Asset Management in Dynamics 365 can be used to manage the maintenance of physical assets, such as machines, equipment, or vehicles. It helps teams track repairs, servicing, breakdowns, and the time spent working on assets.
Asset Management should not be confused with Fixed Assets. These are two different modules in D365 and serve different purposes.
- Asset Management focuses on maintenance activities like work orders, maintenance schedule and booking technician hours.
- Fixed Assets focuses on financial details such as asset value, depreciation, and accounting records.
Microsoft does provide a limited connection between the two modules. This connection allows users to view maintenance-related information, such as labour hours, item, cost recorded on maintenance work orders, on fixed asset records. However, maintenance and financial tracking are still managed separately.
Key Features of Asset Management in Dynamics 365
1. Asset Master Management: The Asset Management module allows you to create and maintain a separate Asset Master specifically for maintenance related assets and to capture important details relate to such assets like Manufacturer, Model, Current condition or status of the asset.
You can also configure asset attributes (for example, capacity, power rating etc) and assign them to relevant assets.
2. Functional Location Management: Assets can be installed to functional locations within the system. A functional locations master is maintained so that you can create locations for your actual physical locations, like plants, buildings, or production. This location can be used to represent where an asset is physically installed or used.
This helps users quickly understand:
- Where an asset is located
- Which assets belong to a specific area
3. Asset Hierarchy (Parent–Child Assets): Asset Management supports parent and child asset relationships. allowing you to group related assets together, such as a main machine (parent) and its components (children).
4. Maintenance Planning and Scheduling: The module provides functionality to cater to both preventive and corrective maintenance.
- Preventive maintenance schedules can be created based on time or usage.
- Corrective maintenance requests can be raised when an asset breaks down or requires repair.
5. Work Order Management: Maintenance requests can be converted into work orders, which are used to execute the maintenance work. Within the work order user can book labour hours, expense and items used.
If required, a purchase order or production order can also be created and linked to the work order to handle external purchases or in-house production related to maintenance. Work order can be prioritized based on the urgency of the request.
6. Integration with Project Management: Asset Management can be integrated with the Project Management module. If maintenance work is billable, the associated costs can be charged directly to a selected project.
7. Integration with Production and Resource Scheduling: When an asset is linked to a production resource and a maintenance activity is scheduled, the system can:
- Block the production capacity of the machine during the maintenance period
- Prevent production planning for assets that are not available
8. Asset Lifecycle Tracking: Asset Management allows you to track an entire lifecycle of an asset from ‘Active’ to ‘In Maintenance’ to ‘Scrapped’. These states are configurable and changes in the state are logged in the system.
9. Maintenance Forecasting and Planning: The system can forecast upcoming maintenance work based on preventive maintenance plans attached to the asset. Maintenance planners can view future workload and plan resources in advance.
10. Spare Parts and Inventory Integration: Asset Management integrates with Inventory Management, allowing spare parts to be:
- Reserved for work orders
- Issued and consumed during maintenance
- Automatically updated in stock levels