Maximo for Transportation has a unique feature in the asset application known as the asset alias. This feature helps to create multiple aliases for an asset.
Consider the scenario of a transportation asset, say a rail car whose number is defined based on the type of bogies and the truck system attached to it. So if the configuration of the railcar is changed, the number also changes. In Maximo, changing of the configuration will result in decommissioning of the old asset and creating a new one with the new railcar number. This will result in lots of new record being created in the system and loss of history of the asset. Asset alias functionality can be used to avoid this. Every time the configuration of the railcar is changed, a new alias can be added to the asset and the old one can be deleted.
The best part of this feature is that the user doesn’t have to remember the asset number while working on the asset in Maximo. Simply putting the alias in the asset number field in work order or PM application would fetch the asset number for that alias. And this feature of fetching the asset based on alias works not only in the transportation applications but also in the base applications.
How to add alias to an asset? – Refer the ibm technote below.