Allowing tool assets as a schedulable resource during work scheduling/assignment

Why is it useful?

In the utility industries especially in the power sector, Mobile plants(Fleet Assets) are used on a regular basis to perform a job. Now, these mobile plants do act as a schedulable resource as like a human resource so that they can be tracked as an when they are booked out for a job or assigned to a job.

Maximo as a product does not provide any specific capability to define them as a schedulable resource so that they can be scheduled and the assignment(Graphical Assignment) of the individual fleet assets can happen to a job prior to the work execution.

The closest match to represent these Mobile plants from a planning perspective is to set them up as "TOOLS" but then Maximo does not have the capability to show their availability in a calendar view so that scheduler can take a decision which fleet asset should be assigned to the job during the assignment phase. These Mobile plants can be grounded/out of service/not available so having that view at the assignment phase will help the schedulers to schedule and execute the work appropriately. Also, this gives a clear direction to the field staff to go and pick up the right Mobile plant either on the same day of the job or prior to it.

At the moment, Maximo can show us the tool availability in terms of quantity but nothing beyond that during work scheduling. From a scheduler point of view that visibility is greatly appreciated so that the right information is passed to the field staff to pick up the correct plant and not just reporting the usage post work completion.

How should it work?

Not sure if there are any other ways to best manage these Mobile plants so that it can be scheduled & assigned to a job but if "TOOLS" is the way forward then providing a calendar view of tool availability just the way it is for human resources then that can immensely help to determine the individual fleet assets that need to be assigned to a job.