Good afternoon and welcome to Maximo Bite Size, a podcast on the functionality of Maximo Manage. Today is the second episode in the series on Maintenance Planning and we will be discussing Crafts, Labor and Qualifications.

Crafts

Craft records are used to define disciplines that one or more employees or contractors possess, and which are used in the planning and assigning of work. For example, MECH – Mechanic, ELEC – Electrician. Craft records are defined at the Organization level.

If you are managing the costs of your disciplines then a Craft may have multiple Skill Levels, an experienced mechanic will have a higher cost rate than a junior or an apprentice. When work is planned at the craft and skill level if you say that a junior mechanic is needed then you will be able to assign a junior or experienced mechanic but not an apprentice mechanic. This uses the Skill Level Rank where 1 is the highest skill level. Each of these records is referenced as a Craft Rate.

Crafts and Craft/Skill Levels may also be associated with a Vendor or a Labor Rate Contract which the Vendor possesses. The contract will need to be approved and time now must be within its Start and End Dates, the effective period, for it to be selected. Each of these records is also known as a Craft Rate.

The Manage Premium Pay Codes action is used to define codes used for overtime. The MULTIPLIER type is the most common, this multiplies the standard rate for the craft by a factor, for example 1.5 or 2.0. The INCREMENT type adds an hourly rate on top of the standard rate. Alternatively, you can enter a static HOURLY rate in the Default Rate field. The Apply to New Crafts field when checked will automatically add the Premium Pay Code to each new Craft Rate record, otherwise you can add them manually. These Premium Pay Rates apply at the Craft level, and not at the Craft Rate level where the Craft-Skill, Craft-Vendor or Craft-Skill-Vendor-Contract combinations have been defined.

In the Crafts application you can Associate Labor, this is known as the Labor Craft Rate.

Labor

A Labor is a person who can be assigned work or can be a member of a crew.

When entering a new Labor record, you will need to reference a Person, if there is no person with the same reference as that for the new labor record Maximo will suggest that it creates one for you. Consequently, it is normal practise to align the labor code and person code.

A Labor record has cost information and consequently resides at the Organization level. A Person record exists at the System level. If a person works across multiple organizations, they will have multiple labor records.

Many of the fields that you see in the main tab of the Labor application exist on the associated Person record, but you can modify it from the Labor application. The Work Location and Work SiteA structural element of a Maximo database that is used for data separation. More identify the place where the labor normally works, for example the depot site. It is used for filtering other labor who also work at the same place. The Work Type is an indicator of the work type that the labor normally performs.

Labor records can belong to multiple crafts, a person can perform multiple disciplines. For example, a labor can perform both mechanic and electrician work. One of the craft records must be designated the default and the Default Craft will appear on the main tab. The other craft records are called secondary crafts. There are some places in Maximo which only use the default craft, for example, long term scheduling. Other areas of Maximo, for example work assignments can use the secondary crafts.

When you associate craft records with labor records these are known as Labor Craft Rates. The hourly rate can be inherited from the craft’s rate or overridden with a rate specific to that labor when they are using the craft. The Labor Craft Rates can be derived from just the craft, the craft and a skill level, a craft and a vendor, a craft, skill level and vendor, and when a vendor is referenced, you may also reference an active labor rate contract. There are six combinations across the four fields craft, skill level, vendor, and contract and each may have a different default rate, which you might override for a specific labor.

The premium pay rates are only associated with the craft but when the premium pay rate is applied it could be multiplying the rate derived from any of the six combinations of these four fields or from an individual labor rate.

Actual hours are accumulated on a labor record during the year on three basis, regular hours, premium hours, or overtime refused hours, the latter is rarely used but is the only one that can be modified directly from the Labor application, the other two are accumulated from time records. At the start of the year an action should be performed for each labor, Zero Year to Date Hours. Unfortunately, there is no standard action to perform this for multiple labor from the List tab, but you could configure an Escalation to set the three fields to 0 using an Action Group with three actions of type Set Value.

The Labor record has a status field which is separate from the Person’s status. They both have a simple status of Active or Inactive. If you make the Person Inactive, it will make the Labor record(s) Inactive. The reverse is not true, although you will get a warning, you will need to manually make a labor active after making the person active.

There is an action called Create Labor Inventory Location which will define a location of type LABOR as an inventory-based location. This will allow a storeroom to be defined for the labor. Think of this as a technician or engineer who works from their van and who carries a stock of spare parts. Item availability can be viewed across these labor type locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More.

There are several settings in the OrganizationsA structural element of a Maximo database which is used for data sharing and is often aligned to a legal entity of an organisation. More application and Labor Options action, which are specific to Labor:

• Automatically Approve Inside Labor Transactions and Automatically Approve Outside Labor Transactions are used to define whether actual labor records are automatically approved. The default is that inside labor is approved, outside labor is not. Automatically approving inside labor will mean that you cannot correct errors once they are saved, you will need to reverse the transactions with negative hours. Starting out with Maximo, I think it better to allow for approvals to be made from the Labor Reporting application for both inside and outside labor. Labor that belongs to a vendor is referenced as outside labor.
• The “Allow Mismatched Craft and Labor When Reporting Actual Labor” option is normally unchecked which means that you will get a validation error when entering a labor value on an actual labor record when the labor does not have a match for the craft, skill level, vendor and contract combination already entered on that actual labor record. When you use the lookups, this error doesn’t normally occur because the lookups are filtering for the records that would avoid the error.
• Automatically Approve Invoices Created from Labor Transactions option is normally set and will approve an invoice that is created by the Create Invoice action that is found in the Labor Reporting application.
• Future Labor Transaction Tolerance in Hours is a setting with a duration field that defaults to zero and would not allow an actual labor transaction to be created in the future. If you had this set to 4:00 hours, and a labor normally works 08:00 to 16:00, then they could fill in their timesheet after 12:00 on the Friday to record the time they intend to spend on Friday afternoon.

Qualifications

Qualifications are specialist skills and certifications that a person possesses that may help to decide between one Labor record or another when assigning work. A qualification can also be a requirement to use a tool or a requirement for a crew position.

When defining a qualification there is a Qualification Type field, a simple list of values which you can use for filtering. A Qualification may or may not have an associated certification. When a certification is required, you can specify a duration in which case when the qualification is gained by a labor record and a certificate number is entered it will be set to expire at the duration after the Effective Date.

For a qualification you may specify the crafts or craft and its skill levels that require the qualification. If you do not reference a craft or skill level, then any labor can be associated with the qualification. If a craft is referenced, then any labor with that craft can be associated with the qualification, they could have a skill level of that craft. If you reference a craft with a skill level, then the labor must have that craft and skill level to be associated with it. If the labor has the same craft and a higher skill level, then they cannot be associated with the qualification. For example, you have a qualification that is required by an electrician 2nd class, don’t forget to say that it is also required by an electrician 1st class, otherwise they cannot be associated with it. If the qualification has multiple Required Craft and Skill Levels, then the Associated Labor only needs to have one of those craft and/or skill levels to be associated with the qualification, and not all of them.

Qualifications exist at the Organization level and have a simple status of ACTIVE or INACTIVE. The qualification must be at active status for it to be associated with a labor record. When labor has been associated with a qualification, which you can do from either the Labor or Qualifications applications, and the association record is saved, then it cannot be deleted. This record (LABORQUAL) has a status of ACTIVE or INACTIVE and there are inline table buttons for changing this status or viewing the qualification status history. For certifications there is also a button for extending or renewing the qualification.

I hope you enjoyed this podcast episode and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode when we will be discussing Crew Types, Crews and Crew Work Groups.

The music is called Drag Race from the group called TrackTribe, please check them out on TrackTribe.com, all one word.

Until another time, goodbye.