Last Updated on December 28, 2022 by maximosecrets

The music is called Drag Race from a group called TrackTribe.

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

Title

Good afternoon and welcome to the second episode in the series on Maintenance Planning. I’m Andrew Jeffery and today we’ll be discussing three applications Craft, Labor and Qualifications. 

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Learning Objectives

Today, we’ll be looking at three applications found in the Resources sub-module a part of the Administration module. We’ll start with Craft which is the disciplines which your employees and subcontractors possess, for example a Mechanic or an Electrician. 

A Person who is assigned work and who enters time will need to be set up with a Labor record and the labor record has one or more craft for which one is marked as their default craft. The Labor application will be our second application to review. A work order may have planned craft, and labor (a person) is assigned to that craft requirement if they have that discipline. 

A qualification is a specialist skill or certification that a Person has, it is entered on their Labor record. A qualification may help you make decisions regarding who to assign to a particular work order, but it will not be a restriction in that assignment, not in the core Maximo Manage application, but some industry solutions or add-ons will allow you to enforce this. For example, the Health, Safety and Environment Manager (HSE) has a Required Qualification for the Craft record entered on a job plan or a work order, this would normally be used when saying there is a specific qualification necessary to undertake a task of the work order.

Qualifications can also be a requirement to use a tool and it can be used as a requirement for a crew position, which we will discuss in the next video.

There is a lot to go though, so, let’s get started.

Craft

Crafts are the disciplines that your workforce possess, the records that define the general skill of people resources that you need for a work order. For example, you might use a code of MECH for a Mechanic and ELECT for an Electrician. You do want to use meaningful values as this will help you when assigning work. Craft is one of those applications where Maximo does not provide you with an autokey. Craft are defined at the Organization level in Maximo, they have cost rates in a base currency that has been defined for the Organization.

A craft can have multiple skill levels , for example in our screenshot on the right the mechanic craft has three skill levels for an Apprentice, First Class, and Second Class. You use skill levels when you are managing craft based on the level of skill needed for a job, or if you are managing costs for your engineers or your subcontractor engineers. Each skill level has a Skill Level Rank where 1 is the highest rank. The craft-skill with the highest rank would be expected to have the highest cost rate. So, while the Standard Rate for a MECH – Mechanic is 21.00 the hourly cost is higher for the FIRSTCLASS skill level at 25.00 and lower for the SECONDCLASS and APPRENTICE at 19.00 and 16.50 respectively, in case you were wondering these hourly rates are a little old.

You do not need to use Skill Levels and you may choose to use Skill Levels for a few crafts, but not all the craft records. When starting out consider keeping things simple and define Crafts without Skill Levels. You can later change and start using skill levels, particularly if you wish to manage costs to a finer degree. If you do have work that can be carried out by lower skilled resources, like apprentices, then use one craft and multiple skill levels rather than multiple crafts.

The rates for craft and/or skill level are defined in a table called CRAFTRATE. There are four levels that can be defined Craft, Skill Level, Vendor, and Contract. In this case the contract is a Labor Rate Contract with a Vendor. In the Outside Rates table window , you can define the rates that you are charged by your suppliers. The Vendor field is mandatory, but the Skill Level is not, you needn’t be using Skill Levels to set outside rates. You also need not be using Labor Rate Contracts. You might start with just saying the vendor that supplies a craft and a nominal rate that is used in comparison with your internal rates. This does not require you to be using purchasing or contracts in Maximo, the recording of actual vendor hourly cost rates might be left to a later date, again better to start simply if you can. 

If you are using Labor Rate Contracts then the contract needs to be approved and time now must be between the Start Date and End Date of the contract, the Effective Period. You’ll only be able to record hours that fall between these dates when the time record references the contract.

If you scroll further down in the application you would come across a table window called Premium Pay, this is used to define how Maximo derives a rate when time is not booked during normal time, but against a Premium Pay Code, you may know these as overtime rates/codes. For example, OT1 – Greater than 8 hours per shift, might be defined as a MULTIPLIER type where the derived rate for additional hours is 1.5 times the normal rate. The Premium Pay Code OT3 may be 2.0 times the normal rate and used for Sunday working. 

When entering actual time on a work order or in the Labor Reporting application you add the number of Regular Hours and the number of Premium Pay Hours and the Premium Pay Code to apply to the overtime hours. Maximo calculates the Line Cost by applying the craft and/or labor rates to each of the Regular Hours and Premium Pay Hours, applying any uplifts to rates set by the Premium Pay Code. You do need to select the right Premium Pay Code; Maximo will not derive from the time entry that it is a Sunday and that Premium Pay Code OT3 should then be applied.

Premium Pay Codes are defined by using the action Manage Premium Pay Codes, this is also defined at the Organization level. There are three Default Rate Types, MULTIPLIER, INCREMENT and HOURLY. The Multiplier multiplies the rate by a factor, e.g., 1.5 or 2.0. The INCREMENT type adds an hourly rate on top of the standard rate. The HOURLY type is a static HOURLY rate that you enter in the Default Rate field. There is a field called ‘Apply to New Crafts’ which when set will automatically add the Premium Pay Code to each new Craft record, otherwise you can add them manually. It is important to remember that these Premium Pay Code rates are entered for a Craft, but they are applied whenever the craft is used. So, they would be applied for a Craft, they would also be applied if the rate was associated with a Craft, Skill Level, Vendor and Labor Rate Contract. 

Other aspects of the Crafts application are a tab for associating Labor to Craft, but you can do this equally well from the Labor application. An action for Viewing on which Crew Type or Crew the craft is referenced, but for this to show you need to make the craft applicable to a Crew, a toggle in the header , or by using the List tab action – Make available to Crews. There is also a field to associate a Craft with a Work Zone Type, we’ll discuss Work Zones as part of Work Management.

Labor

Labor is a person who performs work, is a member of a crew, or is a person who needs to record time, for example a Service Desk agent.

Each Labor record must be associated with a Person record and the Person record will normally be associated first when a user is created in Maximo Application Suite at the suite level. If you create a new labor record Maximo will try and link to a Person with the same reference, hence why it is normal to align the identifiers PERSONID and LABORCODE. If no Person record is found then you will be prompted to see if you wish Maximo to create the Person record for you, but this will not create a user record. 

The fields at the top of the main tab mainly come from the Labor record, but the bottom two thirds come from the Person record, and you can update these from the Labor application.

The Labor record has a Status field which is separate from the status on the Person record although it has the same two synonym values of ACTIVE and INACTIVE. Making a Person Inactive will make the associated Labor record Inactive but the reverse is not true, making a labor inactive will leave the person record at Active state. If you make a Person active again it will not make the associated labor record Active, although you will receive a warning.

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, for utilities this would be their depot. 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, it isn’t used in Maximo, but it could easily be configured into lookups so that it can be used for filtering. The Supervisor field is one of the fields that is on the Person record rather than the Labor record. It is normally the person who approves time records, or Workflow requests. 

The two fields Labor Inventory Site and Labor Inventory Location allow you to record stock for a person, for example facilities engineers who carry stock in their van. You use the action Create Labor Inventory Location ; this will create a location of type LABOR and afterwards it will fill the two fields. You then use the Inventory applications, adding items to the storeroom, or by transferring items from a regular inventory storeroom to the Labor LocationA type of location which can hold inventory and is one of the Transit Locations. More.

The Start and End Location fields are used with Maximo Scheduler and the creation of street level routes for engineers who work in the field going to multiple locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More on the same day. The Location Refresh and Save Location with Work Order fields are both used with GPS tracking of the person, normally from their phone, so that in emergency or urgent situations you can redirect an engineer who may be close by. The Map tab allows you to see their current location.

When actual time is recorded against a work order the hours are accumulated on three basis, regular hours, premium hours, and overtime refused hours, and these values can be seen at the bottom of the main tab. The overtime refused hours is rarely used and is the only one of the three that can be entered directly in the Labor application, it could be repurposed, for example to record call out hours. There is an action called Zero Year to Date Hours which will set these totals to zero, this is typically used at the start of the year, unfortunately this is not available from the List tab, but you could create an Escalation to set the three values to zero for all Labor records.

The View Assigned Work action shows the open work orders where the labor has been assigned, from the dialog that opens you can select a Start Date and End Date and then Refresh the display of records. Note, I emphasised open work orders, this is because when you close a work order the assignment records are deleted.

There is a tab for associating the labor record with one or more work zones, we’ll discuss that during one of the Work Management videos. There are also various fields or actions associated with the use of crews which is the subject of the next video.

Labor – Crafts

Turning our attention to the Crafts tab , you’ll see that a labor record can have multiple craft associations , these are used when assigning labor to a work assignment. Only one craft association for a labor can be marked as the default for the organization. This is known as the default craft; other craft associations are known as secondary craft. Long Term Scheduling uses the default craft, other parts of Maximo, for example a work assignment, will normally be made using labor where there is a match to the required craft using their default craft, but work can also be assigned to labor if there is only a match to their secondary craft. 

Labor is defined at the Organization level , so a person may have multiple labor records. When a work assignment is made, you are matching to the labor records where the work order’s organization matches that of the labor. It could be possible for the same person to provide a Mechanic (MECH) craft for one organization and a completely different craft for another. This might be the case when the craft is being used for specialist skills at another organization.

A Labor record may be internal or considered external if they are associated with a Craft record with the Vendor field entered, sometimes this is known as inside/outside labor, but I prefer the term external instead of outside. 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 there are settings to say whether internal or external labor are automatically approved, it defaults for internal labor but for external labor, time records will need to be approved.

When you associate a craft to a Labor record the default is that the rate is inherited from the craft record, but you can override this. The same applies to the Premium Pay Codes shown in the second table window , these are inherited from the Craft record, the Rate field can be changed by first using the toggle ‘Inherit Rate From Craft’ . You cannot change the Premium Pay type or add a new premium pay rate record for the labor.

The first table window is based on the LABORCRAFTRATE object. You may have multiple rate records for the same craft and labor, for example labor WILSON may be assigned to both an ELECT – Electric craft and a craft/skill record of ELECT – FIRSTCLASS. What you wouldn’t normally do is associate a Labor to a skill level which was lower in ranking to an existing craft/skill level record, for example you wouldn’t also associate WILSON with an ELECT – SECONDCLASS not unless you wanted to give this a specific hourly rate. It is inferred that WILSON can be assigned to Second Class Electrician work because they can do the work of a First Class Electrician, however, when the assignment is made the rate of the ELECT – FIRSTCLASS is used. Therefore, for some industries where they mark-up these cost rates, WILSON can have a record for both ELECT – FIRSTCLASS and ELECT – SECONDCLASS each with their own rates, and what is charged is dependent on the work performed. Charging customers for work performed is a feature of the Maximo for Service Providers add-on.

The diagram at the bottom left requires a little explaining. What it shows is how both the CRAFTRATE and LABORCRAFTRATE objects are derived, these are the objects that carry the hourly rates. The unique key of the Labor Craft Rate table has six parts, the ORGID and LABORCODE is the unique key of the LABOR record, the CRAFT field will always have a value, but the other three fields may be null.

A labor may have 6 combinations of these four fields:

• a craft,
• a craft and vendor
• a craft, vendor and contract number
• a craft and skill level
• a craft, skill level and vendor
• or a craft, skill level, vendor and contract number

Each of these six combinations may have a different rate entered directly in the Labor Craft Rate table or inherited from the parent Craft Rate table. As a labor could have multiple craft and multiple skill levels for any one craft, then there could be multiple cost rates that may apply to a person, not just one. For external labor the number of possible rates could be many more.

Organizations – Labor Options

The Organizations application has a few settings in the action Labor Options that effect 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. When you are starting to use Maximo, I think it better to allow for approvals to be made from the Labor Reporting application for both inside and outside labor, at least until your users are used to reporting actuals.

The ‘Allow Mismatched Craft and Labor When Reporting Actual Labor’ option is normally unchecked. You would receive a validation error if the labor entered on an actual record does not have a match with the craft, skill level, vendor and contract that is already on the actual labor transaction. You might only get this error when you type into the Labor field as otherwise mismatched Labor would have been filtered out by the Select Value lookup. It would be unusual to set this field.

‘Automatically Approve Invoices Created from Labor Transactions’ has effect only from the Labor Reporting application on external labor when the Create Invoice action is used. The created invoices would already be at APPR – Approved state.

‘Future Labor Transaction Tolerance in Hours’ is a setting with a duration field that defaults to zero. This means that you cannot enter an actual labor transaction which is in the future. If you set this to 4:00 hours, and labor normally works 08:00 to 16:00, then people could fill in their timesheet after midday 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. A qualification can also be a requirement to use a tool or a requirement for a crew position. Apart from these two scenarios a qualification is not validated on a work assignment in Maximo Manage but they can help you to decide which Labor record you might assign.

Qualifications are more than something formally obtained, they could be your knowledge of the skills of your labor with respect to the types of assets that they specialise in or have been trained on. For example, for Maximo functional consultants, you could have qualifications for Linear, Scheduler, and Service Provider, so that if you were assigning a functional consultant to a work assignment you select a person based on the skills that are likely to be needed. There are no formal certifications for these Maximo applications but knowing who is experienced with them would make it easier making the right assignment choices.

Qualifications exist at the Organization level , like craft and labor, and have a simple status of Active or Inactive with Active being the default. The Qualification Type is a mandatory field supported by the ALN domain QUALTYPE which you will need to configure for your own purposes. If there is a formal certificate or a period in which a qualification should expire, then you should select the Certificate Required field and set the Duration and Duration Period fields. When you associate a labor with the qualification and Certificate Required is set, then you will need to provide a certificate number and if you have entered a duration then an Effective Date and Validation Date. It is the Effective Date that is used to calculate an Expiration Date one day earlier than the duration period you had set.

You can enter qualifications to Labor records from either the Qualifications application or the Labor application. A qualification once saved to a Labor record cannot be deleted. Its status will default to Active, and you can change status of the LABORQUAL record to Inactive. For certificate-based qualifications there is a button Extend/Renew Qualification which effectively requires you to enter a new Effective Date, and Validation Date, and optionally change the certificate number, the validation date cannot be a date in the future, but the effective date can. Another button View Qualification Status History shows both the status history of the Labor Qualification and the Certification Status History, showing the original certificate and the extensions or renewals that have followed.

The Required Craft and Skill Levels table window allows you to enter the Craft or Craft and Skill Level, which a Labor is assigned for the qualification to be registered to that Labor. It effectively restricts who the qualification can be assigned to. For example, a welding certificate would be associated with a craft of WELD – Welder, but a specialist welding certificate may only be associated with the highest ranked welder, with a Skill Level of JOURNEYMAN. In both cases the Required Craft and Skill Level would mean that a mechanic or electrician couldn’t be assigned those qualifications, not unless they also had a secondary craft of WELD. Do not think of this as the qualifications needed to achieve a craft and skill level, but more the other way round, the qualifications that may be gained by labor who already have the craft and skill level.

When entering the Required Craft and Skill Levels do enter all skill levels that this is applicable too as additional records. For example, if you said that a qualification was required by an Electrician – Second Class, then you would not be able to associate a labor that had the craft of ELECT and skill level FIRSTCLASS.

At the bottom of the Qualifications application, you can enter Tools That Require This Qualification. The records that you enter are also visible from the Tools application in the Required Qualifications table, the records are entered in the TOOLQUAL object. This does not restrict who a tool can be issued to. It is used with Crews so that when you indicate Required Tools for the crew it adds in any qualifications that the tool requires into the Crews table Required Qualifications. We will cover this in the next video when we will discuss Crews.

Thank You for watching

I hope you have enjoyed this video on Craft, Labor and Qualifications and found it useful and thank you for watching. We would like to see you back in our next episode when we will be reviewing Crews, two applications, Crew Types and Crews but we will also discuss Crew Work Groups, it is likely to be another long video. Don’t forget to hit the Subscribe button, and if you enjoyed this video, please give it a thumbs up.

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Until another time, Goodbye.