Improve Uptime of Automotive Plants & Reduce Auto Equipment Costs by Shortlisting the Right Automotive Asset Management Software.

What Is Asset Management For the Automotive Industry?

Automotive manufacturing runs on billions of pounds’ worth of equipment. A single robotic arm can cost anywhere from £80,000 to £400,000. Stamping presses are measured in the tens of millions. Paint booths, welding rigs, quality control machines, and entire production lines represent massive investments that are expected to keep performing for decades.

Making sure these auto assets deliver that value is the job of asset management.

In simple terms, automotive asset management means keeping track of every critical piece of equipment — knowing where it is, what condition it’s in, how much it’s used, and how well it’s performing. It’s about maximising uptime, controlling maintenance costs, and meeting strict safety and quality standards at the same time.

Good automotive asset management goes far beyond fixing machines when they break. It involves planning maintenance based on usage data, monitoring performance in real time, and deciding when to repair, upgrade or replace equipment. It also means understanding running costs — from energy consumption and spare parts to depreciation and downtime losses — so the true value of each asset is clear.

Most modern automotive plants use dedicated software platforms to do this at scale. These systems pull together data from shop-floor sensors, maintenance logs, and financial systems into one dashboard. Managers can see which machines are due for servicing, which are underperforming, and where small interventions could prevent bigger breakdowns.

At BMW’s Munich plant, for example, over 3,000 machines are fitted with IoT sensors that flag early signs of wear. Engineers can act weeks before a failure would occur — a change that cut unplanned downtime by 25% and reduced maintenance costs by 15%.

The impact of this approach is measurable. Effective automotive asset management can cut unplanned downtime by 15–30%, lower maintenance costs by 10–20%, extend equipment life by 5–15%, and improve production efficiency across the board — results that go straight to the bottom line.

The Importance of Managing Automotive Assets

No matter what industry a business operates in, the purpose of Asset Management Software is the same. It is used to:

• Increase asset visibility
• Optimise the useful life of assets
• Reduce costs associated with procurement and maintenance
• Improve workplace health and safety
• Ensure compliance

Without a form of automated asset management in place, businesses face multiple challenges that can have negative effects on both production and revenue. This is particularly true for the automotive industry, which faces numerous challenges when it comes to the management of assets. Including:

Unplanned Downtime of Automotive Machinery & Equipment

Either through machine failure or loss of equipment, the operational damage that unplanned downtime causes can be severe. Typically, the majority of downtime caused in businesses that rely heavily on the use of their assets is due to a reactive maintenance approach. As opposed to deploying preventive or predictive maintenance schedules with the help of an asset management tool.

Not only can disruption to production cause delays in output, but downtime can also put a huge strain on a company’s finances. In 2016, the average cost per hour that downtime incurred was $260,000 across all businesses. In the auto industry, in the same year, automotive businesses experienced a loss of $22,000 in unexpected stoppages caused by asset downtime every minute.

Replacing Lost, Misplaced, or Stolen Assets

One advantage of having an asset management system in place is the ability to track automotive assets in real-time. This is possible with the use of typical asset tracking tools such as asset tags in the form of barcodes and QR codes, GPS trackers, Bluetooth beacons, and RFID tags. The latter helping Canadian airline company, Air Canada, to save millions of dollars each year by using RFID asset tracking to track food carts used in airports around the world.

Without the use of real-time tracking and access to location data, companies are at risk of losing essential assets. Whether through theft or being misplaced across various facilities and manufacturing plants. This can include equipment such as hand tools, CNC machinery, spare parts, or even expensive materials in the automotive industry. Without clear asset visibility, businesses will need to replace them at a cost to their bottom line.

Lack of Asset Data

As with any asset management system, asset managers have the ability to monitor and track an asset’s life cycle. Better known as asset life cycle management. This is split into four stages; planning, acquisition, operations and maintenance, and disposal. With the correct data that fits into each stage of an asset’s life cycle, businesses can define:

• The average useful life of machinery and equipment
• Servicing and maintenance schedules
• If the correct spare parts and inventory are stocked
• When an asset needs to be replaced or disposed of

But, without the capabilities of asset life cycle management, companies take a more reactive approach to maintenance and have a significant lack of asset data at their disposal. Leading to uninformed decision-making, unplanned downtime, and production delays.

Benefits of Asset Management Software for Vehicle Manufacturers

The objective of an asset management system is to build an extensive portfolio for each asset that is critical to a business’s production. In the case of an automotive operation, this could be anything from ensuring conveyor belts run without failure to reducing needless purchasing of material. With an extensive collection of asset data, businesses can ditch manual methods and look to build an automated asset register. As well as this, there are various other benefits of an asset management tool. Including:

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive Maintenance (PM), or Preventative Maintenance, is a proactive strategy that involves regular maintenance of equipment to reduce the likelihood of failure leading to downtime. Through scheduled cleaning, repairs, adjustments, and replacements, preventive maintenance increases the availability and operational output of equipment. As opposed to a reactive maintenance schedule, which leads businesses to run an asset to the point of failure. Something that can cost up to 10 times more in repairs and lost production.

Asset Tracking

The deployment of Asset Management Software brings with it the ability for automotive businesses and asset managers to track assets in real-time. Being able to track and monitor assets is possible with the use of IoT, tagging, and cloud-based tools. This helps businesses to create accurate asset registers, reduce costs associated with replacing assets, and improve inventory management. But, most importantly, the introduction of asset tracking tools allows businesses to swap out error-prone manual tracking methods such as spreadsheets and pen-and-paper.

Real-Time Data

Modern asset management systems pride themselves on being able to deliver essential asset data in real-time. This can be associated with factors such as location, maintenance, depreciation, and work orders. Real-time data is collected into one single-source dashboard that is accessible to managers, supervisors, and staff. From here, asset managers can understand when a CNC machine is due for a service and what inventory is available.

Accounting

Having access to the right asset data also benefits a business’s accountancy teams, enabling them to understand an asset’s depreciation value and its overall return on investment (ROI). This helps businesses to understand when a particular automotive asset is needed and when it is time to be disposed of.

Automotive Asset Management vs. Fleet Management

When it comes to the management of vehicle assets, there are various types of tools that a business in the automotive industry can benefit from. One of those that can be mistaken for Asset Management Software is fleet management.

Whereas asset management is focused on improving the efficiency of machinery and equipment during the manufacturing process of vehicles, fleet management focuses on the upkeep and tracking of vehicles when in use.

What Is Fleet Management?

Fleet management incorporates multiple processes that allow fleet managers to take control of a business’s entire fleet operations. Whether managing a fleet of commercial vehicles via spreadsheets or using an automated system, the objective of fleet management is to maximise productivity and efficiency while reducing costs.

Managing a fleet consists of various tasks that span from asset acquisition, vehicle maintenance, driver safety, and route optimisation. Whereas an asset manager is focused more on asset life cycle management, a fleet manager’s duties include:

• Vehicle dispatch and scheduling
• Reducing vehicle fuel consumption
• Ensuring driver safety
• Understanding transport regulations and compliance
• Ensuring vehicles are MOT’d and serviced
• Acquiring vehicles, drivers, and other assets