Assets overview
What is an asset?

Asset practical definition

Assets are resources that are owned or controlled by an individual or an organization and currently providing benefits and/or are expected to provide future benefits.

Some different kinds of assets:

  1. Tangible Assets: These are physical assets that have a physical form and can be seen and touched. Examples include buildings, machinery, vehicles, inventory, and furniture.
  2. Intangible Assets: These are non-physical assets that have no physical form and cannot be seen or touched. Examples include patents, trademarks, copyrights, software, and brand names. They can also include, in ways that are practical to a CMMS, your Domain name registration and software licenses. A CMMS helps with these types of assets in ways such as PMs that remind you to refresh any of the legal paperwork required, to check monthly for attempts to file conflicting trademarks and so on.
  3. Financial Assets: These are assets that represent ownership of a financial instrument or a claim on a future payment. Examples include stocks, bonds, bank deposits, and mutual funds. You can create PMs to track actions necessary on these assets.
  4. Natural Resources: These are assets that are found in nature and are used to create goods and services. Examples include oil, gas, minerals, and timber, they may be terrestrial (on/in land), oceanic (in the ocean), atmospheric (in the air) or even mining celestial bodies like asteroids.
  5. Human Resources: These are assets that represent the value of an organization's employees, their skills, knowledge, and expertise.
  6. Real Estate: This is a type of tangible asset that refers to land and any structures built on the land, such as buildings, homes, and commercial properties.
  7. Intellectual Property: This is a type of intangible asset that refers to creations of the mind, such as inventions, designs, and creative works.
  8. Investments: These are types of Intangible assets that are purchased with the intention of generating a return. Examples include stocks, mutual funds, and real estate investments. These are some of the different types of assets that exist. It is important to keep track of all assets and their values, as they are critical for measuring the financial health and performance of an individual or an organization.

Comment on CMMS/EAM assets:

While all asset types are managed by customers using MCe it is likely fair to say that Tangible assets are 80% or more of the assets our customers manage in our system.

Tangible assets:

So looking deeper at tangible assets, what are some different kinds of tangible assets?

  1. Property, Plant, and Equipment (PP&E): This includes assets that are used in the production or operation of a business, such as buildings, machinery, and vehicles.
  2. Inventory: This includes goods that are held for sale or are in the process of being produced for sale, such as raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished goods.
  3. Furniture and Fixtures: This includes items such as desks, chairs, cabinets, and other furnishings used in a business.
  4. Land: This includes land that is owned by an individual or a business for a specific purpose, such as for building a facility or holding for investment purposes.
  5. Artwork and Collectibles: This includes assets that are collected for their aesthetic or historical value, such as paintings, sculptures, and antique items.
  6. Vehicles: This includes cars, trucks, buses, and other types of transportation equipment used in a business.
  7. Machinery and Equipment: This includes equipment used in a business that is not considered to be part of the PP&E, such as computers, printers, telephone, fax machines1 and other electronic devices.
  8. Livestock and Agricultural Assets: This includes animals, crops, and other agricultural products used in farming or ranching operations. These are some of the different types of tangible assets that exist. It is important to keep track of all tangible assets and their values, as they are critical for measuring the financial health and performance of an individual or an organization.

But our company doesn't call them assets?

We have one customer, where 100% of their assets are called "Trains". So they went through the UI and changed all references to 'Assets' to 'Trains'. Doesn't change the documentation (although at a cost - that can be done too) but the base system of MCe comes with the ability to change almost any label in the system, as well as reports.

Footnotes

  • 1: Our original documentation was written in 2003 when fax machines were still at least known about by the majority of people and likely half of companies still used them. I had a customer ask me in 2023, in all seriousness, what a fax machine is. Back in the early 90's and before, fax machines where the closest equivalent to the internet most of us had - it allowed you to send a document, with a signature, to another company or individual. These days, 2023, many of us have not used a fax machine in over 20 years, but some larger companies and many governments still use fax machines. If you need to send a fax and don't have a fax machine, there is computer software that can do it, and if you go to a 'copy' store, they likely still have a fax that operates. I considered removing fax machines from our documentation here, but decided to leave it in to honor the early days of MCe ↩