At the end of the Preventive Maintenance application are two tabs Forecast and Forecast Costs. Both project the PM into the future without creating any work orders. The PM must be in ACTIVE state and have an Estimated Next Due Date.

PM Forecasts

You use the Generate Forecast action to start the forecasting process, this can be done for multiple PMs from the List tab of the application. A dialog opens and you need to provide a Forecast Until date or a Forecast For (Days) value. For example, to forecast until the end of the calendar year you would enter the date, to forecast for a year you would enter 365 in the Forecast For (Days) field. Entering a value in one field will calculate the other. The forecasting can be run in the background, and you can be notified of the result by email.

The forecasting process can be run automatically from a Cron Task called PMForecastCronTask and this has a set of parameters which allow you to enter a site, organization, forecast period in days, a where clause that takes a SQL expression, and who to email the result to. There is also a parameter to enter the file path for the log file.

When the forecast process has run you will see that the Forecast Exists field is checked and on the Forecast tab there will be one record for each occurrence as if you had generated work orders, but you actually haven’t. The Forecast Date is equivalent to the Target Start of the work order if you had generated work orders. If there is a Job Plan Sequence, you will see which job plan is required at each forecast date. These dates and job plans can be used in the Graphical Scheduling application when performing medium and long-term scheduling beyond the dates of your generated PM-based work orders.

For time-based PMs the first forecast date is the Estimated Next Due Date, and the frequency is used to calculate further forecast dates after this date through to the end date of the forecast. The dates calculated will consider the active days on the Seasonal Dates tab and if there are active seasons and a calculated date occurs in an inactive period then the forecast date will be the first active day in the next active period.

For meter-based PMs the first forecast date is the Estimated Next Due Date, this date is subject to the last meter reading and the Average Meter Units Per Day. This average is then used to calculate further forecast dates after this date through to the end date of the forecast. Active days and active seasonal periods are again considered.

If there is an Extended Date, then this becomes the first Forecast Date. The second forecast date will be calculated using the frequency from the first forecast date only if Adjust Next Due Date is set, otherwise, the second forecast date is based on the frequency added to the Estimated Next Due Date.

There is an action Delete Forecast, this is also available from the List tab. You will find that sometimes when modifying a PM this will cause existing forecast dates for the PM to be deleted, for example by changing anything associated with the frequency, seasonal dates, job plan sequence, or adding a meter to the PM.

In the Forecast tab there is a New Date field which allows you to change the Target Start Date of a future work order generated from the PM. You might want to do this if there is a known event, for example a planned shutdown. Apart from the first forecast date, there will be scenarios where subsequent dates are approximate and, in these cases, you will not be able to change the forecast dates. For example, if you are working with fixed time-based PMs, you will be able to add a New Date to the second or subsequent forecast dates. If you are working with floating time-based PMs, where the ‘Use Last Work Order’s Start Date to Calculate Next Due Date?’ is not set, then as you do not know the actual finish dates of work orders all subsequent forecast dates are approximations, hence you will not be able to add a New Date. For meter-based PM forecasts only the first forecast date can be modified with a New Date, all others are approximate based on the Average Meter Units Per Day.

If you are allowed to enter a New Date for the second or subsequent forecast dates, then you could modify any of the forecast dates. For a time-based PM based on a frequency of one month this could allow you to create a non-linear PM schedule to fit around the dates that your customer accepts for you to perform monthly maintenance work.

On the other hand, you may wish to change a single forecast date and then reforecast future dates from this new date. To do this you set the Reforecast Subsequent Date field, which you cannot do at Active status, you may have to change status first. Now when you enter a New Date the Reforecast Pending field is set and you will not be able to make further changes to the New Date for future forecast dates until after you have used the Process Pending Reforecast button. On save you will receive a message where if you answer Yes Maximo will run the reforecast for you, and No will leave the reforecasting to be performed during the next running of the PM Forecast Cron Task.

If you generally want to reforecast future forecast dates, but you just want to move one forecast date later, then use the reforecast, move to the next forecast date, and reset that date earlier. For example, a monthly PM is normally performed on the 20th of the month but in September it needs to be performed on the 25th. You can reforecast after making the change to the 25th September and then for the new October 25th date, set a New Date to be the 20th October and reforecast again.

If you have made a change to a forecast date and the Reforecast Pending is set because you answered No to the save message, you can clear the New Date by using the Clear Pending Reforecast action.

The Lock Forecast Dates action makes the Forecast tab fields read-only with the exception of the Remarks field on each forecast date instance. There is an action Unlock Forecast Dates. Both actions are available from the List tab and can work on multiple selected PMs.

If there is a PM Hierarchy the child PMs are forecasted when the parent PM’s forecast dates are calculated.

When PM Work Generation is performed if there is a New Date it is used, then the forecast date is deleted.

Forecast Cost

The Forecast Cost tab displays the same forecast dates found on the Forecast tab. There is a button Calculate Cost which will use the Job Plan details to calculate the Total Labor Hours and the Total Costs for Labor, Materials, Services and Tools and an overall Total Cost. The breakdown of the costs, for example, what crafts were used, materials used, etc, and their costs, is provided in the four tabs Labor, Materials, Services and Tools. The Grand Total Cost for all costs over the forecast period is shown at the top of the tab.

The Forecast Cost will consider a PM with a Route with several Route Stops which might have their own Job Plans, or a Job Plan that has Nested Job Plans on its tasks. Currently, however, the Forecast Costs does not consider Dynamic Job Plans where there may be variable quantities of labor, materials, services, and tools.

While you can generate a forecast for multiple PMs from the List tab, there is no action to run the Calculate Cost except for one PM at a time. However, you can automate the calculation of the forecast costs using the Cron Task called PMForecastCostCronTask.