The lifecycle card: six fields that read as verdicts
An asset register stays an inventory book until the lifecycle card is filled in. What you write there once comes back to you daily as verdicts: which fault goes first, who bears the repair cost, and which assets have entered the replacement queue.
Where: sidebar → Assets → open an asset → Edit → the Lifecycle card.
The six fields
| Field | Why it is filled in |
|---|---|
| Containing asset | The part's place in the installation tree — a motor inside a baggage conveyor. |
| Criticality | The impact of its failure on operations: low · medium · high · critical. |
| Purchase date | The origin of the age calculation. |
| Purchase cost | Read in the asset dossier when you weigh repair against replacement. |
| Warranty until | Answers a question asked before every repair: do we repair at our cost or claim from the supplier? |
| Useful life (years) | The denominator of the life-used percentage. |
What is computed from them
The lifecycle card appears on the asset page with three computed values — computed at display time, not stored, so the age grows every day without anyone writing anything:
- The criticality badge, which is what orders work when it collides: two faults on the same deadline, and the more critical goes first.
- The warranty badge: active · expiring · expired. Check it before you issue the work order, not after somebody pays.
- The life-used bar: a percentage of the useful life. It deliberately exceeds 100% when an asset outlives its expected life — the truth is that it passed it, not that it exactly reached its ceiling.
Age is computed from the purchase date, else from the commissioning date where one is recorded (as for energy assets). If both are missing there is simply no life bar — and no error.
The installation tree
The containing asset builds a tree read in both directions: a path up to the root, and the list of what is installed beneath it. Its practical value is that a fault logged on a small part is never lost to the system that contains it.
The system will not let an asset become its own parent or the parent of one of its ancestors — the loop is refused on save, and the picker itself excludes the asset you are editing.
Why do I not see the card at all?
Because it is empty. If none of the six fields is filled in and the asset has neither parent nor children, the whole card is hidden — a grid of dashes on a new asset helps nobody. Fill in one field and it appears.
And its effect on the indicators
The "assets past their useful life" measure reads exactly these two fields: the purchase (or commissioning) date and the useful life. An asset with no recorded useful life never enters the queue however old it grows — not because it is sound, but because it was never measured.