Meridium Announces New Mobile Capabilities in Asset Performance Management to Enhance Rockwell Automation Strategic Maintenance Service Offering

ROANOKE, Va., Feb. 8, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Meridium, the global leader in asset performance management (APM) software and consulting solutions, today announced new mobile software capabilities that will be utilized by Rockwell Automation to support their strategic maintenance service offering.  

Meridium's Tablet Application Framework is a platform that allows for the rapid development and deployment of mobile, tablet-based applications, which completely integrate to the Meridium APM solution.  

Utilizing this platform, Meridium and Rockwell Automation have developed an innovative tablet application which supports key elements of the Rockwell Automation Plant Baseline offering to implement effective maintenance strategies.  Capturing a customer's installed base of parts throughout the plant, in production or on a shelf, is the first step in Plant Baseline. This information assists Rockwell Automation to determine what support services are going to be the most effective to help improve plant asset performance. This tablet application provides Rockwell Automation field professionals with an efficient mechanism to document the installed base of a plant, and then leverage the Meridium APM platform for criticality and lifecycle analysis. Through this software analysis, Rockwell Automation can provide customers with ongoing awareness of plant obsolescence risk and maintenance strategy recommendations.

"Having an accurate understanding of your installed asset base is a foundational element to any APM initiative, and mobile technologies bring great efficiencies to workers performing asset verification and condition assessment functions," according to Joe Nichols, Meridium's VP of Product Strategy. "Meridium's new Tablet Application Framework platform now allows us to further extend APM work processes to the resources closest to an asset, ensuring a complete understanding of current condition and performance."

The Rockwell Automation partnership with Meridium also extends to the Meridium Certified Service Provider program (MCSP).  As part of the MCSP Program, the Rockwell Automation Plant Baseline tool is building upon the Meridium APM platform to help customers by providing:

• lifecycle status of installed parts
• a complete criticality analysis to determine the highest priority assets
• a team-based risk assessment, with complete failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) and mitigation actions on critical assets
• "what-if" modeling to determine best-fit strategies, cost and residual risk
• development of preventive maintenance activities for customer approval and loading into an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system
• written standard operating procedures
• implementation of condition-based monitoring

Meridium and Rockwell Automation will present and demonstrate the jointly developed mobile application for Plant Baseline and Strategic Maintenance in the technical track at Meridium Conference 2011, to be held May 2-6, in Roanoke, VA. Meridium will also provide an in-depth session on the Tablet Application Framework platform in the Demonstration Theatre at Meridium Conference.

About Rockwell Automation

Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), the world's largest company dedicated to industrial automation and information, makes its customers more productive and the world more sustainable. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wis., Rockwell Automation employs about 19,000 people serving customers in more than 80 countries.

www.rockwellautomation.com

About Meridium

Meridium Inc. is the global leader in asset performance management solutions for process, power, mining and discrete manufacturing industries. With Meridium software and services, companies will accelerate profitability through effective asset strategies, thus increasing asset reliability and improving the performance of their production assets. Developing or improving these asset strategies also has a direct, positive impact on operational excellence by reducing financial, health and safety, and production risk; optimizing maintenance costs; ensuring regulatory compliance and decreasing the potential for undesirable incidents. Industry leaders such as Eastman Chemical, Marathon Oil, Anglo Platinum, and Xcel Energy rely on Meridium for enterprise wide asset performance. Meridium is headquartered in Roanoke, VA, USA, with regional offices in Houston, TX, USA; Dubai, UAE; Bangalore, India; Ricasoli, Malta; and Perth, Australia. www.meridium.com

SOURCE Meridium