Understanding Hierarchical Structures in Your EAM/CMMS

The concept of an asset hierarchy is easy to understand but even though it’s something simple, it can have a large impact on your day-to-day operations.

What is an Asset Hierarchy?

An asset hierarchy is an organized list that categorizes the relationships between all the maintainable assets your company has. The asset hierarchy is made up of parent and child relationships representing the broader equipment (or location/function) and its subcomponents. Generally, there are two common ways a plant would organize its asset hierarchies: one is by location and the other is by function. You can, of course, customize it to fit what your company is comfortable with after following these templates.

Example: 

Parent 

The big umbrella – it’s the bigger piece of equipment or location and underneath it houses all the smaller pieces that makeup whatever it was. In the example above, the parent of wheel and handlebars is bicycle.

Child 

A subcomponent of the parent, parents can have multiple children, but the child can only have one parent. In the example above, bicycle has two children, wheel, and handlebars.

How Exactly is an Asset Hierarchy Helpful?

There are many advantages to keeping your asset hierarchies organized and updated.

1. Scheduling Regular Preventive Maintenance Efficiently

Repairing equipment and machinery that break down completely can be more expensive than regularly scheduled preventive maintenance on your assets. Make sure your asset hierarchy is organized so you can easily plan to maintain related equipment efficiently to prevent your equipment from breakdowns and unplanned failures.

2. Improving Work Order Efficiency 

Imagine trying to search through a flat asset hierarchy for a particular niche piece of equipment that needs to be replaced. It can be a daunting and long process for anyone who does not have an organized asset hierarchy especially if the names of the entries in your EAM/CMMS are similar or ambiguous, so make sure to keep all assets organized and updated to save time in the future.

Best Practices 

If you want to learn more about best practices to adopt for your asset hierarchies, visit our previous blogs to learn more:

1. How to Name Equipment 
2. Asset Hierarchy Best Practices

NRX AssetHub for Asset Hierarchy Organization 

If you are having trouble with asset hierarchy visualization and analytics, NRX AssetHub can be the tool to fix those problems. If you are frustrated that SAP or Maximo doesn’t offer an asset hierarchy visualization NRX AssetHub’s extension to your EAM/CMMS can provide your system with analytics and a visual hierarchy. Use the link below to book a demo and our team will be happy to walk you through our solution for an organized asset hierarchy!

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