A method of monitoring an entity within a process plant wherein the entity includes a plurality of lower level entities, includes acquiring a plurality of use indices, acquiring a plurality of weighting values, and creating an aggregate use index from a combination of the lower level use indices and weighting values, wherein the aggregate use index represents status information regarding the entity. Each use index pertains to status information regarding one of the plurality of lower level entities, and each weighting value pertains to the importance of a lower level entity among the plurality of lower level entities.