Installed base in Manufacturing Cloud: asset data

Before warranty checks, recalls or an agent can work in Manufacturing Cloud, every machine needs one asset record with serial number, product, owning account, location and the date that starts the warranty. Manufacturing Cloud adds three things on top: asset milestones for lifecycle events, account and contact participants for everyone involved with a machine, and fleets for customers with many machines. The data model is the easy part. The hard part is the source, because ERP delivery, dealer registration and commissioning each know a piece of the truth. I would settle who owns which field before the first warranty claim is checked.

What does Manufacturing Cloud need to know about each machine?

The asset is the anchor of everything in after-sales. The Manufacturing Cloud service page1 describes the Asset Service Console as the place to capture “serial number and associated contacts” and to see “warranties, cases, work orders, and claims tied to an asset”. Every one of those records points to the asset. If the asset is missing, the claim, the recall and the agent have nothing to attach to.

The minimum per machine, in my view:

• Serial number. The key that ERP, PLM, dealers and Salesforce all share.
• Product. The machine type, so warranty terms and campaigns can select by product.
• Owning account and location. Who operates the machine and where it stands.
• Warranty start date. The purchase or installation date, depending on your terms. Warranty claims from dealers shows how the asset warranty uses it.
• Usage, if your warranty is limited by operating hours or cycles.

Main assemblies can sit below the machine as child assets. How that hierarchy helps with spare parts is covered in spare parts by serial number.

What do asset milestones record?

An asset milestone is a dated event in the life of one machine. The AssetMilestone reference2 describes it as “the key events in the lifecycle of an asset, such as manufacturing, registration, or resale”. The object is available from API 58.0 and hangs master-detail on the asset. Its fields:

Field	What it holds
MilestoneDate, ExpiredDate	When the event happened and when it stops counting
MilestoneType	The kind of event; the reference lists no values, so you define them
Stage, StageComment	Active, Expired or Tentative, with a reason, for example why a date is still tentative
Address, Location	Where the event happened
SourceSystemName, SourceSystemIdentifier	Which system reported the event, and its ID there

Two fields matter most to me. The source system fields make every date traceable: you can see whether the delivery date came from the ERP or was typed in by a dealer. And the Tentative stage fits a common gap: the dealer reports a handover date that nobody has confirmed yet.

Milestones are history, though. The warranty start date should still be one value on the asset or the asset warranty, derived by a written rule such as “installation milestone, otherwise delivery plus 90 days”. Otherwise every adjudicator picks a different milestone.

Manufacturer, dealer, operator and service partner all hang on one machine

The manufacturer builds it, a dealer sells it, a customer operates it, a service partner maintains it. Manufacturing Cloud models this with two junction objects, both available from API 59.0:

• Asset account participant links an account to an asset. The reference3 lists “Customer” as a stakeholder role.
• Asset contact participant links a contact to an asset. The reference4 lists “Service Manager” as the role.

For customers with many machines there are fleets. The Fleet reference5 describes “a group of assets used in commercial, service, or transport operations in the manufacturing industry”, with an owner account, a location, a parent fleet, a status and the types Commercial, Employee, Executive and Material. The fleet asset6 record links a machine to a fleet with start and end dates and holds its usage with a unit of measure. That suits a rental company or a logistics customer with forklifts at several sites.

The asset data comes from three places

None of them knows everything. A worked example with assumed numbers: a machine builder sells 6,000 machines a year, mostly through 50 dealers. The ERP knows the serial number, the product, the build date and the dealer it shipped to. It does not know the end customer.

Data	Source	Owner
Serial number, product, build date	ERP delivery or production	ERP
Dealer that received the machine	ERP delivery	ERP
End customer, handover date	Dealer registration in the portal	Dealer enters, manufacturer checks
Installation date, location	Commissioning report	Service
Operating hours	Dealer, customer or telemetry	Depends on the warranty terms

In this scenario the warranty start date depends on the dealer. If registration is optional, a large share of machines has no start date, and every claim on them turns into a manual check. I would make registration a required step in the portal, ideally tied to something the dealer wants, such as the first warranty claim being accepted only for registered machines. Which licence dealers need for that is covered in the Manufacturing Cloud customer portal.

The owner column is the actual work. Write it down per field, as in the object ownership matrix, and plan the ERP interface accordingly. I help with that under Salesforce integration.

What does the Asset Service Console show?

Everything that hangs on one machine. According to the service page, it shows “alerts, milestones, and service history” for an asset, plus its warranties, cases, work orders and claims. The Trailhead overview7 calls it a workspace “to manage cases, assets, warranties, and service histories”.

A console only looks as complete as the data behind it. The same is true for the Warranty Claims Adjudication Agent: it reads the serial number and start date like a person does, just without asking when they are missing. That article suggests a simple test: count how many serial numbers from last year’s claims exist as assets with a start date.

Field Service begins at the work order

Assets, milestones, participants and fleets are shared ground. Maintenance plans, work orders, service appointments and technician stock belong to Field Service, covered in the Field Service masterclass chapter on assets and maintenance and in maintenance contracts. Design the asset model once for both, not per project.

Two add-ons often come up here. According to the add-ons page8, Connected Assets costs $15,000 per org and month and brings telemetry; Asset Service Lifecycle Management costs $75 per user and month and comes with Field Service editions. Neither is needed for a clean installed base. Whether telemetry pays off is covered in predictive maintenance in Salesforce.

Count the gaps in last year’s warranty claims

1. 01

   Count the gaps

   Take last year's warranty claims and check how many serial numbers exist as assets with owner and start date.

2. 02

   Write the start date rule

   Which milestone starts the warranty, and what applies when it is missing.

3. 03

   Assign owners per field

   ERP, dealer or service, one per field.

4. 04

   Define milestone types

   Delivery, registration, installation, resale, scrapping: only those someone will actually maintain.

5. 05

   Make registration required

   As a fixed step in the dealer process.

The ratio from the first step, serial numbers with owner and start date divided by all claims, is the number I measure the project by. The full after-sales picture is in the warranty and after-sales chapter of the Manufacturing Cloud masterclass.

Sources8

1. 1Manufacturing Cloud service page (opens in a new tab)salesforce.com
2. 2AssetMilestone reference (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
3. 3reference (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
4. 4reference (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
5. 5Fleet reference (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
6. 6fleet asset (opens in a new tab)developer.salesforce.com
7. 7Trailhead overview (opens in a new tab)trailhead.salesforce.com
8. 8add-ons page (opens in a new tab)salesforce.com