Last Updated on December 28, 2022 by maximosecrets

The music is called Busy City from a group called TrackTribe.

Hello, and welcome back to Maximo Bite Size. A series of videos on the functional aspects of Maximo Manage. 

Title

Good afternoon, my name is Andrew Jeffery, and this is the fifth episode in the series on Asset Management and today we’ll be discussing Asset Templates.  

Learning Objectives

As the name suggests an Asset Template is a template for creating multiple assets, but you can also use an asset template for updating existing assets whether they are already associated with the asset template, or not.

We’ll start by reviewing the Asset Templates application, and each tab, this will take up most of the time in the video. We’ll also look at the application actions including the actions to generate assets or to update assets from the asset template.

Finally, I’ll reveal a little secret which is not so well known, it uses Asset Templates as the starting point to populate storeroom balances for items with assets. So, let’s get started.

Asset Templates

The Asset Templates application was originally introduced as part of Maximo Calibration, this is why the object name starts with PLUSC. In Maximo Manage calibration is now included in the licenses and you may see an additional tab called Data Sheets which you have not previously seen, and there is also the Calibration Details section at the bottom of the main tab. I am not aiming to talk about calibration in this series on Asset Management, as like Linear Assets, Calibration would warrant its own set of videos.

The main object name of the application is PLUSCTEMPLATE, and it is an OrganizationA structural element of a Maximo database which is used for data sharing and is often aligned to a legal entity of an organisation. More level object with a simple status of DRAFT, ACTIVE and INACTIVE, with DRAFT as the default for new records. To generate new assets the status must be set to ACTIVE. There is no status history.

On the main tab there are fields which will be set on the asset when they are generated or updated from the asset template. Fields like Asset Type, Manufacturer, Vendor, Usage, Priority and the three cost fields, Purchase Price, Replacement Cost, and the Budgeted cost for the year. The Asset Description field and its long description will become the descriptions for the asset, the Description field of the Asset Template is not used to populate the asset.

You use an Asset Template when you have several similar assets of the same type, that would have the same meters, classification characteristics, and spare parts. Think of assets in a storeroom bin, they are probably the same item based on a manufacturer’s model. These are exactly the sort of assets for which an asset template is suitable, but there is no item number in the application, and while there is a Manufacturer field until Maximo Manage you needed a calibration license to get to the Model Number field. It will now be found in the Calibration Details section, and you do not need to say that the record will be a calibration asset to use this field. There is a rotating item field, it is hidden, and I’ll be coming back to this in the last section of the video.

Along the top of the Asset Templates application is a series of tabs, each with a table window whose records will be copied to the assets associated with the asset template.

The Spare Parts tab allows non-rotating items to be added to the Spare Parts table of each asset being generated or updated. The quantity of the spare part used on an asset can be added along with a remarks field which might indicate where on the asset the spare part is found. You can add the same item multiple times as a spare part, so you could describe the spare parts on the left-hand side of the asset and those on the right-hand side, and this is where the Remarks field would be useful.

On the PMs tab you can associate multiple Master PM records used for frequency based preventive maintenance and inspections. A Master PM is a template for a Preventive Maintenance record and when the assets are generated from the asset template then Maximo also generates the preventive maintenance records from the associated Master PMs. This can save you a lot of data entry, it won’t eliminate it as there are still fields to be set-up on the newly created PMs, but it does help. The Master PM records must exist first, and they can now be used with non-rotating assets. The Master PM needn’t now reference a rotating item which used to be the case several years ago, the Item and Item Set fields can now be left blank.

On the Meters tab you can enter a Meter Group, and this will create a set of meter records on the asset template, the meters associated with the meter group. Alternatively, you can enter the meters without using a meter group. Once the meters have been created on the asset template you can then setup additional settings for CONTINUOUS type meters, for example the Average Calculation Method, the Rollover Point, and whether a meter reading can be accepted from the parent asset or the location where the asset resides. These points were described in the fourth video in this Asset Management series, called LocationA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More and Asset Meters, check it out if you have not watched this. The meter records will generate a set of asset meter records on the assets when the asset template is applied.

The fourth tab which you are likely to use is the Specifications tab, as shown on the right. You will need to enter a Classification which has been setup against the Use With Object of ASSET, there is no classification object for Asset Templates, it uses the same set of classifications as you have defined for assets. The classification’s attributes, the specification, are copied to the asset template and you can then enter the alphanumeric, numeric, or table values. Notice that there is no New Row button on the Specifications table window , this is a template which ought to be aligned with a specific classification, if there is a need for an additional attribute, then you need to decide whether to create an additional classification or add the attribute to the existing one.

Create and Update Assets

In this section we will look at some of the menu actions found in the Asset Templates application starting with the one you are most likely to use, Generate New Assets.

When the Generate New Assets action is launched the Select SiteA structural element of a Maximo database that is used for data separation. More dialog opens for you to select a site. These are the active sites from the organization on which the asset template is based, which was EAGLENA on previous screenshots. I’ve selected the BEDFORD site.

On pressing OK the Generate New Assets dialog opens, as shown on the right. At the top is a series of fields which will act as default data for the assets you create. You do not need to complete any of this data, they are just the defaults that will be added to records at the bottom of the screen as new assets are generated. The fields are Location, Serial Number, Depreciation Start Date, PM Start Date, PM Storeroom, Status, and Installation Date. The Status will default to NOT READY and the Installation Date to today, but both can be changed, or the Installation Date made null, which is what you might want to do if the asset is going into a storeroom.

The next step is to decide the quantity of assets to be generated whether the assets will have a prefix or suffix and the starting asset number, again none of these fields are required except for the Quantity field . One of the reasons we suggest using an autokey for assets is because there are a few places where assets can be generated, and Asset Templates is one of them, the Receiving application is another, this is a procurement function. After setting the Quantity field you use the Generate Assets button to generate the quantity of rows in a table window lower down in the dialog. If you do use a prefix or suffix, then you will need to provide the Starting Asset Number. Some utilities may use this to provide an asset number for each pole when an electric distribution line is added for a new housing development.

The table window in which the new assets are generated has fields for each of the fields in the Default Asset Table Data section highlighted previously, which allows you to manually enter the data or override these defaults. When the OK button is pressed new assets are generated. There is a New Row button on this table, you can just see it, and if you generate too many rows there is a Delete Row button at the end of the table window.

The Apply to Existing Assets action goes through a very similar process where you first select the site and then you are presented with a dialog box with Default Asset Table Data section and an Assets table window. There is no Generate Asset Numbers section and instead of the Generate Assets button there is a Select Assets button for you to select the existing assets against which to apply the asset template. As a reminder an asset template can be applied to existing assets that are not yet associated with an Asset Template.

The Change Status action is a simple lookup, but it can be used from the List View and applied to multiple asset template records. The View Asset Template Usage action is an audit trail of when either of Generate New Assets or Apply to Existing Assets actions are used. It doesn’t tell you the details only which asset was generated or updated and by whom and when. As this is an audit trail, then the same asset can appear multiple times in this dialog, if it has been updated multiple times.

You can apply one or more depreciation schedules to an Asset Template so that the depreciation of the asset is enabled when it is installed. Asset Depreciation is a financial subject which I aim to explore with all other financial aspects of Maximo in their own series of videos and podcasts.

Populating Storeroom Assets

When you are using Inventory in Maximo and the question is asked “How do I adjust the balances of rotating items”, the answer is – “By moving assets into the storeroom”. The secondary question may be – “How do I do this?”, for which many Maximo consultants will reply – “We’ll do it as part of data loading, don’t worry”.

The point is that you can’t adjust the current balance of items that are marked as Rotating you’ll receive the error message “BMXAA1799E – A current balance adjustment cannot be performed on a rotating item.” And, if you were wondering what a Rotating Item is, then the simple answer is it is the purchase or inventory item for which you have assets that can be held in a storeroom. I’ll be giving a much more detailed look at Rotating Items in the next video in this Asset Management series.

So, going back to that original set of questions, it might follow “What happens, if I want to rollout inventory to another site and their storerooms at a later date?”. For which the correct answer might be – “We’ll set up Asset Templates for you to generate your asset records and then move them into your new storeroom, and you won’t need to call us back to do this”, and we left site at the end of our contract with a happy client. 

I won’t often dive into the dark arts of Maximo configuration or customisation, but in this case, I just wanted to show that in the Database Configuration application and for the PLUSCTEMPLATE object for which an Asset Template is based, there are existing fields for the Rotating Item, Item Set and Item Type and these can be easily exposed onto the Asset Template main tab. The key field for an asset template is TEMPLATEID.

The trick then is that to get them copied onto the generated assets you need to create a Crossover Domain on the TEMPLATEID of the ASSET object, and then the three fields can be copied to their corresponding fields on the asset when the TEMPLATEID is populated. I’ve only used this when generating new assets from an Asset Template, and too be honest it really ought to be a part of the Maximo product, but it isn’t.

The crossover domain on the asset’s TEMPLATEID attribute can be used to extend the fields which are copied from the Asset Template to the generated assets, for example, there is no Calendar, Shift or Failure Class on an asset template. But crossover domains only fire once for a record, and not multiple times, OK, there is an exception to this which will be revealed in a future video. So, unlike Meters, or Master PMs, or Spare Parts which are updated on an Asset Template and those changes can be applied to existing assets that already reference the Asset Template, then changes to additional fields will not work in this update scenario, and a script or customisation will be needed to update changes to new fields on assets that are already associated with an asset template. But most of the time it works great because we are using the Asset Templates application to generate new assets.

Once the assets are generated, then the Move/Modify action in the Assets application can be used to move the assets into the chosen storeroom, and this can be done on mass to multiple assets.

A word of warning. The assets are now considered Rotating Assets because they reference a Rotating Item, and there are functions associated with Rotating Items that could conflict with functionality of Asset Templates. I’ll go through this in the next video. For example, the classification and specification details of a rotating item are mastered from the Item record, so if you are going to use this, I wouldn’t have the classification on both the Item as well as the Asset Template. Similarly, a Rotating Item can have a Meter Group, so I wouldn’t create a conflict by using meter groups on both the Asset Template and the Rotating Item. I expect it was for these reasons that the Rotating Item field was hidden on the Asset Template application when it was originally released as part of Calibration.

However, there is other great functionality associated with Rotating Items, like applying an Item Assembly Structure, or automatically adding the items issued to rotating assets as spare parts, so I wouldn’t dismiss this secret, it can be worked through so that you make the best of all functionalities available to you in Maximo.

Thank you for watching

I hope you have enjoyed this episode on Asset Templates, that you found it useful, and thank you for watching. I know it got a bit tough in that last section, especially as we were dealing with Rotating Items which is the subject of the next episode, and I’ll re-emphasise some of those points again.

Don’t forget to hit the Subscribe button, and you can use the Notifications button to receive an alert when the next episode has been published.

Incidentally the music track is called Busy City from the talented set of musicians called TrackTribe, do check them out on tracktribe.com.

Well, until another time, Goodbye.