What is the asset hierarchy?
The asset hierarchy that you create in Maintainly should be representative of the actual physical structure of each asset (or piece of equipment) needing to be tracked or have work performed on it.
The hierarchy will be comprised of parent-child relationships. To achieve this, you may even consider adding assets that are not tangible but act purely as a grouping mechanism for assets that are tangible.
Assets can be created by one of two methods:
Created directly in the asset hierarchy - as described below (the most common method), or;
Purchased via an order - and then received via a shipment (the least common method), if the applicable asset model already exists.
Greater detail (ie. more assets) in the hierarchy comes with some advantages as well as some disadvantages; every usage case is different. Below are some advantages, as well as disadvantages, to using maximum hierarchy detail, minimum hierarchy details, and a combination of the two.
Maximum asset traceability
All work will be tracked to an individual asset & if that asset is removed or moved it will take the asset history with it;
The incoming replacement will be either a new one or another asset that also has a previous history;
Whilst this is the ultimate traceability of assets, it also incurs additional administrative work since purchasing, replacing, and moving individual assets requires additional processes and is therefore more laborious;
Extended set-up time in determining assets to be tracked and creating the assets in the system;
Other materials (eg. minor spare parts and consumables) will still be tracked based on quantity consumed.
Example:
Company K operates a fleet of 50 wind turbines;
Many of the child assets are expensive (eg. gearbox, generator, blade), have unique serial numbers, and the company wants to report all work performed on these individual child assets as well as tracking them if they are moved or removed from their parent asset, the turbines;
Each of the child assets will be established in the asset hierarchy;
Asset replacement will be used whenever a replacement asset is consumed;
All other spare parts and consumable items will still be tracked based on quantity used, so would therefore be added to the materials list and consumed in tasks.
Minimum asset traceability
The minimum amount of traceability, with work, tracked only to the top-level (or high-level) asset/s;
Only the top-level assets need be established in the asset hierarchy;
All materials (eg. minor spare parts and consumables) will be tracked purely on the quantity consumed in tasks;
Reporting will only be to the top-level asset and work performed will only ever stay with the top-level asset;
Very quick set-up time.
Example:
Company Y operates a fleet of 40 trucks;
The company is not concerned with tracing the movement of the child assets (eg. gearbox, alternator, radiator, etc.), but rather just the work performed and materials used;
Only the top-level assets, the trucks themselves, will be created in the asset hierarchy;
Asset replacement functionality will not be used.
All other spare parts and consumable items will still be tracked based on quantity used, so would therefore be added to the materials list and consumed in tasks.=
Combination of the two extremes
A convenient balance of top-level assets and some of the child assets (ie. just the ones that are expensive and/or capable of being moved around);
Most materials (ie. minor spare parts and consumables) will be tracked purely on the quantity consumed via tasks;
Reasonable set-up time with only a few assets needing to be created;
Example:
Company G operates a fleet of 100 vehicles;
The company is somewhat concerned with tracing the movement of some of the more expensive child assets;
Top-level assets will be created as well as a few of their child assets in the hierarchy (eg. gearbox, fuel injectors, air conditioning compressor, transmission, engine control unit, EV battery);
Asset replacement functionality will be used if any of the child assets require removal or replacement & that transaction needs to be recorded and/or the serial numbers have been recorded to the assets.
Asset Models vs Assets vs Materials
Assets are the things that will have work performed on them;
Asset models are unique combinations of a manufacturer and model that you have defined when creating manufactured assets;
Materials are the spare parts and consumables that will be tracked as inventory and deducted when you use them when performing work in a task.
In essence, materials and asset models are the same; things that exist to be used or consumed in any way. However, a subtle difference arises when considering that asset models can be used to define assets in the asset hierarchy, whereas materials are purely consumed during maintenance and we're chiefly concerned about the quantity that gets consumed.
Asset models are used to define asset
For asset models, the listing will effectively represent the generic make & model of equipment that you will be tracking as unique assets within the asset hierarchy. For example, if you have 20 Toyota Hilux trucks, then you will only need to create "Toyota Hilux" once in the asset models list (or just once one-the-fly when creating a new asset) and then associate it with each of the 20 individual trucks when you create them as unique assets in the asset hierarchy. Whereas, if you have spare parts and consumables that will be used during maintenance on any one of those 20 trucks, they will be created as materials in the materials list.
Asset models can also have preventative maintenance schedules created on them, which in turn apply those preventative maintenance schedules to any assets that have been defined as being of that asset model.
Assets are unique entities
Any asset in the asset hierarchy is a unique entity, allowing an individual serial number and unit price/value to be associated with it, whereas all materials in the materials list will have an average unit price.