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Sofigate provides Wärtsilä with comprehensive asset management solution

Sofigate is currently implementing an extensive operational technology asset and service management project for Wärtsilä, a provider of smart technologies and complete life cycle solutions. The idea is to help Wärtsilä improve its management of equipment, systems and data supplied to customers. The project highlights thinking based on business technology, since asset management combines both IT/OT and business needs.

Wärtsilä produces complete life cycle solutions for the marine and energy markets. This includes the delivery, servicing and maintenance of power plants and ships’ systems. Until now, Wärtsilä has lacked an efficient digital solution that would enable the centralised management of customer deliveries around the world, and the related equipment, systems and information.

Sofigate and Wärtsilä began the OTSM (Operational Technology Asset & Service Management) project in early 2018. The asset and service management solution will provide Wärtsilä with a system for managing its customer deliveries. The idea is to centralise items, such as all engines and the related accessories and software delivered by Wärtsilä, in the system’s database. Equipment and software data will be gathered on new and existing deliveries. The data will also be used for service management, which will provide information on possible incidents, problems, changes and customer deliveries.

”Our tools and service management processes are also highly suitable for industry. The system being built will involve an enormous amount of data, which Wärtsilä can use for the efficient management of customer delivery life cycles,” says Marko Salonen, a project manager at Sofigate.

The solution will help to analyse equipment malfunctions

The project was kicked off in Wärtsilä’s cyber security department, where the solution has been introduced in various production lines during the first two phases. Much of the equipment data is gathered using the Asset Inventory tool and then entered into the configuration management database of the BMC Remedyforce system. Phase two of the project was completed in February 2019. The objective of the third phase, now just beginning, is to integrate the asset management tool into the daily work of Wärtsilä’s staff and suppliers.

”We can now monitor the status of production equipment and see which equipment, systems and other components are in which customer environment. Understanding the operating environment is critical from the perspective of cyber-security. This also enables us to identify possible cyber attack vectors more effectively”, says Toni Tunkkari, Wärtsilä’s ICS CERT Manager.

Several of Wärtsilä’s stakeholders will benefit from the asset and service management solution, since production and account managers, field service, the cyber-security team, customer support and sales all need real-time information on the equipment. Above all, the solution provides help when problems occur. It analyses the event and the extent or seriousness of a fault in equipment or a system. In addition, using the OTSM solution, it is easy to identify the life cycle phase of equipment, and what equipment has been delivered to any single customer.

“The asset management tool will also provide field service engineers with a continuously updated manual on what they should do. With the help of centralised equipment and software data, we can streamline our operations and provide our customers with better services,” says Tunkkari.

New business operations based on asset management solution

The aim is for Wärtsilä to introduce the system on every production line and its customers’ facilities. Although the project began life as a cyber-security project, Tunkkari states that asset management has become an important tool and lies at the heart of business activities in particular.  Wärtsilä also uses the asset management tool to design new business models based on the system it is releasing.

”This customer journey has brought Sofigate into new operational environment. Wärtsilä is investing heavily in digitalisation and has a vision to create new business models round the OTSM solution. So this is not a traditional IT project, it is above all management of business technology,” says Olli Halttunen, Business Executive at Sofigate.

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