Planning Your Table

The Equipment Table or as it is sometimes defined, the Equipment Database, is the most important table in the SOMAX CMMS system. Prior to building your table it is extremely important to have a plan for building your table.

• Plan an  Equipment ID coding scheme before you actually begin adding records. 
• Identify which pieces of equipment you will be recording

There are two methodologies to building an Equipment Table

• The simplest method is simply to enter every piece of equipment that you know will require maintenance, assigning them consecutive Equipment ID codes (for example, 00001 through 99999).  You can also use letters of the alphabet, so that you may have groups of related pieces of equipment assigned the codes A0001 through A9999, and another group assigned the codes B0001 through B9999, and so on.
• A more complex system would be to determine a numbering scheme like the example shown
  • XXX-XX-XXX-XXX
    • 1st XXX might be a plant or location code
    • 2nd XX might be an process or system code 
    • 3rd XXX might be a machine type
    • Last XXX could be as simple as the sequence of the equipment type 
  • Lets us assume that the Site or Location code is 001
  • Secondly the process could be BR - Bread
  • Third the machine type could be MIX - Mixer
  • The last could be 001 indicating the Mixer 001
• The resulting equipment number would be 001BRMIX001 or simply put the equipment is in plant 001, Bread Line, Mixer, 001.

How complex you want your table structure and how much planning you'll want to do before building your table will depend on the size and complexity of your operation and on how quickly you need to have your SOMAX system up and running.