Asset groups in Enterprise Asset Management
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Summary of Asset groups in Enterprise Asset Management
Asset groups in the Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) application offer a structured way to organize assets based on their functional relationships and physical placement. This organization supports improved data integrity, maintenance planning, life-cycle tracking, reporting, and access control.
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Assets in EAM are organized using three hierarchical types:
- Location hierarchy: Defines the physical locations of assets, enabling location-based filtering and reporting.
- Asset groups: Logical groupings of related assets and subgroups representing functional systems, processes, or departments.
- Asset structure: Defines parent-child relationships between assets to assist with work completion, spare parts planning, and life-cycle tracking.
Key Features
- An asset group can contain multiple subgroups, but a subgroup belongs to only one asset group.
- Assets can belong to multiple asset groups.
- Subgroups inherit certain fields from their parent asset groups.
- Asset groups can be associated with sites (top-level entities in ISA-95 hierarchical models), allowing configuration items (CIs) linked to that site to associate with the asset group. Only assets from the associated site and its specific locations can be added.
- Asset groups and subgroups may optionally reference a service instance to pull related assets from a node in the configuration item hierarchy, with the constraint that subgroups can only reference a service instance if their parent group does.
- Asset groups require the snisamodel plugin, which is installed automatically with the Enterprise Asset Management application.
Practical Considerations
- An asset group cannot contain itself as a subgroup.
- Asset groups cannot have models or model categories assigned, as these are handled separately.
- Asset groups cannot be deleted if they contain subgroups or assets; removal of these requires specific administrative roles (sneam.enterpriseassetmanager or sneam.enterpriseadmin).
- Only hardware and enterprise assets without parents can be added to asset groups.
- Consumable assets, linear assets, linear segments, and pallet assets cannot be added.
- Assets must be located in the same or descendant location of the asset group and must be in “In use” or “In maintenance” states.
- Asset groups are not supported in certain EAM flows, including asset resale, transfer order line management, repair order line management, disposal order management, shipment asset creation, contract management, and move order management, or any flow requiring an asset model.
Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
Using asset groups allows ServiceNow customers to logically organize their enterprise assets aligned with functional and physical structures. This organization enhances maintenance efficiency, reporting accuracy, and access control. The hierarchical approach combined with site and service instance associations streamlines asset management workflows while maintaining data integrity. Understanding the restrictions and plugin dependencies ensures smooth configuration and management of asset groups within the Enterprise Asset Management application.
Asset groups in the Enterprise Asset Management application provide a systematic approach to organizing assets based on their functional relationships and their physical placement within an organization. They can help improve data integrity and support maintenance planning, life-cycle tracking, reporting, and access control.
Organization of assets in Enterprise Asset Management
- Location hierarchy: Hierarchy that defines the physical locations of your assets, organized based on the real-world location structure of those assets. This hierarchy enables location-based filtering, maintenance routing, and reporting.
- Asset groups: Logical groupings of related assets and subgroups. Each asset group represents a functional system, process, or department within your organization.
- Asset structure: Hierarchy that defines the parent-child relationships between assets. This hierarchy can help you complete work on your assets, plan spare parts, and track your asset life cycles.
Overview of asset groups
An asset group is a logical grouping of assets. Each asset group can have multiple subgroups; however, a subgroup can belong to only one asset group. An asset can belong to multiple groups.
For details on creating asset groups and subgroups, see Create an asset group in Enterprise Asset Management and Create an asset subgroup in Enterprise Asset Management. For details on adding assets to asset groups, see Add assets to an asset group or subgroup.
Sites in asset groups
A site is an ISA-95 hierarchical entity model. Sites are organized in a hierarchical structure, with site being the top-level entity, followed by area, work center, and work unit.
For details on creating sites, see Create a site in the Enterprise Asset Management application.
Service instances and asset groups
An asset group or subgroup can optionally reference a service instance to pull all related assets from a chosen node in the given CI hierarchy. A subgroup can reference a service instance only if its parent group references one.
Considerations for asset groups
- An asset group can’t contain itself as a subgroup.
- An asset group can’t have a model or model category, as it's a separate entity.
- An asset group can't be deleted if it contains subgroups or assets. To delete an asset group, the sn_eam.enterprise_asset_manager or the sn_eam.enterprise_admin role must first remove any subgroups and assets from the asset group.
Considerations for adding assets to asset groups
- You can add only assets without a parent.
- You can add only hardware and enterprise assets. You can't add any consumable assets, linear assets, linear segments, or pallet assets.
- Assets must be in the same location as the asset group or in a descendent location.
- Asset must be in the In use or In maintenance state.
Considerations for asset groups in Enterprise Asset Management flows and capabilities
- Asset resale flow
- Transfer order line management
- Repair order line management
- Disposal order management
- Shipment asset creation
- Contract management
- Move order management
- Any flow where the asset requires a model
Plugin dependencies for asset groups
Asset groups require the sn_isa_model plugin, which is automatically installed with the Enterprise Asset Management application.