In Pilario we differentiate among different type of assets. You can think of assets as the entities you create in Pilario.
We are currently working on expanding the information in this article.
Products
Products are, likely, the most common asset in Pilario. Think of a product as something you produce at your company. You can run LCA over your products.
For example, your company produces an aluminium can of 33 cl with imported aluminium from Norway.
Sites
Sites are only usable with the Carbon Footprint model and they relate to your buildings, offices, etc. You can run carbon footprint assessments over your sites.
For example, your 10 employees Madrid office with all of them working at the office and a thermostat at 21°C.
Scenarios
Scenarios are simulations you run over your products, generally to see how tweaking specific parameters in any of the stages would affect the outcome of your LCA.
For example, you could create a scenario (over your product aluminium can of 33 cl) to see how using aluminium from The Netherlands would affect your results.
Or, you could create a scenario (over your site 10 employees Madrid office) to see how reducing the thermostat to 20°C would affect your carbon footprint.
Templates
Templates allow you to define the baseline to create products, type or scenarios. In a template you define several attributes of the asset so you don't have to re-enter them every time.
For example, you could have a template to create aluminium cans, from the same aluminium provider without specifying the capacity. And then, create products like Aluminium can of 33 cl, Aluminium can of 50 cl...