When the documents are in a document management system

In this scenario, object numbers are managed in the maintenance management system but there are no documents linked to the objects in the system. The related documents reside in a document management system (Meridian Enterprise or otherwise) or are indexed in a standard database management system.

The documents first need to be imported into the Meridian Enterprise vault. Depending on the quality of the document metadata and how well it matches with the maintenance management system, a staging vault (as described in When the documents are linked in the maintenance management system or When the documents are not linked) may not be necessary. If so, you can proceed directly to importing the documents with the Database Import Wizard. After the documents are imported, the maintenance management system objects can be imported. If a staging vault is not used, this might require a custom tool as described in When the documents are linked in the maintenance management system.

The main challenge in this scenario is matching the maintenance management system objects with Meridian Enterprise document properties. In most cases, this requires significant manual work. This work can be supported by using custom tools that match description, site code, equipment types, and so on. Matches on these values can then be used to narrow the choice of possible proxy objects for each document.

When the system is in production, numbers for new objects (equipment, locations, and so on) can be generated by the engineering department with automation provided by Meridian Enterprise. If the maintenance management system is Maximo, the Maximo SDK can be used to create corresponding new assets in Maximo. Alternatively, a procedure can be defined to let the engineer create the new objects manually in the maintenance management system.