.

Over the last year, people have asked us about the origin of our company name, Itus (pronounced ‘eye-tus’) Digital.  So, we thought we would share how we came to choose it and what it means to us.

Who was Itus?

When we founded the company, we researched several ideas for names. Then a founder came across a story describing a Greek God of Protection, whose name is Itus.  All of us knew this name was a perfect fit.  In Greek mythology, Itus is the quiet and humble protector of Apollo – one of the most important Gods and son of Zeus.  He is armed with two swords and takes a vow to protect Apollo with his life. His mission is to identify potential threats and thwart them, allowing Apollo to ward off evil forever.

We believe the most critical aspects of asset performance management initiatives are:

• managing asset strategies,
• monitoring asset health,
• identifying failures and mitigating them.

How “Itus” Relates to APM

Often, we see customers heavily invest in the definition of asset strategies but then stumble on the actual implementation. These strategies must include governing the mitigating actions because that is where they will realize the actual value. We fix this challenge. How? First, by giving customers the ability to define their asset strategy easily. Second and more importantly, we offer capabilities that actively monitor your maintenance plans, equipment condition, operating state, and corrective actions.  We call these “protections” that leverage analytics to monitor the current state of your equipment continually. They are the key to ensuring you have mitigated the known risks to your assets and business.

With all this in mind, what’s in a name? Ours truly reflects our mission. Itus Digital, quietly protecting your assets from failure risks through strategies and asset twins.

The post What’s in a Name? The story of the Greek God of Protection appeared first on Itus Digital.

• meet regulatory compliance,
• create reporting standards,
• manage assets efficiently and sustainability and
• optimize total cost of ownership.

From their perspective, the market is fragmented, and there are many players.

For this reason, ARC Senior Analyst, Paula Hollywood recently interviewed Joe Nichols, Co-Founder and President of the newly launched Itus Digital.

Listen to this podcast or read on for the transcript as they discuss why

• the market needs to rethink APM,
• now is the right time to launch a new platform featuring digital twin technology,
• the focus needs to be on getting the asset strategy right from the beginning is essential.

APM Challenges Central to Genesis of Itus Digital

Paula’s opening question was, “You and the Itus team have a long history in the APM space. Can you tell us what motivated you to start a new APM company at this stage of market maturity?”

“We had multifaceted motivators for building an APM solutions company,” responded Nichols. He stated that the challenge of optimizing without increasing the operating costs and risks to people and the environment is their motivator. APM now has a proven value proposition; lower maintenance costs and risks and increase production and availability. Nichols believes that solution providers are not addressing large aspects of the APM market. The veteran APM team at Itus enjoys solving complex problems. Further, they think that a new approach and new business model could fundamentally shift the adoption of APM.

Addressing APM Challenges

When asked what APM challenges impacted the solution’s development, Nichols indicated three common themes. Their research uncovered:

• cost, particularly the considerable upfront costs associated with software licensing and implementation;
• the complexity of monolith applications stitched together via acquisitions typically using older, less efficient software architectures;
• and the capabilities of existing solutions.

Further, he elaborated that existing solutions are enterprise APM apps requiring large implementation teams, consulting services, or analytic/AI/ML applications to solve specific equipment anomalies or focus on anomaly detection.

Nichols summarized how Itus addressed those challenges. To solve cost concerns, Itus Digital offers subscription licensing based on actual usage. The company drives an onboarding process that completely de-risks the customer from massive up-front investments. It defined an efficient architecture that allows for on-premises or cloud-based deployment on-premises within minutes to lower complexity. And an intuitive user experience and workflow serve to simplify the process further.

Similarly, the company’s philosophy is that equipment and domain experts should be able to navigate the APM process easily and measure the APM program’s value. In terms of capabilities, the Itus platform is out-of-the-box ready, thus offering rapid time-to-value. Moreover, it fully integrates the implementation process for an asset strategy and tightly couples it with analytical models. This approach identifies when risks emerge, equipment health degrades, or when strategy activities are not completed. The company’s development team based this feature on an embedded and extensible asset strategy library covering 200 of the most common equipment types. Consequently, the combination of the Itus application process, strategy library, and asset twin models enables customers to be up and running rapidly.

Asset Twin Drives APM Value

When asked to explain the Asset Twin concept, Nichols addressed it in terms of the digital twin and acknowledged the variability in how that term is interpreted in the marketplace. In addition, he stressed the belief that the core constructs of a digital twin are critical for driving APM value. Itus views an Asset Twin as a software-defined asset, connected and analyzed in real-time to generate proactive insights as emerging threats are detected. Also, he believes that APM use cases, such as condition-based maintenance, failure prediction, and risk identification, must be firmly grounded with an asset strategy. Nichols summarized, “an Asset Twin is the fusion of an asset strategy with a digital twin. You must have both elements to ensure you optimize the performance of your assets.”

Taking a Different Approach

“Does using this methodology allow you to approach the APM market differently, and whom do you see as your target market?” asked Hollywood.

According to Nichols, “there are huge aspects of the industrial space that have challenges with unplanned failures, high maintenance costs, and the inability to identify emerging risks. The challenge these companies have is that APM only applies to a small portion of assets. Maybe they have limited IT and change management resources, or their particular ROI on APM initiatives does not align with existing solution costs, so they don’t do it. We have made APM easier across the board, but that does not mean organizations cannot use it in highly sophisticated APM environments. Our target market is anyone looking to solve for core APM use cases, such as equipment failure prediction, condition-based maintenance, or operational risk identification in an intuitive, scalable model that matches to their APM investment capability.”

The post Podcast: Why Now is the Right Time to Rethink APM appeared first on Itus Digital.

Itus Digital announces its acquisition of nextAPM to support the growing demand for implementing its Asset Performance Management (APM) platform.  This purchase allows Itus Digital to expand client onboarding and provide critical support functions.

Who is nextAPM?

In 2018, a group of APM industry veterans founded nextAPM. Their goal was to provide Asset Performance Management consulting services such as implementing, upgrading, or enhancing APM systems. Since its founding, nextAPM has experienced continued growth.  They have served a deep market need by leveraging their extensive experience in data integration, system configuration, application support, and developing asset strategies and performance dashboards.

“Clients see nextAPM’s experienced team as trusted advisors. And they have a proven record of deploying successful APM projects large and small,” said Joe Nichols, President, Itus Digital. He continued, “As our client base continues to grow, nextAPM’s expertise is a perfect fit to support our rapid onboarding and service model.”  Nichols stated, ” More important, we are excited to have them join the Itus Digital team.”

Our Combined Strength

“We have worked with the Itus Digital team and are impressed with their new APM platform,” said Nate Underwood, Managing Partner, nextAPM.  He continued, “Further, as a combined team, we have a natural fit for our capabilities in data management, systems integration, and application support.” “Consequently, we plan to integrate with the Itus Digital platform fully,”  Underwood explained, “We also see a significant growth opportunity in the APM consulting services market through expansion of our offerings. This shift will accelerate asset strategies and twin models implementation.”  Underwood stated, ” And it is a core component of Itus Digital’s mission and vision. We’re excited to bring our decades of APM implementation experience to Itus Digital. Together we will continue our focus and energy where we believe it needs to be, on our clients.”

About Itus Digital

We are industry veterans maniacally focused on practical asset performance management. Our approach focuses on increasing profit margins while improving asset safety and reliability. By leveraging digital twins, we help companies define their asset strategy, detect emerging threats, mitigate asset risk, and extend asset lifecycle. And, our mission is to protect people, the planet, and profits.

About nextAPM

Founded in 2018, nextAPM helps clients find renewed success in their Asset Performance Management programs. Over the past few years, the APM consulting market has changed. The market has experienced reduced direct support and partnership that clients should demand from their service provider. Our goal is to meet those needs and exceed expectations through integrity and dependable quality.

The post Itus Digital Announces Acquisition of nextAPM appeared first on Itus Digital.

The Platform

The platform includes an extensible Asset Strategy and Digital Twin Library covering 200 of the most common equipment types. This feature enables asset operators and maintainers to rapidly deploy models to support foundational APM use cases. For instance, condition-based maintenance, failure prediction, and operational risk identification are good examples of these cases.

The Itus Digital platform is available as a subscription with on-premises and cloud deployment options. It provides a structured process to manage asset strategies, monitor asset health, and address advisories. Further, it ensures continuous learning of asset management processes and practices.

Best of all, unlike other solutions, customers experience a limited investment risk from the start. An easy pay-as-you-go model allows customers to accelerate the time-to-value. Customers begin with a small number of assets and incrementally grow optimization initiatives as they recognize the value.

The Opportunity

“We founded Itus Digital with the mission to simplify how industrial organizations optimize asset performance, and we have spent the past year doing that,” said Joe Nichols, President, Itus Digital. “Asset Performance Management processes and solutions have become too complex and expensive. As industry veterans, we saw an opportunity to provide industrial companies of every shape and size the ability to optimize maintenance costs and minimize equipment downtime through an innovative APM platform and approach.”

“The APM basics have been lost in the hype surrounding machine learning and analytics,” according to Paula Hollywood, Senior Analyst at ARC Advisory Group. “Asset strategy management is the foundation of APM. Consequently, it is the mechanism for manufacturing organizations to define equipment failure risk, establish maintenance and monitoring plans and ensure alignment of analytic models with engineering principles and business goals. This approach is the key to balancing risk and cost with performance.”

About Itus Digital

We are industry veterans maniacally focused on practical asset performance management. Our approach focuses on increasing profit margins while improving asset safety and reliability. By leveraging digital asset twin technology, we help companies define their asset strategy, detect emerging threats, mitigate asset risk, and extend the asset lifecycle. And, our mission is to protect people, the planet, and profits.

The post Itus Launches Asset Performance Management Solution appeared first on Itus Digital.

Where We Began

One of the core motivators we established when launching Itus Digital was to get back to our roots and build solutions through customer and market-driven innovation. We have not been disappointed! Your level of engagement, desire to enhance existing APM processes, and “ideation” have genuinely been invigorating. You provided the Itus team with great requirements for our initial product release and beyond. Looking back on the workshops, functional reviews, and discussions, several key themes have emerged. So we thought it would be helpful to share a few with everyone.

Theme #1 – Traditional Asset Performance Management is Too Hard

APM requires a systematic method to integrate people, processes, and technologies. For many, this requirement represents a significant change in how engineering, maintenance, and operations functions work day to day. It is likely not new news to most who are reading this blog. What we uncovered when we asked “why it is so hard” will be. We were expecting answers centered around people or organizational change. And while these are still elements to manage, the responses focused on gaps in existing solutions. The notable concerns we discovered were:

• APM process definitions that are too broad or narrow and limit APM’s effectiveness,
• Software portfolios stitched together through acquisitions and are loosely integrated, hard-to-use, and challenging to maintain,
• Implementation approaches centered on enterprise-wide, “big bang” deployment models that are risky, difficult, and costly.

Theme #2 – The Asset Strategy is (Still) the Critical Value Driver

Over the past years,  the buzz and energy in the APM space have focused on emerging computing technologies. These technologies consist of various mathematical algorithms and 3D visualizations. They serve to enhance asset performance. However, to drive recognizable business value, these technologies need to anchor to robust asset strategies. As we worked with APM experts, they reminded us that success depends on defining, managing, and governing asset strategies. The industry has indeed made great strides in defining those strategies using RCM, FMEA, RBI, and HAZOP methodologies. But, it still leaves you struggling with strategy implementation and governance across your asset population. Simply put, the ability to assess critical assets, define how they fail, determine mitigations, actively manage emerging threats, and document remediations are the foundation for everything else.

Theme #3 – Enable the Equipment Experts

If you agree with Theme #2, you will probably agree that enabling the equipment and operations experts is another critical element for APM success. After all, an asset strategy is the domain expertise curated to an applied structure and process that you can scale across asset populations. As we worked on our initial product requirements, the COVID19 pandemic forced us all to adjust to a new normal. Further, it pushed several industries into curtailing production, which unfortunately led to the loss of experienced workers and critical equipment knowledge. In addition, many had and still have essential worker protocols that limit site personnel and create a “virtual gap” between the front line and back-office workers.

These new dynamics have further exposed weaknesses in how front-line operators and engineering teams manage assets, share knowledge, collaborate on best practices, and optimize strategies. The feedback here was clear. APM solutions must focus on enabling the equipment and operations experts and capturing their unique equipment knowledge in asset strategies. Ease of use, accessibility from anywhere, collaboration, and documentation of learnings in a structured manner which are easy to leverage, have become essential success factors in Asset Performance Management.

Reflecting on the last ten months, we are fortunate to have a network and community willing to engage and share their expertise. Their generosity has shaped our initial product release and future innovations. Not only have we thoroughly enjoyed innovating with the market again, we successfully validated one of our core beliefs when we founded Itus Digital. APM is much more difficult and complex than it needs to be, and we can fix that! Thanks again to everyone who participated.

To Learn More

If you would like to see some feedback on our pre-release product, follow the link below to see what David Metcalfe, CEO at Verdantix, has to say.  You can also reach out directly to me – [email protected] and I can show you what is coming on September 30th!

Read Verdantix Review on Itus Digital

The post Innovating Again! The driving motivations for the Itus team appeared first on Itus Digital.

When you think about the history of asset performance, the famous quote, “You can’t know where you are going until you know where you have been,” Around 1965, the industry started CMMS (computerized maintenance management system). CMMS is software that centralizes maintenance information and facilitates the processes of maintenance operations.  Then network technology advanced enough to give companies the ability to link computer systems across multiple sites. From this advancement arose  EAM (enterprise asset management). EAM systems include maintenance management capabilities, but they consider the total cost of ownership (TCO) for a company’s physical assets. By the 1990s, EAM had begun evolving into APM (asset performance management).

The Rise of Asset Performance Management

In fact, in 1996, Meridium convened the first Asset Performance Management User Conference. This event brought together some of the brightest minds from the most progressive industrial companies in the world.  The objective was to define how we could better protect people, the planet, and industrial profits with enterprise software solutions. At that time, we knew that we were working on some innovative approaches that would change the industry’s view of industrial asset management.

As a company, we understood that we were planting the initial seed that ultimately created a multi-billion-dollar enterprise software category. This category, named asset performance management, would enhance environmental sustainability, improve worker safety, and deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in value creation.

From a historical perspective, by the 1990s and 2000s, software developers and engineers designed classical, model-based, or statistical technologies primarily for anomaly detection. These solutions required expert human intervention to interpret results and separate real alerts from false alerts. Today, in the overall context of asset performance management, many organizations have the fundamentals in place. For example, many can catalog assets, plan and schedule asset maintenance. And most organizations have implemented basic monitoring and inspection programs to identify potential problems.

What Makes Asset Performance Management Valuable Today

But these solutions fall short.  A key value driver for current APM platforms is to wrap these core processes with risk-based asset strategies.  Further, using an asset twin approach of digital models proactively monitors and identifies risks to the business.  We believe a platform that provides the capabilities to define asset strategies, model digital twins, and actively monitor risks is a crucial enabler for the next level of industrial asset optimization.

Today, we are announcing the launch of Itus Digital.  We are a unique company of Asset Performance Management industry veterans.  Our collective passion for protecting people, the planet, and profits is what drives our purpose.  We envision a purpose-built asset performance management platform because of our years of experience with countless companies worldwide and across industries. We desire to see an APM strategy for every asset.

Read on to learn about us and our approach.

The post Itus Digital: The First Insight appeared first on Itus Digital.