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Quick question out there for Maximo CMMS system users.   In an effort to drive improvements in our overall maintenance processes, i've started with the foundational elements.   Our asset hierarchy was set up under an older system and imported into Maximo about 15 years ago.   At the time there was no standard for structure numbering or naming conventions, so every plant took what they had the bridged it into the new system.   They tried to keep some of the old numbering system and adopt some of a new numbering system so as you work through the hierarchy tree, you find a switch between systems and therefore it is not easily recognizable when looking at an asset, which system, process or plant it belongs to.    This makes it extremely difficult to perform bad actor analysis on systems.   Any suggestions from the wider group on how you might have handled this in the past.   Note, starting over is not really an option as we are a highly regulated industry and must maintain historical documentation.   What are thought about imbedding a consistent hierarchy number in the first part of the asset description then pulling that in reports and sorting on the description field?   Open to suggestions, thanks in advance for your help

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Mark Pospisil
Program Manager Maintenance Excellence AN Division
Abbott Laboratories
SUNBURY OH
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It sounds like your goal is to perform high level reliability analysis across multiple sites. Is your company currently using the existing asset failure class hierarchy? If not, this could be a simple way of achieving your objective. This would facilitate organization- wide analysis by "equipment type".  If this does not provide the level of detail you desire a second option would be to apply the asset classification functionality to existing assets. Asset classification is highly configurable for any use case. The benefit of both these options is that they would be non-intrusive to the end users.

The option of adding a prefix to existing asset numbers would require back-end intervention and could create issues in the reporting or end user functions.  

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Joe Fluder
Asset Management / Reliability Director - Retired
Norris Lake, Tennessee
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Thanks Joe,   yes we have some asset failure classification set up but not fully developed.   I see the benefit for analyzing common equipment across multiple sites but we are also set up so that a Reliability Engineer is assigned to a production line and owns overall performance for that maintenance system.   We need to move them from reactive maintenance to true RE's responsibilities but then need to be able to analyze on their assigned production line,  which assets are performing the worst.   Our measures include maintenance spend with contract services, parts and labor,   reactive work,  quality system costs for poor quality and machine performance IE line downtime or OEE.    Because the current asset structure has assets set up by technological capability IE instruments, Electrical....it is not clean without much effort to get the actual maintenance associated costs with respect to a functional production line asset.   It wasn't the best method to set up assets but now we have about 12 years of history that we don't want to lose all of that.

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Mark Pospisil
Program Manager Maintenance Excellence AN Division
Abbott Laboratories
SUNBURY OH
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-24-2025 09:17 AM
From: Joe Fluder
Subject: CMMS System Asset Structure Set up

It sounds like your goal is to perform high level reliability analysis across multiple sites. Is your company currently using the existing asset failure class hierarchy? If not, this could be a simple way of achieving your objective. This would facilitate organization- wide analysis by "equipment type".  If this does not provide the level of detail you desire a second option would be to apply the asset classification functionality to existing assets. Asset classification is highly configurable for any use case. The benefit of both these options is that they would be non-intrusive to the end users.

The option of adding a prefix to existing asset numbers would require back-end intervention and could create issues in the reporting or end user functions.  

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Joe Fluder
Asset Management / Reliability Director - Retired
Norris Lake, Tennessee
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As a practitioner of the ISA-95 standard, I suggest you consider the Equipment Hierarchy model from Part 1. For example, Enterprise, Site, Area, Work Center, Work Unit, Storage Zone, or Storage Unit. These can use full names or codes. Your ERP may have these defined as part of its master data model. An added benefit comes when exchanging information, as other systems can use this hierarchy, too. Hope this helps.

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David Schultz
G5 Consulting
Mukwonago WI
dschultz@g5ces.com
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Do you have anyone available to do screen design to Maximo and add those fields to the asset screen. Coding and description coding tend to be used these days for one of two reasons. 1) We have always done it this way 2) There is a problem with the way our system displays data we are trying to work around

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VERNON WELCH
Urbana IL
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In general, embedding a hierarchy number scheme in a Description (or even in a record ID) becomes a management nightmare over time. Rather, taking advantage of built-in functionality, that Maximo has in the area of Locations and their relationship to Assets is a better approach. The Asset (or Location) number can be anything unique, and the Description uniformity can be driven by Classifications.

In Maximo, Systems, Processes, Plants can be defined at the Location level. This also defines the hierarchy that Assets (the equipment) can be placed at the hierarchy. Locations (at whatever level needed) play roles in System(s) and Assets are at the various levels in the Location hierarchy.

Leveraging Classifications and their related Attributes to further describe the Location (and/or Asset) records bring uniformity to the Description fields, and the Attributes can be used to further describe the record. Asset and Location records can be searched for, reported upon, etc. by those Attributes far easier than filtering/searching on Description fields.

Taking this approach, you have a clean Location hierarchy, well placed Assets, defined Systems/Plants that they play a role in, and uniformly described records. Any work performed (on Assets or Locations) is captured very clearly in Work Orders.

One last thought about historical records... leave them alone and archive them. If the new Location/Asset scheme changes, then there will be a cross-reference that explains that ABC is now 123 as of some date. Over time, the new scheme will take hold and the past is just the past for future reference if needed. Do not waste time by destroying historical data to make it match the new scheme.

Here are articles I wrote about the subject awhile back... hope all this helps.

Location and Asset Hierarchies 2.0 |

Total Resource Management		remove preview
Location and Asset Hierarchies 2.0 | Asset locations and hierarchies may be one of the most important aspects of asset management and knowing why you need them, what they're used for, and how to set them up is just as important. View this on Total Resource Management >

Getting Your Location and Asset Hierarchies Just Right | Total Resource Management, Inc.

Total Resource Management		remove preview
Getting Your Location and Asset Hierarchies Just Right | Total Resource Management, Inc. Knowing what assets are out there and what maintenance crews are spending time on impacts the ability to improve and react to budgetary pressures. View this on Total Resource Management >

Using P&ID Diagrams to Establish Location and Asset Hierarchies | Total Resource Management

Total Resource Management		remove preview
Using P&ID Diagrams to Establish Location and Asset Hierarchies | Total Resource Management P&IDs are an excellent source for defining how to setup the Location and Asset hierarchies in your EAM/CMMS system. View this on Total Resource Management >

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John Todd
Sr. Business Consultant/Product Researcher
Total Resource Management
john.todd@trmnet.com
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Mark,

Based on my involvement in a number of migrations of legacy asset and work history data into Maximo, I suggest that you do not go the route of imbedding a code in a description field.  That method is susceptible to "loss of control" and could impact the performance of various queries.  There is a means of managing asset relationships / hierarchies in Maximo within the Location Hierarchy capabilities.  Generally you will have a Primary Location Hierarchy.  That was most likely established in your original migration to Maximo.  Given that there are issues with the Primary hierarchy at this point you have the capability to set up additional Location Systems.  Each Location or Asset can belong to multiple Location Systems.  You can then use those Locations Systems to better align your assets to the systems or functional groups that they support.

Good Luck, improving data is always an adventure!  

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Roger Shaw
APM Consultant
Salem CT
Roger_Shaw@comcast.net
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Thanks Roger,   this along with Todd's comments makes perfect sense and using Maximo the way it was intended to be used.

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Mark Pospisil
Program Manager Maintenance Excellence AN Division
Abbott Laboratories
SUNBURY OH
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Original Message:
Sent: 01-24-2025 11:21 AM
From: Roger Shaw
Subject: CMMS System Asset Structure Set up

Mark,

Based on my involvement in a number of migrations of legacy asset and work history data into Maximo, I suggest that you do not go the route of imbedding a code in a description field.  That method is susceptible to "loss of control" and could impact the performance of various queries.  There is a means of managing asset relationships / hierarchies in Maximo within the Location Hierarchy capabilities.  Generally you will have a Primary Location Hierarchy.  That was most likely established in your original migration to Maximo.  Given that there are issues with the Primary hierarchy at this point you have the capability to set up additional Location Systems.  Each Location or Asset can belong to multiple Location Systems.  You can then use those Locations Systems to better align your assets to the systems or functional groups that they support.

Good Luck, improving data is always an adventure!  

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Roger Shaw
APM Consultant
Salem CT
Roger_Shaw@comcast.net
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Hi Mark, have you thought about using a "user defined field" (UDF) to capture the hierarchy naming/numbering standard?  I don't work in Maximo, but would assume that these are available there.  My thought is that you could leverage a UDF with the correct information, probably do a bulk upload for your assets, and then sort and report based on the UDF. 

  Overtime with the introduction of new equipment using the correct naming/numbering standard, the UDF would become just a duplicate, and could eventually be removed from the system.  

Kind Regards,

Tami

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Tami Ryley
Equipment Reliability Program Mgr
Anacortes WA
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