Asset Planning & Naming

The Asset Table is the most important table in the SOMAX CMMS System, which is why it is extremely important to have a plan for building your table before you do so. This includes:

1. Planning an Asset ID Coding scheme before you actually begin adding records
2. Identifying which pieces of assets you will be recording

Remember that there are other ways to group assets, which you may want to factor in when naming them. There are Asset Family Trees and Asset Groups (or lists), which you can find more information about through the links.

Additionally, there are some characters that are not valid for asset IDs. See Data Validation Rules for Asset IDs for more help.

This article provides two helpful methods for naming and organizing your assets: the simplest method and the more complex method.

How complex you want your table structure and how much planning you want to do will depend on the size and complexity of your operation and how quickly you need to have your SOMAX system up and running.

The Simple Method

The easiest method is to enter every asset that you know will require maintenance and assigning them consecutive asset ID codes. For example, you could do 00001 through 99999. If you would like to group related assets, you could do A0001 - A9999, B0001 - B9999, C0001 - C9999, etc. 

The More Complex Method

A more complex method would be to determine a numbering scheme with different properties of the asset embedded in it. A general model would look like XXX-XX-XXX-XXX, or 001BRMIX001, with:

1. 1st XXX may be a plant or location code (ex: 001)
2. 2nd XX may be a process or system code (ex: BR for bread)
3. 3rd XXX may be a machine type (ex: MIX for mixer)
4. 4th XXX may be the number of the machine type (001 for Mixer 001)