The foundation of your maintenance processes is a representation of your physical assets in the system. This is why you create an asset structure, which helps you control, monitor and document your processes and save and analyze relevant data.
Asset structures can be built by using Functional Locations to map more complex systems, Equipment to map individual, important objects, and maintenance Bills of Material (BOM) to map spare parts.
Functional Location
Watch the following video to learn more about Functional Locations.
Functional locations are hierarchical structures with a systematic order (based on the so-called structure indicator - taking into account technical, functional or process-oriented criteria). They represent technical systems, buildings, or any other object types which need maintenance.
The aim of creating a functional location is to structure a technical system or building into units that are relevant for plant maintenance. When you create a functional location, it takes on the function of the location where individual objects (such as engines, gearboxes, pumps, and so on) can be installed. In these cases, you can analyze dismantling and installation operations both from the perspective of the installation location, and also from the perspective of the individual installed or removed object.
Equipment
Individual objects that can be a part of bigger technical structures, and for which a separate maintenance history must be maintained, are mapped by using equipment.
A piece of equipment is an individual physical object that you would maintain as an autonomous unit. Pieces of equipment usually represent single objects such as pumps, motors, and vehicles for which maintenance tasks are to be performed and recorded.
A piece of equipment can be installed at functional locations. A piece of equipment can be linked to a material if there is a need for inventory management.
Bills of Material (BOM)
The maintenance BOM differs from other BOMs because it only contains items relevant to maintenance.
The maintenance BOM has the following important functions:
- Structuring of the technical object
- Spare parts planning in the maintenance order
- Spare parts planning in the maintenance task list
Spatial Asset Management
Spatial Asset Management boosts data quality and enables federation with GIS. It embeds geo-spatial capabilities and linear asset data models into business processes providing a spatial front end to distributed assets and allows users to drive business processes from a map.
Spatial Asset Management consists of:
- Linear Asset Management
- Geographical Enablement Framework
Linear Asset Management provides functions with which you can describe, display, and manage linear assets. Linear assets are technical systems with a linear infrastructure whose condition and properties can vary from section to section (dynamic segmentation) - f.ex. pipelines, roads, railway tracks, power lines.
The Geographical Enablement Framework enriches business objects by assigning geo-spatial data. Therefore, it is possible to drive various business processes from a map.
Federation of GIS data: Expose geometries and attributes of geo-spatially enabled business objects as REST-based feature services.
Watch the demo video to learn about displaying asset structures.