Pieces of equipment that are to be maintained in a technical system, can be grouped together in asset units from an accounting perspective. In this case, the superior technical system is equivalent to a tangible asset in the business sense.

By grouping pieces of equipment together to form tangible assets, you can perform comprehensive analyses at a higher level than that of the individual piece of equipment.

In the R/3 System, the application components Plant Maintenance (PM) and Asset Accounting (FI-AA) are linked together by the tangible asset number in the equipment master.

If your company does not use the application component Asset Accounting, you cannot use the tangible asset number in the equipment master.

For more information on asset accounting, see the SAP documentation FI - AA - Asset Accounting.