Explore the underlying principles that any organization can use to develop their own asset hierarchy. With the right asset hierarchy, an organization can endeavor to improve asset performance through such Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) activities as Failure Modes & Effects Analysis (FMEA), and Root Cause Analysis (RCA).

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Understanding
Hierarchical Asset
Structures in CMMS
Gil Acosta
Director of Engineering Services
eMaint Enterprises
eMaint Best Practices Webinar • Wednesday, May 20, 2015

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Meet the Presenter
www.emaint.com/webinars● Joined the eMaint team in June 2014, and has
substantial years of production, quality and
project management with Fortune 500
Companies.
● Trained and skilled in organizational
development, team leadership, change
management and lean manufacturing initiatives
● Extensive training with practical experience in
quality systems, industrial statistics, and group
dynamics
● BS Engineering from UT El Paso, MS Engineering
Management from UT Austin, and MA curriculum
in Behavioral Science through Bastyr University.
Gil Acosta
Director of Engineering Services at eMaint

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Agenda
I. What is a hierarchical asset structure?
II. Why is it important?
III. How do you begin?
IV. Q & A

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Poll Question #1
What motivated you to attend today’s webinar?
A. My current asset hierarchy is not serving me
B. I’m looking for ways to improve my asset hierarchy
C. We don’t have a CMMS and I want to learn more

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What is a Hierarchical Asset Structure?
hi·er·ar·chy
ˈhī(ə)ˌrärkē/
noun
1. a system or organization in which people or groups
(ASSETS) are ranked one above the other according to
status or authority.
synonyms:
pecking order, order, ranking, chain of command, grading,
gradation, ladder, scale, range. "in the equipment hierarchy,
Tractor Vehicle is two levels above the carburetor system”
As it applies to our assets, hierarchy is simply the relationship between
the highest level of equipment and subordinate components. Often
times referred to as the Parent Child relationship.

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What is a Hierarchical Asset Structure?
Establishing the parent-child relationship . . .
Excerpt from Article By Paul Langan, Life Cycle Engineering as appeared in the October 2013 Edition of RxToday
“Once developed, the asset hierarchy parent-child relationship allows the end-user to easily identify
which assets are maintainable assets and which assets are considered bill of material assets. ISO
14224 illustrates how a parent-child relationship appears in a pyramid taxonomy.”

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What is a Hierarchical Asset Structure?
It’s not just about reporting structure . . .
AHU Pump
Room
Building
Site
Motor
Asset
Parts
Air Handling Unit
Electric Harness
Location
What about the electrical
panel, Location or Asset?
What about the refurbished
motor, Asset or Part?
“If the hierarchy is not accurate it is impossible to gain the reliability, maintainability and required
traceability of the assets. How can Planners do their job if they are not aware of the plant’s assets and
in particular how the assets relate to other assets?” Paul Langan

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Why is Asset Hierarchy Important?
The foundation of any CMMS
initiative is to understand,
manage and improve the
performance of the
company's assets.
In order to deliver on this
premise, there must be an
underlying hierarchical
structure that governs those
assets.

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Why is Asset Hierarchy Important?
With the right asset hierarchy,
an organization can endeavor
to improve asset performance
through such Reliability
Centered Maintenance (RCM)
activities as Failure Modes &
Effects Analysis (FMEA), and
Root Cause Analysis (RCA).

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Why is Asset Hierarchy Important?
● A Planner is scheduling maintenance on a piece of equipment
How would you do this without a relationship hierarchy?
1
Benefits of establishing a sound hierarchical asset structure:
Scheduling preventive & predictive maintenance activities
● This saves time, this saves money, and improves uptime because we
can shut down a group once to do scheduled maintenance versus
numerous shutdowns to do maintenance on individual assets.
● Therefore, all the assets associated with that equipment such as gear
boxes, instrumentation, safety valves, and isolation points are also
candidates for maintenance while the equipment is offline.

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Why is Asset Hierarchy Important?
● This helps develop historical data that can be used to calculate total
cost of ownership and contributes to “Repair or Replace” analysis.
How would you do this without a relationship hierarchy?
2
Benefits of establishing a sound hierarchical asset structure:
The ability to charge costs to the lowest possible asset level
● This provides a means to identify where maintenance dollars are
actually being spent.
● Additionally, once the asset hierarchy relationship has been
established, Maintenance can write work orders to the correct asset
level and not to a general area.

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Why is Asset Hierarchy Important?
● FMEA is a step-by-step approach for identifying all possible failures in a
design, a manufacturing process, an asset or service.
How would you do this without a relationship hierarchy?
3
Benefits of establishing a sound hierarchical asset structure:
Allows for Failure Mode & Effects Analysis (FMEA)
● “Failure Modes” means the ways, or modes, in which something might fail.
Failures are any errors or defects, especially ones that affect asset
performance and can be potential or actual. (Work Order History)
● “Effects Analysis” refers to studying the consequences of those failures.
Failures are prioritized according to how serious their consequences are,
how frequently they occur and how easily they can be detected.
● The purpose of the FMEA is to take actions, think maintenance plan, to
eliminate or reduce failures.

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Why is Asset Hierarchy Important?

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How Do you Begin an Asset Hierarchy?
● What is the total cost of ownership for particular equipment?
● What is the MTBF for a particular equipment type?
● What is the MTTR of similar equipment but different manufacturers?
● What child component is creating the most unplanned downtime?
● What child components should be included in the next PM outage?
● What is the break even analysis for repairing or replacing?
Start with the end in mind - What would YOU want to know?

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How Do you Begin an Asset Hierarchy?
● Begin with a building diagram of your asset domain.
When establishing the asset hierarchy . . .
● It’s not just about the reporting relationship, It’s also about identifying similar
assets, assets from the same manufacturer, assets with similar power
consumption ratings, and the list goes on and on.
● The ISO/DIS 14224 Standard Taxonomy can be a useful guideline for
establishing the appropriate levels. However, do not stop there, companies can
customize the structure illustrated in the taxonomy to better manage their
unique requirements.

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How Do you Begin an Asset Hierarchy?
● Asset Tag (MUST BE UNIQUE)
● Asset Name
● Parent Asset
● Parent Asset ID
● Asset Type
● Manufacturer
● Model Number
● Serial Number
● Location
● Room / Level
Typical
Asset
Hierarchy

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Assets
● Parent Grouping
● Child Specific Assets
● Child Miscellaneous Asset – Only one per parent
INSERT PICTURE OF ASSETS IN EMAINT
THAT MEET THE MINIMUM CRITERIA
Asset Structure at a minimum must include the following:

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Summary
● Begin with the end in mind!
● Set up your specific asset hierarchy
● Monitor the asset performance
● Prioritize asset improvement areas
● Perform RCA / FMEA analysis

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