What is an asset hierarchy?
An asset hierarchy is the structured breakdown of a physical asset into its systems and components, from the whole facility down to the individual item of equipment. It is used to tag and retrieve the documents that belong to each part, so a drawing or manual can be found by the piece of plant it describes.
Where an asset register lists what an organisation owns, the hierarchy arranges those assets as a tree: a plant containing pump stations, a station containing pumps, a pump carrying its own drawings and manuals. That structure is what lets a maintenance team open the record for one item without reading the whole archive.
How the hierarchy works for an asset owner.
Most asset owners already hold the hierarchy in an asset management system such as Maximo, Ellipse, or SAP, where each plant, station, and item of equipment carries its own tag. The engineering content is mapped onto that same tree, so every drawing, model, and manual is filed under the asset it describes rather than under a project folder that means little to an operator years later.
The payoff comes at retrieval. When a crew is standing at a pump station with a fault, they need the current drawing for that one asset, not the whole set. A hierarchy tied to the documents lets them walk down the tree from the facility to the item and open only what belongs to it, whether the sheet was drawn last month or scanned from a decades-old archive.
Read why the hierarchy shapes the recordHow Lunr handles the hierarchy.
Lunr can process the underlying asset hierarchy from systems like Maximo, Ellipse, or SAP to tag operations and maintenance documentation, so a document is retrieved by the asset it belongs to. Group every facility into a Portfolio, classify by folder for hierarchical browsing, and tag documents for grouping, reporting, and search. Place a QR code at the asset location and it links straight to the relevant documents, while XRAY searches the text inside every drawing, scans included.
Related reading.
Why contextualising engineering documents within the organisation's asset hierarchy makes sense for asset owners.
How the drawings, models, and manuals for an asset are captured, controlled, and kept for its whole life.
Treatment plants, pump stations, and network assets grouped into Portfolios, each carrying its own asset information.
The master index of every drawing on a project or asset, and how it sits alongside the hierarchy.
Questions about asset hierarchies.
- What is the difference between an asset hierarchy and an asset register?
- An asset register lists the assets an organisation owns, one entry per asset. An asset hierarchy arranges those same assets as a tree, from the whole facility down to each item of equipment, showing how the parts fit together. The register tells you what you have, and the hierarchy tells you where each part sits and what documents belong to it.
- Where does the asset hierarchy come from?
- Most asset owners already hold the hierarchy in an asset management system such as Maximo, Ellipse, or SAP, built to run operations and maintenance. The same structure can be reused to organise engineering content, so the documents follow the asset tree the organisation already maintains rather than a separate scheme built just for drawings.
- How does an asset hierarchy help find documents?
- Each document is tagged against the part of the hierarchy it describes, so it can be retrieved by asset rather than by file name. A maintenance team walks down the tree from the facility to the specific item and opens only the drawings and manuals that belong to it. A QR code placed at the asset location can link straight to that set.
Tie every document to its asset.
Book a walkthrough with someone who knows what an asset hierarchy and a transmittal are, and watch Lunr file every drawing under the asset it belongs to.
10M+ documents under management · Hosted in Australia and the US · SAML · Full audit trail · Export anytime
- entity
- Lunr Labs Pty Ltd
- location
- Melbourne AU
- workspace
- documents.lunr.app
- rev
- 2026