Asset
The physical thing that produces, moves or houses something, and its history of failing and being repaired.
01 Why it matters
What depends on getting this right
Maintenance strategy, capital replacement and downtime cost all accumulate against the asset. When one machine exists under three identities, its failure history never accumulates anywhere, so the machine that is quietly consuming the budget is invisible.
02 Where it lives
Every system holds a different version
None of these is wrong. Each was built for a purpose and records the part of the entity that purpose needed, which is exactly why resolution is required rather than optional.
| System | What it holds of this entity |
|---|---|
| CMMS / EAM | work orders, failure codes, spares and maintenance history |
| MES or SCADA | runtime, downtime events and production against the asset |
| ERP fixed asset register | the financial identity, book value and depreciation |
| Historian or IoT | condition data, the leading indicator ahead of failure |
| CAFM | the same asset seen as an estate obligation under a service contract |
03 Match keys
What actually matches, and what only looks like it does
| Key | How well it works |
|---|---|
| Serial number plus manufacturer | The strongest key, and often not captured at commissioning. |
| Functional location or tag | Stable across replacements, which is what you want for location-based analysis. |
| Asset tag or barcode | Reliable where scanning is enforced in the field. |
| Fixed asset number | Financial identity, rarely matching the operational one. |
04 Survivorship
When two records disagree, which value wins
Survivorship is a business decision, not a technical default. These rules should be agreed with the people who own the data and then applied consistently, because changing them later restates history.
Functional location and physical asset are distinct records
The position in the plant outlives the machine occupying it; both need identity.
Engineering attributes from the asset register
Make, model and rating from the authoritative technical source.
Condition from the most recent inspection
Condition is a time series, not a static attribute.
Financial and operational identities are linked, not merged
They serve different purposes and follow different lifecycles.
05 The cost of not doing it
What stays broken while it is unresolved
Repeat failures never counted
Four failures on one machine appear as four unrelated events, so the bad actor is never identified.
Repair-or-replace undecidable
Cumulative maintenance cost cannot be compared with replacement cost without one identity.
Spares policy set blind
Consumption per asset class is unknown, so stock is held on intuition.
Warranty recoveries missed
Claims within warranty are not made because the install date and asset cannot be matched.
06 Metrics that divide by it
The numbers this entity carries
07 Questions
Frequently asked
Why separate functional location from asset?
Because when a pump is replaced, the position keeps its history and the new pump starts its own. Merging them makes every location look reliable and every asset look new.
What is the minimum to capture at commissioning?
Serial number, manufacturer, model, functional location and install date. Capturing those five at the moment of installation removes almost all downstream resolution work.
See the duplicates in your own data
We will resolve one entity on your systems, live, and show what the duplicates are costing.