Reducing Client Collisions Using Asset Family Collection Reclassification Groups

A Reclassification Group is a group of asset family collections that are compatible and will trigger a collision within its members. But more importantly, collisions will not be triggered between assets which are not in the same Reclassification Group. Imagine a serial number which refers to a medical oxygen cylinder as well as an acetylene cylinder - we know medical oxygen would never be filled with acetylene, thus we know the serial number must be referring to different cylinders and we can avoid creating a collision record.

In other words:

• If there is an asset in the system with a serial number and a new asset is added with this same serial number, then TrackAbout will cause a collision. The user must decide if they are the same asset or different assets.

• collisions are cases where the system is not smart enough to know what happened and we need a human to make a decision. With this feature we are making the system smarter and reducing the cases which appear on the collisions page of the website so that human intervention is needed less often.

• We can make TrackAbout smarter here by knowing which kind of assets can 'turn into' other kinds of assets.

• See the picture below. If there is a gas cylinder with serial number K104 in the system and then someone enters a new welding machine also with serial number K104, normally TrackAbout will cause a collision. The idea here is to let TrackAbout know that these assets cannot 'turn into' each other and so there is no reason to create a collision. TrackAbout should create the new welding machine asset. It is not the same as the gas cylinder.

  

• The gas cylinder and the welding machine will be in different Reclassification Groups and this is how TrackAbout knows that there is no reason for a collision. A new asset should be created instead of causing a collision.

 

Results and Impacts

Using this feature, a large TrackAbout customer was able to reduce collisions by 30 to 40%.

Additional Notes

• A product code can belong to more than one Asset Family

• Asset Family Collections can belong to multiple “Asset Family Collection Reclassification Group”

• If an asset family collection under consideration does not have any reclassification groups associated with it, we do not eliminate the collision. (I.e. if Asset1 is in reclassification group "RG1" and Asset2 doesn't have any reclassification groups, technically those groups differ but we do create a collision.) Each involved asset's asset family collection must have at least one reclassification group associated with it in order to be considered for collision avoidance using this logic.

• After setup, TrackAbout does not have a process to re-run the collision logic on unresolved collisions.

Customer Setup

Several steps are require to configure your system, TrackAbout will assist you with this:

Planning

• TrackAbout Support will provide a spreadsheet listing all asset types with the total count for each type. This will help prioritize your work starting with asset types that might have the most potential for collisions.

• Assign and populate the spreadsheet with Reclassification Groups. Compatible asset types will share Reclassification Groups. Start by assigning the types that have the most assets. Sort the spreadsheet by Asset Count, or by gas to locate compatible gases. When creating Asset Family Collections and Asset Families, we suggest using the same name as the related Reclassification Group. This simplifies the setup and reduces mistakes.

Asset Family Collection Reclassification Group

Asset Family Collection

Creating Asset Families