I appreciate the suggestions and input. It appears that an equipment class or type code is a consistent theme. The example of ACUN = A/C Unit being an example, does anyone have a listing of standard codes or abbreviations? I have found a national stock number listing for numbering of stock items, is there such a listing for equipment or asset numbers?

The numbering expands to identify instruments or other accessory items like valves:
equipment number-instrument code-sequential number.
Example:
100AHU005 = Air Handling Unit

100AHU005DPT001 = Differential Pressure Transmitter #1 of the fifth Air Handling Unit installed at Building 100.

I especially don't like things with too much numbers in it.
Don't look at the Ford VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) or something similar. Every number has a mean (number of cylinders, color, turbo, pick-up etc..)

In our pre-CMMS era, the first things that entered were vehicles and engines. Thus we ended up with 9 digits combinations. Then some static equipment came, thus you got numbers with a lot of zero's in the middle.

For a plant, just take the numbering that is put on the P&ID's and PFD's. At least the process people will talk your language. If they know the pump by P-1102, it would be difficult to expect coperation if they have to punch in 123-456-008 to make a workorder.

Also in the pre-cmms era we had a simple database with our equipment masterlist. The work requests were written on a ticket, with the asset id, and its normal description (tractor 5 for instance).
Everything going fine until we matched in the database the written asset ID, with the description in the database.
I found once a mobile radio, that was requested to have the brakes checked

quote:

Originally posted by svanels:
For a plant, just take the numbering that is put on the P&ID's and PFD's. At least the process people will talk your language. If they know the pump by P-1102, it would be difficult to expect coperation if they have to punch in 123-456-008 to make a workorder.

You signaled a key point to consider. The equipment numbers must be unique. By that I mean:
* Two equipment units can not share the same number.
* A equipment unit can not have two equipment numbers.
* Once a equipment number is retired (equipment unistalled, demolished, relocated to dumpster, sold, not longer exists); the number is not reassigned to another piece of equipment.

Everyone in the plant must identify pump P-1102 as P-1102.

Verify with at CMMS the requirements or limitations for the equipment ID field.
I encounter the following problem with a equipment ID. In this plant the Equipment ID code just included a location number code, a dash "-", and a sequential number code. for instruments the code was just a sequential code and a letter to represent replacements. Since the dash and the letters were accepted we had the impression that the field accepted any alphanumerical combination of numbers, letters and dashes. What happened? When Project Engineering remodeled one Area and designated one room as Room 000, and we tried to enter at the system and Air Handling Unit installed at that room (code 000-0001) the CMMS responded that negative numbers are not allowed !
The CMMS system instead of treating the 000-0001 as an alphanumeric input of eight caracters, treated it as a numeric input, truncated the first three leading zeros and replied that -0001 is not acceptable as a valid equipment ID.
Moral is: be sure you understand clearly which equipment numbering scheme your CMMS can accept and align it with the engineering procedure of equipment numbering.