Asset management multinational Aladon has opened a new asset management software development office in South Africa.

This forms part of the company's expansion into software development as part of its continued commitment to delivering high-quality, easy-to-use, cost effective and cutting-edge solutions for asset management, Aladon owner Marius Basson says.

The South African office will also provide software support globally, in collaboration with regional consultants.

Over the past year, Aladon has been developing the Reliability Engineering Workbench (REW) software. The software is a wraparound service that enables companies to maintain their assets over their entire lifespan. 

Aladon founder John Moubray developed Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM2) for industrial applications in the 1980s."

The company has always focused on transforming organisations and creating a reliability culture through training and consulting using the Aladon methodologies like RCM2 and RCM3 and then using third-party software developed using the Aladon intellectual property to implement them, such as the REW software, says Basson.

Aladon also recently acquired Karabo Software to manage assets, spare parts, materials and work orders as a low-cost solution for asset data management.

"With the addition of cloud-based software, Aladon will have a complete software solution for asset reliability management. The Aladon Asset Integrated Management Software will provide business transformation, strategy development, physical asset management and performance management benefits," he said.

Karabo Software will help to manage master data that can be used for asset criticality and work management. Aladon provides other business transformation services such as maturity assessment, business strategy, methodologies and training.

Further, the REW software uses an integrated approach to develop effective asset management strategies. The Aladon Network consulting also offers tools and services for an asset-centric approach to enable the management of physical assets throughout their lifecycle.

Aladon can develop connected maintenance, predictive Industrial Internet of Things technology, condition monitoring and tracking and condition assessment to monitor asset health using an RCM approach. Additionally, continuous improvement tools are leveraged to close the performance management loop, says Basson.

The objective of the software tools created by reliability engineers for asset management is to have the same software suite work along the entire lifecycle of an asset. Both the new suites will directly integrate with the Aladon thoughtware so that organisations can share information across all Aladon methodologies, he adds.

Further, the company's methodologies also drive the way the Aladon Network of practitioners engage to develop asset care strategies, and Basson saw a need for software that supported these integrated methodologies. Once Basson and Aladon Network Member Theuns Koekemoer started adapting software for their own asset management consulting, they decided to develop it for wide availability.

"We need these resources to move our software to the cloud to better support larger enterprises. We saw a void in the market for tools that reliability asset managers need to perform their various jobs that also share information across the asset management lifecycle," says Aladon technology manager Kris Hahn, who is managing the South African office.