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Hello, and welcome back to Maximo Bite Size. A series of videos on the functional aspects of Maximo Manage.

Title

Good evening, my name is Andrew Jeffery, and this is the eighth episode in the series on Asset Management and today I’ll be introducing you to Asset Subassemblies and Spare Parts. If you are finding these videos useful, then don’t forget to subscribe to the channel.

Learning Objectives

The Assets application has a Spare Parts tab with two table windows Subassemblies and Spare Parts, we’ll look at each of these in turn. Then, we’ll review how Spare Parts can be created apart from the obvious method of using the New Row button.

So, let’s get started.

Asset Subassemblies

We are in the Assets application and the Spare Parts tab, and we see two table windows for Subassemblies and Spare Parts.

Assets can exist standalone or in an asset hierarchy and the Subassemblies table window is where you see the child assets for the current asset. These are the subassemblies or components of the asset, which in turn could also have subassemblies, grandchild assets to the current asset.

For asset 11430, a Centrifugal Pump, there is one subassembly, asset 23972, a motor. Notice that asset 11430 is itself a child asset of the Parent 11400, a Boiler . What we see here are three levels, Maximo does not limit the number of levels in the asset hierarchy. In the Details Menu of the Parent and Subassembly Asset fields is an option to Move To that record, which makes it the current record, showing its parent and children.

You cannot see whether the parent asset is a child of another asset, or whether the subassembly asset has its own child assets, not without some configuration. However, in the Details Menu on those fields is the action Open Drilldown which opens a dialog which you can see in the bottom left of the screen. This allows you to see the whole hierarchy. The button Show Path to Top expands the asset hierarchy and you can use this to navigate to another asset record. The View Work Details button opens the same dialog found on the Work tab of the Assets application and shows work orders and tickets, whether open or in history, Preventive Maintenance records for the asset, Routes and Collections that reference the asset, and outstanding and completed inspections.

As the Spare Parts tab only shows three levels in the asset hierarchy at any one time, then if you are using more than three levels for some of your assets then it might be worth considering adding two existing non-persistent fields to the application HASCHILDREN and HASPARENT. Adding the HASCHILDREN to the Subassemblies table window can save users from moving to the record to only find that it has no children. When looking up the asset hierarchy the Open Drilldown action can prove more useful than the HASPARENT field because it allows easier navigation to other assets on a different part of the hierarchy.

The Open Drilldown action, which is also available from the main menu, allows you to navigate in both the asset hierarchy and across to the location hierarchy or location networks and then review the assets at those locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More. Assets belong in operating locationsA location with a location type of OPERATING. More. It is often the case that the subassembly assets belong in the same operating location as its parent, but this does not have to be the case and as you go higher in the asset hierarchy it can become less so.

When assets that contain subassembly assets move to a different location then you need to decide whether the subassembly assets should move with the asset. There is a field called Maintain Hierarchy on the main tab, which can only be set if the asset has no parent. When set the subassembly assets are moved to the same location as the parent and the asset hierarchy is maintained. When set the subassembly assets cannot be moved or removed. When not set the child asset can be moved to a different location to its parent without breaking the parent/child asset relationship.

Subassemblies can be either rotating or non-rotating assets, but when created by applying an Item Assembly Structure they always reference a rotating item, as otherwise they would have been created in the Spare Parts table. As the records in the two tables on the Spare Parts tab can be populated by using the Apply Item Assembly Structure action it would be wrong to think that the subassembly assets always reference a rotating item, they needn’t.

Assets can be related to other assets and can exist in multiple hierarchies. This uses the records created in the Relationships tab, the subject of the last podcast episode and video in this Asset Management series.

Spare Parts

The Spare Parts table window shows the non-rotating items which are considered spare parts for the asset. You populate this table to help planners and engineers find the parts that they will need when planning a work order. In the Work Order Tracking application and the Plans – Materials tab there is a button called Select Asset Spare Parts which opens a dialog which shows the spare parts for the primary asset on the work order, the same button will be found on the Actuals – Materials tab. You’ll also find a similar dialog called Spare Parts which is found on the lines of a Material Requisition, Purchase Requisition or Purchase Order. Having spare parts listed for your assets certainly saves time when preparing work or raising purchasing documents.

I’ll give you another reason for using spare parts. You may have a lot of strategic spares when new equipment is ordered, these sit in the storeroom in case they are needed. If you tie these spares to the assets using the Spare Parts table window, then many years down the line you know why the part exists in your storeroom. When the asset for which the spare part was purchased reaches its end of life, is sold, or is scrapped, you can also find out whether the spares are still needed, and if not, you can try and sell them off, or at least clear them out of your storeroom, freeing up space.

Spare Parts can only be items and not tools. The place where you define the specialist tools or instruments needed for assets is on the Job Plan where the tool will be used for a specific job on the asset. Incidentally, a Job Plan is another place where you will find the Select Spare Parts button and dialog.

On the Assets application you can create the spare parts using the New Row button . If there are spare parts on another similar asset you can copy those using the Select Spare Parts button . An item can exist multiple times on the same asset, and if you do this the Remarks field should be used. For example, you can group spare part items for the same asset by using the remarks field to indicate where on the asset the spare parts exist. You can also add a quantity for the item. The Issued Quantity field next to this is incremented every time an item is issued to the asset as part of inventory processes.

In the next section we’ll look at ways in which the spare parts can be added to an asset, other than by using the New Row and Select Spare Parts buttons.

Creating Spare Parts

There are several ways in which Spare Parts can be created for an asset, some of these I have already referenced on previous recordings in this Asset Management series.

An Asset Template has a Spare Parts tab and table window, these can only be non-rotating items. The Quantity and Remarks fields will also be found. When the asset template is applied to an asset the spare parts are copied.

In the Item Master application an item can have an Item Assembly Structure. The rotating items that are listed become subassemblies when the Apply Item Assembly Structure action is used in the Assets application. The non-rotating items in the item hierarchy will become spare parts when the action is applied to an asset, and these spare parts can exist at all levels in the hierarchy. Incidentally a location doesn’t have spare parts, and it will only be rotating items that are copied when the Apply Item Assembly Structure action is used on an operating location.

Staying in the Item Master application a field ‘Add as Spare Part?’ when set, will automatically add the item into the asset’s Spare Parts table when the item is issued to the asset, the Issued Quantity field is incremented by the quantity of the item issued. Associated with the ‘Add as Spare Part?’ is another field, Maximum Quantity, which determines how many of the item can ever be issued to the asset. When used this is often set to one. An example would be software for a laptop or PC, you wouldn’t want two or more copies of the same software on the same device.

To finish off this subject there is an action in the Assets application called ‘Issue Items from Storeroom’. This is used by IT technicians who just want to stay in the Assets application when configuring the PC or laptop with the set of software that needs to be downloaded and registered with the asset. The action does not work from the Assets application’s List tab, so you cannot issue the same item to multiple assets, however, the action ‘Issue Current Item to Multiple Assets’ is available from the Inventory application. Along with the Inventory action ‘Issue Current Item’ all three actions will add the item as a spare part if ‘Add as Spare Part’ is set for the item, additionally they all increment the Quantity Issued field for the spare part.

If you are thinking of using the Quantity Issued to register the amount of an item that is consumed, for example fuel, then there is a better alternative, that a long time ago was called Metered Material Usage. When both the item and the asset have the same meter, then as the item is issued the meter is incremented by the same quantity. This is a better approach for transportation assets as it allows the meters to be reset when major events on the vehicle asset occur.

Thank you for watching

I hope you have enjoyed this episode on Asset Subassemblies and Spare Parts and found it useful and thank you for watching. We would like to see you back in our next episode when we will review Location and Asset Associations.

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The music track is called Busy City from the group called TrackTribe, do check them out on tracktribe.com, all one word. 

Until another time, Goodbye.