Last Updated on April 24, 2024 by maximosecrets

Planning, or to give it a fuller title, Maintenance Planning, includes the modules of Maximo Manage where work preparation is performed and includes the Resources module, a sub-module of Administration, Planning, Safety a sub-module of Planning and the applications in the Preventive Maintenance module.

Resources

People

A person record must be created before a labor or user record is created. In MAS users are created in the Suite Administration, which you access using the button (cog icon) to the left of the Help menu button. The Users option lets you define the user details, contact information, locale and time zone, users can also be imported. The person and user records defined at the suite level are then automatically synchronised with Maximo Manage. Passwords are set at the administration level. Users can be a mix of local MAS usernames/passwords or those provided by an identity provider.

The People application is still used for other settings which are specific to Maximo Manage functionality and for creating people who will not be Maximo users. A labor record is someone assigned to work. You can create a new person record at the same time as creating a new labor record, however, if you do this then the user you define at the suite level must use the same Person/Labor identifier, otherwise it will not synchronise if you later create the user. The preferred approach should now be to create the user in MAS Administration and then create the Labor record after the person and user have been synchronised to Maximo Manage. It will be a lot easier if user, person, and labor all have the same identifiers.

When creating a new person, labor or user record consideration should be given to the identity of the record and the privacy of the information it contains. These records are used in many places across the Maximo Application Suite and the identity, as with all key fields in Maximo, cannot be changed once it has been created. Current privacy regulations might suggest that the username and hence person and labor are not identifiable to a person who has left your company, as that person may have a right to be forgotten.

The person’s display name is shown in most places across Maximo and has the advantage of being able to be changed. A person can have multiple phone and email addresses of which one will be designated the primary phone and primary email. However, the fields which are defined at the Suite level are now read-only in the People application, therefore additional phone and email addresses must now be created in the MAS Administration application and they cannot be changed by a user. 

One of the configurations that can be easily made to help protect privacy is to use a hover-over dialog box when only the identifier field of the person is used and displayed. The hover-over dialog pops-up to show additional details from the person record, for example their display name, primary phone, and primary email.

A person can have a supervisor and the supervisor can also have their supervisor field entered with their manager. This creates a person hierarchy which is used in some areas of Maximo, for example Desktop Requisitions and Workflow. A person can also have a default location and site, and a shipping and billing address. The person’s default location can be used as the default on new service requests. A person can have a photo loaded as an image, but this cannot be performed by the user through their profile options. However, a user can use the Set or Modify E-Signature to set/change the key used for electronic signatures.

There are other fields on the person record including language, locale and time zone which are available for the user to change when they are logged-in, by using the Profile button. There are fields for controlling defaults in Workflow and for recording the details of a procurement card if one is held.

A person can be associated with one or more locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More and assets as a user or custodian of the asset and an action is provided in the People application View Related Assets and Locations. There are actions in the Assets and Locations application called Associate Users and Custodians and this can be applied to multiple locations and assets in one action. You can also change the user and custodians when you use the Move/Modify action in several other Maximo applications.

If a person has an associated calendar, then their primary calendar can be updated with periods of unavailability or periods when they expect to be additionally available. The Modify Person Availability action is available from the List tab and the changes can be applied to all the people selected using the Mass Modify button. Maximo Scheduler is now available to all MAS clients and the Graphical Resource View application is much easier to use to make person (or crew) availability changes and these can also be made to multiple records in the same action.

A person can be associated with one or more commodity groups and commodity codes using the action Associate Commodities. For example, a buyer may be associated with one or more commodity groups or specific commodity codes of a commodity group. 

Returning to the subject of privacy, there is an action Manage People Data which allows you to delete email, phone or sms records, or make null or randomize the attributes in tables like Person, Labor, and User. This action can be used on the List tab against a selected set of people records.

Person Groups

A person group is used widely but mainly on tickets and work orders to assign ownership to a group of people. There is a checkbox on the person group record to mark a person group as being used as a work group on a crew. A role can be defined that points to a Person Group and the role can then be used in Workflow and Communication Templates. A Person Group can be used as a contact group for services and as an audience for a bulletin board message.

A person can belong to many person groups. Both a person and a person group exist at the system level in Maximo. The person group has fields to identify who will act as the default for the group, for an organization, or a site. 

The Person Group application shows two table windows and, in most cases, only the top table window of people will be used. The Alternates table window is used for identifying an alternate to the person in the top table window. Alternates are used in workflow during the assignment process. People in the person group are searched in sequence order and if all people in the top table window are unavailable then workflow will start searching through the alternates. When Maximo is being used with people who are on shifts the Workflow assignment process will consider whether the person is scheduled to be on-shift.

Crafts

A craft represents a type of skill or trade that is assigned to work. A craft may have multiple skill levels, for example first class, second class, apprentice, where the hourly rate reflects a person who performs work at the craft-skill level. Labor records are assigned to a craft or craft-skill level and the hourly rate used by that person is either inherited from the craft-skill or can be specific to the person.

Crafts and/or craft-skills can be associated with vendors who have hourly rates they charge you when work is performed requiring a particular skill or trade. These outside rates may also be referenced on a labor rate contract that defines the hourly rate to be used. The labor associated with the labor rate contract will also be referenced in the Crafts application on the Associated Labor tab.

Hourly rates used at times beyond the normal work hours of a shift may be defined against the craft. The action Manage Premium Pay Codes defines the premium pay code, its description, and a rate type. The multiplier rate type multiplies the hourly rate by a multiplier rate, for example 1.25 for hours greater than the shift hours, 1.5 times for Saturday working. The increment rate type adds an additional hourly rate to the standard rate for a particular premium pay code. The hourly rate type overwrites the standard rate when a particular premium pay code is used. A checkbox can allow one or more premium pay codes to always be added to new crafts, alternatively, they can be added at the bottom of the Crafts tab. The premium pay codes are specific to a craft and are not defined for a specific craft-skill level or vendor.

Crafts can also be made available to crews. There is a checkbox on the craft record for this, alternatively there is the action Make Available to Crews which will set this field for all crafts in the selected set. The View Crew Requirements action shows the crew types and crews that reference the craft.

Labor

A labor record is someone who is assigned to work. A labor record is defined at the organization level, a person record is defined at the system level. If a person works across multiple organizations, then they will need more than one labor record. 

A labor record has a status which defaults to active and can be changed to inactive, this is independent of the status on their person record. However, making a person inactive will also make their labor record(s) inactive. If you want to make a labor record active again you will need to first set the person record to be active, then make the labor record active.

A labor record can belong to multiple crafts. The hourly rate can differ depending on the craft and is normally defaulted from the craft-skill record, but it can be modified. One of the crafts will be defined as the default craft for the labor. Assignments are normally made by matching the craft required on work to labor that have that craft as their default craft, but assignments can match to the secondary craft of a labor record. If a craft has multiple skill levels, then you only assign the highest skill level of a craft to a labor record. If a person was an electrician first class, they can be assigned to work that only requires an electrician second class, but the reverse is not true, work requiring an electrician first class cannot be assigned a labor that is an electrician second class.

A person with a labor record can have multiple qualifications linked to this labor record. These qualifications are those specific to performing certain jobs whether externally acquired or internally, for example, a person is trained on a specific safety procedure. Some qualifications can expire after a period and need to be renewed in time for the labor to continue to perform jobs that require that qualification. Each labor qualification has its own status, active or inactive and the qualification can be extended or renewed.

A labor record may have an inventory location. The action Create Labor Inventory Location creates a location of type LABOR. This is a transit location like the location type COURIER. Transit locations maintain a balance of an item. You use an Inventory Usage document to transfer in and then transfer out to another storeroom. Labor inventory locations can also be used for rotating assets (items or tools) which are loaned to others via a reservation and then returned to the owner who is responsible for those assets and their maintenance. 

As labor record their time against work orders or other activities there is an action Zero Year to Date Hours, which will zero regular hours, premium hours and overtime refused hours, this is normally performed manually by a Maximo Administrator at the start of a new financial year.

Qualifications

Qualifications are acquired by a person and associated with their labor record. The qualifications application is used for defining the qualification and determining whether a certificate is required, the duration of the qualification and how much the qualification must be used during that period.

In the Labor tab you can see who has a particular qualification and their expiration dates, you can change the qualification status and extend/renew a qualification for a person.

You can associate a craft and optionally a skill level to the qualification. The labor who are assigned to this craft-skill level should have and should maintain that qualification. Similarly, you can specify the tools that require operators of those tools to have this qualification. Crews also have required qualifications (see later).

A qualification record exists at the OrganizationA structural element of a Maximo database which is used for data sharing and is often aligned to a legal entity of an organisation. More level and has a status of active with a Change Status action that can move it too inactive.

Crew Types

Crew Types is a template for Crews. A crew is a group of labor that are assigned work and travel together to perform that work. It would normally be two or more persons; it could be one person but that would be considered unusual.

A crew type is the required craft-skills, qualifications and tools that will need to be fulfilled by the members of a crew. Before a crew type can be created the positions in the crew need to be defined in the ALN domain called AMCREWPOSITION. Each position in the crew will be filled by a labor that has a certain craft-skill level. Only the craft records that have been set to be available for use with crews can be selected. A quantity of the same craft-skill is achieved by having multiple positions that require the same craft-skill.

The hourly rate of the crew is calculated from the sum of the hourly rates of each craft-skill associated with the crew type, but the calculated value can be overridden with a new rate.

A crew type can also require a set of tools, the tool sequence field makes each record unique so that a quantity of the same tool can be entered. As the tools are added, if there are any qualifications required for the use of those tools, they are also added to the crew type. Additional qualifications can be added and linked to a crew type position or alternatively a quantity given meaning that there must be at least this number of persons in a crew that hold this qualification. Only the tool records that have been set to be available for use with crews can be selected.

Crew types are defined at the Organization level. They are created at a status of active and there is a Change Status action to change the status to inactive.

You can add a crew type to a job plan or work order in the same way as you can add a craft-skill requirement. 

Crews

A crew is based on a crew type which is a mandatory field, and which acts as a template for the crew. The new crew receives a copy of the required crafts, tools, and qualifications from the crew type. If you update the crew type definition it does not update associated crews the user will need to manually update the crews as necessary. 

After the crew has been created you can add additional craft-skills, qualifications and required tools. A crew may have a set of required qualifications. These may be the required qualifications for the use of a tool, the qualifications associated with a particular crew position, or just a qualification needed to be met by one of the team assigned to the crew. A quantity may also be added to the qualification, for example two persons should be qualified to drive the truck. 

A crew should have a calendar and shift, and this can be updated with periods of unavailability or periods when the crew is expected to be additionally available. The Modify Crew Availability action is available from the List tab and the changes can be applied to all the crews selected using the Mass Modify button. The Graphical Resource View application is now available to make Labor and Crew availability changes, and this can be performed for multiple records in the same action.

A crew normally works from a work location/site. There are a set of fields used to control aspects of Maximo’s location-based services, how often the GPS position of the crew should be refreshed, whether the location is based on the GPS position of one of the labor records rather than the GPS position of the vehicle the crew is using, the normal start and end locations for the crew. Location-based services also applies to labor records.

The crew has a set of work positions where each position has a required craft-skill level. The Labor Assignments tab is where you assign labor to a particular position for a period, the end date may be left open. The labor record chosen for the position should match the craft-skill level requirements, the person should also meet the qualification requirements for the position. While the Select Value lookup defaults to the same craft-skill level it is not enforced.

The Tool Assignments tab is where you assign tools to match the required tools for a period, the end date may be left open. The tool record chosen for the position should match the tool requirements. While the Select Value lookup defaults to the same tool number it is not enforced but can be easily made to do so by making the field read-only.

As you make labor and tools assignments Maximo will assess the assignment and various warnings will be given. You cannot make assignments with an effective date in the past. The action Crew Assignment Status shows the labor, tool and qualification requirements and there is a status field to indicate whether these requirements are being met by the assignments you make. The Requirement Status field will start at NOT ASSIGNED and if a perfect match is made will change to OK. If the assigned labor is not available for the required calendar and shift or the person has already been assigned elsewhere then the status will show as NOT AVAILABLE. If the labor assigned to a position does not meet the qualifications of the position the qualification status will show as NOT QUALIFIED. If the skill level of a position is not at the required level it will indicate that the requirement has not been met, REQ NOT MET, etc.

Partial day assignments are supported for both labor and tool assignments, an assignment being able to be made between an effective date and an end date on the same day. Dates default to the start and end of a shift. The same position in the crew should not be filled by two persons, their assignments should not overlap. For example, John Smith, an electrician works the first half of a shift from 07:00 to 10:59 and Jayne Jones works the second half of the shift from 11:00 to 15:00. Both John and Jayne are assigned to the same position.

The Unrestricted Row button allows you to create a new position that did not exist on the crew type, and it is also used to resolve assignment conflicts. For example, if you wish to assign a labor for a period but that person is already assigned elsewhere on an open-ended assignment, Maximo will end the current assignment and create a new one to start after the end of the new assignment created through the Unrestricted Row dialog. With this button you are only adding a new assignment, but Maximo handles the existing assignments to fit around it.

Actions exist to allow a user to view, for a range of dates, a person’s labor assignments, or the crew assignments (labor assignments and tool assignments). An action also exists to view the actual history of a crew over a range of dates. In other Maximo applications crews are handled in a similar manner to crafts, you can plan them on Job Plans, plan them on a work order, assign them while using the Assignment Manager application, and report time for members of the crew in the Labor Reporting application. The Maximo Scheduler graphical applications assigns crews in a similar manner to assigning labor to a craft requirement and there is a Gantt based application called Graphical Crew Management for managing the assignments of labor and tools to the crew.

Crews are defined at the Organization level. They are created at a status of active and there is a Change Status action to change the status to inactive.

Work Zones

A work zone is a name given to a geographic area where locations and assets exist. There can be multiple work zone types. There are actions in the Locations and Assets applications for associating the records with a work zone. Labor and Crews can be associated with work zones of each type one of which will be marked as their default work zone. During work assignment travel time can be reduced by matching the default work zone of labor and crews to the work zones referenced on the location or asset. You can override this and match a labor or crew where the work zone associated with the location or asset is not their default work zone.

While work zones are mainly used by utilities, or service providers where the work is geographically spread, it is still relevant to large sites, like airports, refineries, nuclear facilities, hospitals, universities, etc, where it may take 15 minutes or more to get to your next work order. 

Planning

Job Plans

Job Plans is one of the two main applications used with maintenance planning. When a job plan is applied to a work order it create a work plan, it is a template for a work order. The job plan is the tasks and the resources needed to perform those tasks, or the resources needed for the whole job. Job plans can be set at the system level or be specific to an organization or site. 

If a job plan is defined at the organisation level, then it can only be applied to the work orders for the sites that belong to that organization. A work order can apply system wide job plans, those specific to its organization and those specific to its site.

In regulated environments job plans may be set to allow revisions to be created, a revision is a copy of the job plan. Only one revision of the job plan can be set to a status of active and it is only the active job plans that can be applied to a work order. A revision history is maintained and can be reviewed.

Job plans and their tasks can be classified and may have a specification of attributes. This is used in audits, surveys, and inspections where the attributes reference a question to be asked for which an ALN or numeric answer is provided, or a date entered. As there can be multiple tasks to a job plan the questionnaire can become quite detailed. 

An alternative approach to using a classification is to associate the job plan or its tasks to an Inspection Form which is created in the Manage Inspection Forms Work Center.

When a job plan has multiple tasks then precedence logic can be applied between these tasks. A feature called Flow Control can be set-up to automatically set to in progress one task when its predecessor tasks have been completed. 

There are several fields which are copied to the work order when the job plan is applied. The fields in the responsibility section; supervisor, crew, lead, work group, owner, owner group and crew work group, are all copied.  The two constraint fields, Start Constraint Offset and Finish Constraint Offset are integer values in hours which when applied to the work order with target dates calculate a Start No Earlier Than and Finish No Later Than date. This creates a time window around the work order target dates, a period in which the work order should be started and completed. There are similar responsibility and constraint fields on the Preventive Maintenance application and in general these fields will take priority if both the PM and the job plan have different values for the same field.

On the job plan tasks there is a field called Nested Job Plans which allows a job plan task to reference another job plan which itself could contain tasks which might reference a nested job plan. This creates a work order hierarchy when the job plan is applied to the work order. A hierarchy of three levels, parent work order, child work orders and their tasks are quite practical, a fourth level is probably not.

The job plan task has a Meter field. This is the meter name of a meter of type Gauge or Characteristic. When the job plan is applied to the work order then Maximo will search for Condition Monitoring records for the asset or location and meter name, if found Maximo will insert the measure point number against which the measurement will be recorded.

As Maximo Scheduler is now included in Maximo Manage there are fields for indicating whether asset or location downtime are required, and whether an asset or location maintenance window will be needed. A further field may indicate that an appointment is required, this fixes the schedule dates on a work order so that they cannot be changed when an appointment has been made. Appointments can also be made on a task.

The four tabs at the bottom of the job plan application allow the labor, materials, services, and tools to be planned. Each record can relate to a specific task or to the job plan.

• Labor – Normally used to define the Craft or Crew Type needed to perform the work, a quantity can be specified. If multiple craft records are created without referencing a task, then this indicates that multiple labor need to arrive for the work order at the same time. Tasks will allow the labor to have a staggered start when precedence logic is applied between the tasks.
• Materials – Material items are defined in the Item Master or Inventory applications. A quantity can be requested. The storeroom in which the item will be issued can be provided and when referenced the unit cost and line cost will be calculated. A Direct Issue item will be a material item that needs to be sourced externally in which case the storeroom will not be required. If a Vendor is selected, then the last price for the item from this vendor will be used for the unit cost and to calculate the line cost.
• Services – Service items is a type of item that cannot be held in a storeroom, they will be typically requested through the creation of a Purchase Requisition or Purchase Order. On the Service Items application, a site must be entered before a vendor can be selected. If the service item has been purchased previously from the vendor, then the last price is used for the unit cost and to calculate the line cost.
• Tools – Tool items is the third type of item and are defined in the Tools application. A tool can be held in a storeroom using the application Stocked Tools. The checkbox Reservation Required will need to be checked before selecting the tool storeroom against which the reservation will be made.

Job plans can sometimes be quite similar. When this is the case, they might be consolidated into one and the tasks, labor, materials, services, and tools conditionally applied. The condition is set up in the Conditional Expression Manager application. When the job plan is applied to a work order each record with a condition is evaluated and if the condition is met for the task, labor, material, service, or tool then it is copied to the work order.

The Work Assets tab is used for:

• Associating job plans with specific locations, assets, or items. This can help users with the selection of the right job plan on the work order.
• Associating job plans with specific items, locations, assets, and a safety plan. This is used to default the safety plan onto the work order when the job plan is applied to it.
• Associating job plans with a specific rotating item so that when the item is purchased a work order is created to install or commission the rotating asset. The work type of the work order to be created can be referenced.

The Job Plan application is often extended by other add-on products or industry solutions. For example, Service Provider allows one or more customers to be associated with the job plan. Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Manager, adds several tabs. Maximo Calibration which is also included in Maximo Manage adds an association between a job plan and one or more data sheets.

There is a feature of job plans which must be enabled through a System Property before you can use it, it is called dynamic job plans. There is an associated application called Resource Levels Management which must also be authorised. Imagine some work being performed on a linear asset, the quantity of the resources that you need may be dependent on the length of the segment of the linear asset being worked on. When enabled additional fields are displayed at the header, task, and each of the four resource tabs, labor, materials, services, and tools. 

The quantities, hours and durations are calculated when the job plan is applied to a work order. There are five different calculations that can be made where Static is the term used for standard values where no calculations are made. Proportional is used to linearly scale the hours, quantities, and durations by the number of work units you enter, and this can also be applied to non-linear work orders. For example, you have a building with four floors and several fire extinguishers spread across those floors. Maintenance or an inspection of fire extinguishers will be dependent on the number of work units, fire extinguishers in the case, that exist on each floor. In this example, a single job plan could be used for several buildings where the number of work units is defined on the route stops of a route where each route stop is the floor of a building. Dynamic Job Plans, once understood, can save you from having many similar job plans where the quantities, hours and job durations are the only factors that are different.

When working with linear assets, dynamic job plans can become more complex, but there is an action called Simulate Dynamic Job Plan where you can see the effect of the calculations. The Total Work Units is calculated based on the Start and End Measure of the linear asset that you provide in the simulator. Some calculations use a level defined in the Resource Levels Management application, for example, the quantity of supervisors may differ depending on the length of road being worked on, one supervisor for 0 to 10 miles, two supervisors for 10 to 20 miles. The calculations can also consider an attribute of the linear asset or an attribute of a feature of a linear asset. Pothole repairs might be dependent on the number of lanes the road has, and if the number of lanes changes along the stretch of road where repairs will be made then the calculations consider the length of each segment where the number of lanes has a certain value.

Resource Levels Management

This application is used to define thresholds which are used with dynamic job plans. These can be based on hours, quantities or both hours and quantities. These records are used on the job plan when the dynamic job plan calculation type is LEVEL or ATTR_LVL. A Resource Levels Management record of type HOURS is used on the Job Plan Header, a Job Task, or on the Job Plan Labor tab. A Resource Levels Management record of type QUANTITY is used on the Job Plan Materials, Services and Tools tabs. I wouldn’t use a type of BOTH, as it may not be selectable. 

For each threshold you enter a non-overlapping start and end and a value for the hours and/or quantity. A new record is entered to represent a resource type that changes based on length, for example there may be a ratio of the number of foremen needed for working on a road depending on the distance of the work.

Routes

A route is a set of locations or assets (the route stops) that are applied to a PM or directly to a work order and which creates a group of work to be performed at the same time. When applied the route creates either child work orders, tasks, or records in the multiple assets, locations, and CI table, one record for each route stop. 

Routes are often used during inspections, surveys, or audits. The job plan to be performed at each route stop is either determined from the PM, manually applied to the work order, or if the route is defined to create child work orders, then a job plan can be specified for each route stop. Therefore, routes can be used to inspect or perform preventive maintenance work on a set of similar assets or a varied set of assets that might be at the same location and where the work is to be performed at the same time.

A route stop can reference an inspection form created in the Manage Inspection Forms Work Center. This is useful if there are several questions that need to be answered for the same asset or you have multiple assets of the same type where the set of questions is the same. It is possible for multiple route stops to reference the same location or asset, and this might be used if you only had a very small number of questions to ask about the same asset, but if the same questions are asked on multiple assets then the inspection form can be reused and would be worth the effort to set-up.

Each route stop can have a number of work units, this is copied onto the work order and used to calculate a total number of work units, which is then applied during calculations when using dynamic job plans. 

Manage Inspection Forms

The Manage Inspection Forms is currently a Work Center application, but it is expected to be replaced with the MAS 9.0 release in summer 2024. It is used for designing inspection forms and visualising what the inspection will look like when a technician uses it.

An inspection form is a series of questions where you define the allowed responses. You enter a question and select a response type from a text response, single numeric entry, date, time or date/time entry, a single choice entry from a set of options you provide, a single choice from a domain of values, or where multiple choices can be made. You can also record meter readings, upload files, or capture a signature.

Questions can be added to groups to break the overall inspection into logical units. Questions can be set to be required or left as optional. Conditions can be applied to a question which provides a single response to direct the user to another question depending on the answer given. This can also be used with a characteristic meter. When the response is a numeric then a validation can be created to ensure that the value entered is within a specified range.

Inspection forms start at draft status but must be made active before they can be used. An inspection form is under revision control and if you revise the inspection form it is at pending revision status, but the previous revision remains active. When the new revision is made active the previous revision is marked as revised and can no longer be used. You can make the inspection form inactive. 

An inspection form can allow an automation script to become available when the technician conducts the inspection, for example to raise a follow-on work order for items that require an action. 

Inspection forms can be set to be hands-free where questions are read aloud and responses are recorded, this uses Text to Speech and Speech to Text services.

Safety

Hazards

The Hazards application allows a library of hazards to be created. Hazards are defined at the organization level. A hazard may be a hazardous material, if so, it would be normal to store the Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) as an attachment to the hazard record.

A hazard can have a set of precautions which are used to inform workers how to reduce the risks associated with the hazard. A hazard can also have tag out procedures defined to help workers follow a process when they encounter the hazard.

Precautions

The Precautions application defines a library of precautions and displays the hazards against which they have been associated. Precaution records are defined at the site level.

Lock Out / Tag Out

A tag out record is defined for a location or asset and is therefore defined at the site level. One or more lock out operations are then defined against the tag out record. The lock out operations are performed against other locations or assets and are required to be performed by the worker in a specific order prior to the work and then in a specific order after the work has been completed, the apply sequence and the remove sequence.

Safety Plans

A safety plan pulls all the safety information together for a location or asset, it is defined at the site level. The work assets for the safety plan are selected and then the action Select Hazards is used to apply the hazards, precautions and tag out rules related to the work asset to the safety plan. Additional hazards, precautions, hazardous materials and tag out rules can also be applied when there are safety related locations and assets.

The work asset and safety plan combination are then referenced on the work assets tab of a job plan so that when the job plan is applied to a work order which references the location or asset all the related safety information is copied onto the work order.

Preventive Maintenance

Master PM

A master PM is a template for a PM. The master PM is associated with a rotating item defined in the Item Master application and then the user can create PMs for selected locations and/or assets that reference the same rotating item. There is an action Update PMs for updating PMs associated with the master PM. A set of checkboxes controls what data on the PM is updated from the master PM, extended date, seasonal dates, job plan sequence, time-based frequency, and work order information.

PMs can be time based or meter based, consequently the master PM allows this information to be set-up. Time based is a set frequency in days, weeks, months, or years. A check box allows the next due date to be determined from the target start date or the actual finish of the previous work order. Meter based PMs allow the next due date to be determined from the actual readings of one or more continuous meters. A PM can be both time and meter based in which case whichever falls due first will cause a work order to be generated.

The master PM allows active seasonal dates to be set up. These are the seasons in which if the PM falls due during the period of the season, then the work order will be generated, if it falls due outside of the season, it will be generated for the first day of the next season. The active days of the week can also be selected. If Monday through Friday are selected, then if the PM falls due at the weekend, then the work order will be generated for the following Monday.

The master PM can have a single job plan or a job plan sequence. For example, a monthly PM might have one job plan which is performed each month, but then a different job plan is applied once per year. The first job plan has a sequence of 1, the annual job plan has a sequence of 12. Every 12^th work order we apply a different job plan to the generated work order. The annual job plan would typically have the same tasks as the monthly job plan but additional ones to support the annual maintenance.

There are other fields on the Master PM which are copied to the PM; work order information, lead time, extended date, and alert lead but they will be discussed in the next section.

Master PMs can be referenced on an asset template so that the when the asset template generates assets it also creates the associated PMs. Existing Preventive Maintenance records can be associated with a Master PM, the application can therefore be used without either referencing rotating items or using asset templates. 

Preventive Maintenance

A PM record generates a work order and is used for frequency-based inspections and preventive maintenance. A PM does not have to be associated with a master PM and often it doesn’t, if it is a checkbox will allow the PM to override updates from the master PM.

The first thing to recognise is that a PM is associated with a specific site, the site against which the location, asset or route is referenced. A master PM is defined at the system level. A PM either references a location or an asset, it cannot reference both, the PM can also reference a route. There is a validation to check that the PM references a location, asset, route, or a GL account, however, what is normal is either a location, location and route, or an asset. For meter-based PMs a location or asset is required.

The frequency, seasonal dates and job plan sequence tabs are like that found on the Master PM application.

• Lead time is the amount of time needed to cover the longest lead time of materials. It is added to the slack time which is how far ahead of time you need to prepare or group the work orders prior to assigning them to labor or crews. Lead time plus slack time is how far ahead of the next due date work orders are generated.
• An extended date is a date later than the next due date which is used to extend the period before the next work order will be generated. The next work order of a PM wouldn’t normally be delayed beyond the frequency cycle otherwise it might cause an issue with the sequencing of the job plans. For example, a 3 monthly PM might be extended for a period up to 1 month.
• Alert lead only has an effect when changing the status of a corrective maintenance (CM) work order. If I need to perform CM work, then as a planner I need to understand whether there is PM work which will fall due shortly as I may choose to perform the PM work early and fix the CM work order at the same time. The alert lead when applied to time-based PMs is the number of days before the PM will fall due where I wish to be alerted when performing CM work. For a meter-based PM, it is the number of units to go before the PM will fall due.
• Work order information is data copied to the work order, for example, the work type, priority, and work order status of each generated work order.

The responsibility section is a set of fields which are copied to the work order, and which are the same set found on the job plan. Similarly start and finish constraint offsets are also found on the job plan.

PMs can exist in a PM hierarchy. A work order hierarchy is created when the PM at the top of the hierarchy is generated. The status of the PM can be rolled down the hierarchy. The PM statuses are Draft, Active, or Inactive. A series of inspections performed at the same frequency at the same physical location can be grouped together using a PM hierarchy. The child PMs can reference a route. PM hierarchies can also be useful for grouping PMs which need to be performed together at an annual shutdown.

To aid long-term planning a PM can be forecasted without generating work orders, this action can also be applied to multiple PMs and run as a background task. The PM must be active and set to allow forecasting to take place. Once generated the forecast dates can be modified and later dates reforecast based on the amended dates. This allows a non-linear schedule to be established, the forecasted dates will be used to determine when to generate work orders. Forecast dates can be locked/unlocked. 

The Forecast Cost tab uses the forecast dates to generate a projection of costs for the PM. The Calculate Costs button will consider job plan sequences, routes and nested job plans and use the costs defined for the labor, materials, services, and tools defined on the associated job plans. Forecast costs do not consider dynamic job plans. Work orders can be generated from one or more PMs either manually or as a background task, a Cron Task. Work orders can be generated for those PMs which are due today or a few days ahead, a value that you specify, this is sometimes referred to as the slack time. There are also background Cron Tasks for generating PM forecasts and for calculating PM forecast costs.