Assigning Types

You can 'Tag' assets in your ARDI system to give them types - one or more groups that they fit in to. For example, sensors can be grouped together by them all being tagged as 'Sensor'.

The tags themselves have their own hierarchy that take them from very general classifications (ie. 'Instrument') to very specific (ie. 'Yokogawa AXF Magnetic Flow Meter'). An example appears below.

Thus if you tag something as a 'Yokogawa AXF', it is also indirectly tagged as 'Magnetic Flowmeter', 'Flowmeter' and 'Instrument' based on the tag hierarchy.

Apart from the ability to search through your system by classification, the type system has an additional benefit - inheritance.

By adding properties to a type, you also add that same property to all assets that use that tag - either directly or indirectly.

So for example, you can create a type for a 'Air Temperature Sensor', adding the Temperature - Air measurement and a Calibration Date recurring event property on it.

Any asset that uses the 'Air Temperature Sensor' type now will automatically include these properties. This makes it much easier to set up a system with recurring parts.

If you had a specific model of temperature sensor that you regularly use around the plant, you could even go a step further and make a sub-type of 'Air Temperature Sensor' for the model, then both the appearance of the item and add media (such as photographs, specification sheets and manuals) to your new type.

Then, when you tagged any asset as that model sensor, it would inherit the media from the direct type, plus the temperature measurement and calibration date properties from the indirect type.

If you have a number of different types of media, and you're measuring the same property on more than one of them (ie. water pressure vs air pressure), then we suggest creating a different type for each instrument and media type.

This means that you'll have a structure similar to the following…

Although this is a little time-consuming during setup, it allows you to add new sensors to your ARDI system extremely quickly. For larger systems, it's a time-saving technique.

As well as properties and alerts, media is also inherited.

Adding documentation - such as instruction manuals or work instructions - to a type distributes that media to all sub-objects. This makes administering your documents much easier - a single change to one asset feeds through to all of the sub-assets that share the type.

Note that types do not count to your active element count unless they have properties attached.