Sidebar: CMMS, EAM or ITAM?

Computerworld - EAM is a close cousin of CMMS, or computerized maintenance management systems, which are used for setting maintenance schedules, tracking parts and generating work orders for plants. EAM expands on CMMS by providing a centralized view of assets and associated resources across multiple facilities. It also includes analysis tools to evaluate how well assets are being leveraged. For instance, an EAM system might track how often an expensive maintenance tool gets used in a year or how much a leased asset generates in service revenue per month.
Ernie Botte, director of information systems at Wheelabrator, plans to use the information gathered by his TabWare EAM application to streamline asset management at Wheelabrator's 24 power plants. "If one facility is excelling, I can capitalize on what they're doing to improve the other facilities," he says.
ITAM, or IT asset management, is a subset of EAM. For some companies -- such as IT services or technical management firms -- ITAM is essentially EAM. For instance, Englewood, Colo.-based CH2M Hill, which provides management services to government and industry, uses Peregrine Systems Inc.'s AssetCenter for cradle-to-grave management of its many laptops, printers and other IT assets.
"We are very project-driven and need to know where equipment is and when it will be available for the next project," says Susan McCarthy-Rice, an IT business systems analyst at CH2M Hill.

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