Introduction to Assets

Within TVA, an Asset is a uniquely identifiable item that has a long-term relationship to a company or organization. An Asset may be considered serialized, in that it generally will have a vendor-supplied serial number, however TVA does not require external serial numbers and may generate one as required.

An Asset may take may forms, from a widget on a shelf, a piece of an assembly, or a truck or shipping container used to transport material. Assets may have custody assignments, be associated with customers or organizations within TVA, and may have automatic tracking devices associated. An Asset may even be stored within the warehouse module, and stored, retrieved, and stored again over time. This flexibility makes Assets and the Asset Management functions of TVA uniquely powerful for ensuring the tracking and accountability of all company material.

Assets may be created by any user with proper permissions, and are then tracked as a uniquely identifiable item over it's lifetime. An Asset is uniquely identified by a combination of a part number (item number, SKU, etc.) and a serial number, either vendor supplied, organizationally defined, or generated by TVA. This unique pairing is subsequently used to identify the asset across all item management functions within TVA.

Assets have a range of optional metadata, described elsewhere in the documentation, and this helps to define operational characteristics, additional functionality, and other functions, however at the core, the Asset management lifecycle is a critical part of any long-term material management strategy.