Analyzing Asset Utilization

[allen_h]

This document is part of the SystemLink Portal.

Analyzing Asset Utilization

Once you've started tracking the utilization of all our test assets, you can start analyzing and visualizing the utilization data.

1. In Asset Manager, click on Reports.
2. Select the Advanced Asset Utilization report.
3. The default view shows the overall utilization of all my assets over the time span of the past 30 days.  Each bar here represents a separate day.
   
4. Use the "Group by" item to choose how you want to group your assets.  In other words, the "Group by" determines what the x-axis represents and what each bar represents.
   
   1. For example, if you set the "Group by" to Month, then each bar represents the utilization of all assets per month (e.g. January, February).
   2. If you set the "Group by" to System, then each bar represents the utilization of all assets per Client system.
      
   3. If you set the "Group by" to Assets, then each bar represents utilization for an individual asset.
      
   4. You can also set the "Group by" to Utilization Category, Task Name, User Name, Model Name, and many others.
   5. You can even set the "Group by" to a custom Property.  For example, if you set the "Group by" to a customer Property of "Project", then each bar would represent the utilization of all assets set to a different Project (e.g. Project A, Project B, Project C).
      
5. Use the "Filter" item to filter the assets that are used in the Asset Utilization calculation.  You can filter by many different properties, such as Model, System, Vendor, Utilization Category, Time Span, Timestamp, custom properties, and more.
   

Note The Asset Utilization (%) number is based on working hours of 09:00:00 (9am) to 17:00:00 (5pm).  For more information or how to customize this, refer to the Configuring the Working Hours for the Asset Utilization (%) Calculation document.

Example Scenario

Someone on my team needs to get a specific instrument, but all the existing ones seem like they're currently being used because they are all already connected to test stations.  Before I go out and purchase a new instrument, I can check the utilization of the current existing instruments.

I'll look at the Advanced Asset Utilization report and filter it to show the utilization for only that instrument Model name, set the "Group by" to Asset, and filter it with a Time Span of the last 30 days.

The screenshot below shows an example of searching for a GPIB board by searching for a Model containing "GPIB".

I can now see that the GPIB board with a Serial Number of 030CDEF2 has only been utilized 7.5%.  Next, I'll investigate further and look at the utilization of this particular GPIB board for the past 30 days grouped by day.

Upon this further inspection, I now know that this GPIB board has not been used at all in over two weeks.  Now I can click on this report, which automatically takes me to the Asset grid view with the same filters, as shown below.

I can see which system (8880Demo1) that this underutilized asset (GPIB board) is currently connected to.  I can go to this system and verify with the current user that they no longer needs to use this asset.  I can then re-purpose this currently unused asset to a system/person/project who needs it.

Reference

For more information, refer to the Generating Asset Reports topic.