Deep in the Dock Ward distillery, an alembic tower rises three stories from furnace base to condensation coil, its copper surfaces etched with arcane runes that channel elemental heat through a precisely calibrated sequence of heating, condensing, and collecting. When the condensation coil fouls or an elemental furnace drifts out of alignment, the entire distillation line halts, and every hour of downtime costs the Waterdeep Trading Company lost production, spoiled ingredients, and unmet contracts. The Asset Management module in Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management is where these physical assets are classified, located, maintained, and connected to the financial records that track their cost and performance across the company's facilities and trade routes.

Asset Management provides a comprehensive framework that spans the full lifecycle of physical assets, from the moment a piece of equipment is registered to the day it is scrapped. It covers the type classifications that define how assets behave, the functional location hierarchies that map the plant floor from site down to individual equipment positions, the service levels that set response time expectations based on operational criticality, the individual asset records that carry parent-child relationships and operational history, the maintenance requests that capture reported breakdowns for triage, the work orders that direct repair activities through approval and scheduling, the fault management tools that build a diagnostic knowledge base of symptoms, causes, and remedies, the project integration that ensures every maintenance cost flows to the correct financial ledger, the standardized job definitions that bring consistency to maintenance procedures, and the worker group configurations that assign blacksmiths, brewers, mages, and mechanics to the right teams. Greta Ironfist expects every piece of equipment to be tracked from installation to retirement, every maintenance event to be documented with root cause analysis, and every repair cost to be posted against the correct project. These labs deliver that level of governance.

What You Will Learn in This Guide

Asset Types: Define the lifecycle states that control how assets progress from creation through active use to eventual retirement, configure the lifecycle models that govern the allowed transitions between those states, and create the asset type classifications that group equipment by function. For the Waterdeep Trading Company, nineteen asset types cover every component of the distillation line, from the alembic tower itself down to individual vent hoods and condensation coils.

Functional Locations:  Map the physical hierarchy of places where assets are installed and maintained. This module covers functional location lifecycle states and models, the location types that classify each level of the hierarchy, and the creation of the location records themselves. The Waterdeep Trading Company's hierarchy flows from the Dock Ward production plant through the distillery area and distillation line down to individual equipment positions, with a parallel branch for the maintenance storeroom.

Service Levels:  Establish the priority framework that determines how quickly maintenance responds to issues at different locations and on different equipment types. Service levels define a numeric scale from critical to low, each with a response window measured in days. Asset service level assignments then map those priorities to specific functional locations and asset types, ensuring that distillation equipment receives same-day attention while routine items follow a longer cycle.

Assets:  Create the individual equipment records that represent every maintainable item the organization owns. This module covers the creation of the sixteen assets at the Dock Ward facility, organized in a parent-child hierarchy with the alembic tower at the root, six first-level components, five second-level sub-assemblies, and two standalone cauldrons in the maintenance storeroom. Each asset is classified by type and installed at a functional location.

Maintenance Requests:  Configure the lifecycle states, lifecycle models, and request types that govern how reported issues are captured, routed through review and approval, and ultimately closed. The maintenance request workflow supports direct approval for urgent breakdowns and a formal review path for standard requests, ensuring that nothing falls through the cracks between the shop floor and the maintenance team.

Work Orders:  Define the lifecycle states, lifecycle models, and work order types that direct the execution of maintenance activities. The work order workflow moves through eight states from creation through approval, scheduling, release, execution, completion, and final sign-off. Six work order types classify maintenance activities as corrective, preventive, safety, investment, round, or general maintenance, each linked to the same lifecycle model.

Faults:  Build a structured diagnostic taxonomy by configuring fault areas that identify equipment zones, fault symptoms that describe observable problems, fault causes that capture root reasons, and fault remedies that record corrective actions. The Fault Designer then links these dimensions to specific asset types, creating the valid classification combinations that maintenance workers select when reporting faults. For the Waterdeep Trading Company, five fault areas and eighteen symptoms cover the range of issues encountered on distillation equipment.

Projects:  Connect asset maintenance activities to project accounting by configuring the shared categories, category groups, project categories, and project groups that control how maintenance costs are posted and reported. Three parent projects serve as containers for automatically generated work order subprojects: one each for preventive maintenance, corrective maintenance, and investment activities. This integration ensures that every hour, material, and fee associated with a work order flows to the correct financial record.

Jobs:  Define the standardized maintenance job framework through job type categories that classify work as corrective, preventive, condition assessment, or service. Maintenance job trades identify the skilled disciplines required, from blacksmiths and brewers to mages and millwrights. Job type variants add scheduling frequency dimensions, supporting weekly, monthly, and annual maintenance cycles that drive preventive maintenance planning.

Workers:  Organize the maintenance workforce into five worker groups by trade, from Blacksmiths and Brewers to Mages, Mechanics, and Millwrights. Assign individual workers to their groups, enabling the dispatch board and scheduling engine to match the right skills to the right work orders. This final configuration step connects the human resources needed to execute the maintenance plans defined throughout the preceding modules.

By completing these labs, we will have established a comprehensive asset management framework for the Waterdeep Trading Company, ensuring that every piece of equipment in the Dock Ward distillery is classified by type, installed at its designated functional location, prioritized by service level, tracked through maintenance requests and work orders, diagnosed with a structured fault taxonomy, costed through project accounting, maintained by standardized job procedures, and serviced by skilled workers assigned to the right teams. From the elemental furnace at the base of the alembic tower to the vent hood at its crown, every asset will be governed with the precision that Greta Ironfist demands.