Matching object numbers to documents

Technically speaking, matching object numbers to documents involves creating and maintaining property values and references in the Meridian Enterprise vault to match object numbers in the maintenance management system database.  Because a typical plant contains tens of thousands of locations, pieces of equipment, and so on, and there may be tens of thousands of documents that describe the assets, this is not a trivial task.

Given the different perspectives of the maintenance and engineering departments, it is unlikely that they will share a common list of object numbers. For example, the engineering department may work with vendor-supplied object numbers, whereas the maintenance department usually uses internally-generated numbers.

To match these disparate lists, it is usually necessary to look at secondary information in the database of the maintenance management system and on the documents. Data that is potentially useful to make the matches includes:

• Name of the manufacturer of the equipment – Both departments will usually keep a record of this.
• Description of the asset – Elements such as class of equipment (for example, Centrifugal Pump) and design parameters (for example, 100GPM/60FT HD that indicates capacity and total head) can significantly narrow the search.
• Serial number – This can be related to the purchase of an individual piece of equipment and from there, to the type of equipment.

How useful this data is in a particular situation depends on how your organization uses the data and how accurately it has been maintained. In the best case, a unique relationship exists. Typically, this reduces the number of possible matches to several or perhaps dozens of documents for each object number.

Whatever the situation, the organization must have a list or database somewhere that matches object numbers with equipment types, and equipment types to documents. Without this, no documents can be found for a specified object number and the maintenance department could not function. In the worst-case scenario, however, this could involve searching through several sources of data.

Deploying a link between a maintenance management system and Meridian Enterprise requires careful preparation. A few example scenarios are described in the following topics to help you decide on the best approach for your situation. In each scenario, the equipment numbers are managed by the maintenance management system but the proxy object numbers are maintained by Meridian Enterprise. The differences between the scenarios are in where the related documents reside and are managed.