Introduction

In the 12 Steps to Planning and Scheduling Maturity the first three steps are associated with assigning work. You can assign work without planning work, although planning work will help you assign, you do not need to plan first. The remaining steps (4-12) move between Plan and Schedule. You develop some planning techniques, then you start to use those to help you schedule or advance your work assignment techniques. 

In the above diagram the order of the 12 Steps is shown in the orange circles.

From a Maximo perspective planning is the activities that take place prior to work order approval. In business terms you may plan after work order approval but from a Maximo perspective this should be considered Scheduling or Assigning. The terms planning and scheduling are used interchangeably in business, I am forever asking people what they mean by planning and often they mean scheduling, sometimes they describe the process of work assignment.

There are four levels in Planning Work, they progressively introduce functionality that you will find in the Job Plans and Work Order Tracking applications, but it also includes Routes and Inspections.

Level 1 – Labor is Step 4 in the 12 Steps and will be the focus of this article. 

It starts with creating Job Plans with the smallest amount of information to be useful and ensuring that all work orders have planned labor, the exception to this might be emergency and urgent work where there may not be time to plan first. The focus is on the minimum data to be able to schedule or assign work using this planned data. Many clients will have Job Plans for Preventive Maintenance work, but there should also be Job Plans for other work types. You do not need a lot of details, enough to be able to identify the jobs so that you can collect information about them as they are executed.

Following Step 4 we have two Schedule steps. In Step 5 we set Target Windows for our work orders and in Step 6 we start using the Graphical Work Week application for a rolling Short-Term schedule of 3-4 weeks. 

Level 2 – Materials/Tasks is Step 7 in the 12 Steps.

If you have been collecting actual data against work orders that were coded against a Job Plan, then after 3-12 months depending on how frequently you perform the work, you would have gathered information on the materials issued and the actual hours booked which can help you provide more details on the associated Job Plan. I am also including building out tasks on Job Plans and thinking about how you want to group work together into a work package to reduce the scheduling and assigning effort. This is where applying a Route will be found.

Following Step 7 we return to the Schedule stream and with Step 8 we start using the Graphical Scheduling application for a rolling Medium-Term schedule up to 8 weeks, the schedule dates created are used by the Graphical Work Week application.

Level 3 – Services/Tools is Step 9 in the 12 Steps.

These activities may only be relevant to some work types or a minority of work orders, for example requiring external services, using specialised tools, ensuring tasks are performed in a certain order. The functionality of Maximo involved in planning at this level is more advanced than for the previous two levels, for example using Craft Skill Levels, using Maintenance or Operational Schedules, and switching to using Job Plan Revisions. This is where applying an Inspection Form will be found.

Step 10 is back in the Schedule stream continuing to explore the Graphical Scheduling application this time for Long-Term scheduling. We also introduce the Graphical Assignment application which provides some additional capabilities for scheduling and assigning work over the Graphical Work Week application.

Level 4 – Qualifications is Step 11 in the 12 Steps

This level covers the more advanced aspects of planning that can help you consolidate similar job plans, using conditional job plans, and dynamic job plans. A new feature with MAS 9.0 allows you to indicate on a Job Plan, the Qualifications required to perform a job, or a task, these are selected as you enter the job labor record.

Step 12 – Optimization is using the optimization templates found in Graphical Scheduling, Graphical Scheduling – Large Projects and Graphical Assignment applications and the Scheduling and Dispatching Dashboards.

If your work is geospatially dispersed, then you will need to consider other planning tasks before you will be able to use some of the features of the Maximo Scheduler, particularly the Graphical Assignment Dispatch tab and its map. 

Craft and Labor

We’ll start with a quick look at the Craft and Labor applications to make sure that these are set up correctly for basic level planning. We will be entering craft requirements on Job Plans and in the Plans tab of Work Order Tracking, and there are some fields that you should consider setting on a Labor record that I want to point out.

The Crafts application will be found in the Resources sub-module of the Administration module. Crafts are the trades or disciplines that people who are assigned work (Labor) have. You can see that Craft are entered at the Organization level. You need a Craft Code, in this case PIPE and a description, Pipefitter.

I would recommend entering a Standard Rate, although it is not mandatory, this is an hourly rate. The rate does not need to be deadly accurate to start with. Take your total yearly costs for internal labor, divide it by 200 days and divide it by the average number of hours in a shift. Now using that average hourly rate, you can give different crafts a higher or lower rate depending on whether they are higher or lower paid on average. 

These cost rates are used in budgeting and comparing commitments and actuals to budgets. It doesn’t take much effort to create rough hourly cost rates, and it sets a baseline from which you can adjust in the future. It is difficult to come up with accurate cost rates, so easier to start with some sort of guide. Also, if you want to explore using the Budget Monitoring application you do need some data on which it will do some calculations.

I wouldn’t set up Work Zones initially, they are normally associated with spatially distributed work, although they can be used for grouping Labor with the assets and locationsA physical place where assets exist and where work can be performed. More that they normally work on, we’ll come to this in Step 7.

I wouldn’t set up Skill Levels initially either. A Skill Level is used to split a Craft so that it can have multiple hourly rates, we will come to using this in Step 9. If you were not prepared to add a Standard Rate, then there is no point using Skill Levels, it is useful when you do want to think about reducing costs by assigning work based on experience.

If you have labor that work for a vendor, work with the rest of the shift, are assigned to work orders and enter actual time in Maximo, then they are referred to as Outside Labor, your employees are referred to as Internal Labor. Specialist vendors who are assigned work but are called in for specific work and who do not record time in Maximo are handled through Planned Services and not Planned Labor, they would not have a Labor record, but they may be able to login to Maximo and would have a Person record.

You should record the Outside Labor rates for each Vendor in the Outside Rates table window; in the example I have done this for the PIPE craft and Vendor BWC. You should enter a Standard Rate for the same reasons given for entering a Standard Rate on the Craft record. You do not need to create Labor Rate Contracts and select a value in the Contract field to be able to register Outside Labor.

At the bottom of the screenshot are Premium Pay Codes, if these are set up, then when you create a new Craft record you may see some of the Premium Pay Codes being copied automatically to the new Craft record. I will discuss Premium Pay Codes in Step 7. For the most basic Planning step they are not important.

The Crafts application has an Associated Labor tab where you can associate Labor with a Craft. This is useful for verifying which Labor provides a Craft, but I would enter these records from the Labor application, and I’ll explain why next.

In the Labor application and Crafts tab, you can enter the Crafts provided by each person who will be assigned work. The first Craft record you enter will be marked as Default Craft for Labor, often referred to as their Default Craft. You cannot set or change the Default Craft from the Crafts application and Associated Labor tab.

The Default Craft is important as it will be used in applications like Graphical Resource View and Graphical Work Week, and most of the time you assign work to labor based on matching the work order’s craft requirement to the labor’s default craft.

Each labor record can have additional craft records, referred to as Secondary Craft, but it is not necessary, it will be discussed in Step 7.

The Rate will be defaulted from the Craft record or if this person is Outside Labor, then it will use the Outside Rate when you enter the Vendor. I would set the field Inherit Rate from Craft which will make the Rate field read-only. If you are allowed to change the Rate field then you are in effect setting hourly rates individually, this probably wouldn’t be occurring until you were monitoring costs against budgets in Maximo, I do not discuss this until Step 11.

The table window you see on the Crafts tab is referred to as the Labor Craft Rates table, it has a 6-part key, based on each Labor record having a Craft, Skill Level, Vendor and Contract, some of these fields except for Craft can be null. Whenever you are selecting a Labor to assign to a work order you are selecting one of these records and this is how Maximo derives the labor cost hourly rate.

When a Craft record has been associated with a Labor record, then at the bottom of the main tab of the Labor application you will find one or more of the fields in the Default section has a value. This indicates that the Labor has a Default Craft, a Labor Craft Rate record which is marked as Default Craft for Labor.

If the following query, or something similar, returns any rows, then it is likely you would need to associate a Craft with these Labor records. (orgid = ‘EAGLENA’) and ((laborcode,orgid) not in (select laborcode, orgid from maximo.laborcraftrate))

In Step 3 – Availability, we discussed the importance that each Labor record has a Calendar and Shift.

At the top of the Labor main tab there are two fields Work SiteA structural element of a Maximo database that is used for data separation. More and Work Location; these should be added. It appears as a field in Assignment Manager Labor List, in the Available Labor dialog, in the Resource columns of the Graphical Work Week application, and it can be added as a column in the Graphical Resource View application. When filtering Labor, it is the Work Location which is most likely to be used apart from the Default Craft. If your organization has several sites, then as Labor is defined at the organization level you will need to filter the labor to find those associated with a site, Work Location is used as the filter. For Crews the equivalent is Crew Work Group.

Think of the Work Location as a way of filtering Labor records when the Default Craft is not being used, or perhaps in conjunction with the Default Craft. A utility company might use this to represent the depot where the labor is normally based. Work Locations are locations of type OPERATING. These operating locationsA location with a location type of OPERATING. More do not need to belong to the primary hierarchy, or belong to a location system, they can be standalone locations. If they do not represent physical locations, then you might create a synonym of OPERATING in the domain LOCTYPE, to be able to easily find them. 

If you have spatially spread work, and your labor works from a van or vehicle, then each Labor field should have a Start Location and End Location, this could also be the same as the Work Location, i.e. it represents the depot where the Shift starts. These fields are used as the starting and ending point of a Street Level Route, used in Scheduling/Dispatching work where travel time is taken into consideration. But as you are setting a Work Location for the Labor, if relevant, then also set the Start Location and End Location. These Locations need a Latitude and Longitude which would normally be entered via a Service Address.

Job Plans

Job Plans are templates for work orders. Job Plans are often created for Preventive Maintenance work, but less so for other work types. It is, however, good practise to create Job Plans for any work that you believe will occur again, the issue then becomes how do you find the Job Plan to apply to a work order.

A Job Plan doesn’t need a lot of information, a Job Plan code, Description, a Duration, a work priority (WO Priority) and a record in the Job Plan Labor. Many clients start by creating a Job Plan for each written work instruction they have, and they attach the work instruction as an Attached Document. The status of the Job Plan will need to be ACTIVE to be applied to a work order.

Some clients provide meaning to the Job Plan Code to aid searching, the JPNUM field is defined as UPPER 12. As it is likely that only a few people will create Job Plans, then it is possible to create some meaning to the code used, you can’t enforce it, this needs to be a discipline you set if you head in this direction. If you don’t add meaning to the JPNUM field then make sure you give the Job Plan a good description, this would be used as the work order’s description, so it is worth the effort to give this some thought and structure. It can be modified, whereas the JPNUM field cannot.

The Job Plan created above is at the System level, the Organization and Site are both null. Once saved you cannot change the level.

I’ve created another Job Plan JP1022 against Organization EAGLENA, I haven’t saved yet, hence the Organization and Site fields are modifiable. The Duration is 4:00 hours, I am treating this as a default, it will be copied to the work order, then I can adjust according to how many hours the job will take, in this case, the job plan is Kitchen Electricals (quoted work).

If you enter a Default WO Class Maximo will save automatically as you close the dialog. When entering Job Plans at Organization and Site level, I tend to add the Job Plan code and go straight to the Organization or Site fields. If you enter a Site, the associated Organization will be entered for you.

I think Job Plans should generally be entered at the Organization level unless they are very specific to a Site, so that there is little chance of them being reused by other sites in the organization. The main reason for this is that Qualifications, Inspection Forms, Craft, and Items (Materials, Services and Tools) are all defined at the Organization level. If you wanted to reference a Vendor on a Direct Issue Material or Service, then you must enter an Organization first. When using Dynamic Job Plans Resource Levels are defined at the Organization level. 

If the Job Plan is defined at the System level you can enter multiple rows in the Job Labor table by selecting the Organization first and then the Craft, the Organization will act as a filter to the Craft. This would allow the same craft code to be entered on the Job Plan for multiple organizations, and when the job plan is applied to a work order, a site-level object, it would only copy the Job Labor records for the work order’s site’s organization.

At the bottom of the main Job Plan are tabs for Labor, Materials, Services and Tools. In Step 4 of the 12 steps, we are only interested in the Labor, we can of course enter the materials, and you are likely to do this for job plans associated with Preventive Maintenance. 

Each Job Plan should have at least one Job Plan Labor record, which will normally be entered against a Craft or Crew Type. In most cases you will not make the labor requirements task specific, so the task will be left empty. When you are entering the record, you could enter a Labor or a Craft, at this step in the Planning and Scheduling Maturity leave the Labor field empty, it is used for specialists where there is only one person, or one person per site who could undertake the work, and you will schedule around their availability.

The quantity is set to one by default, if you require two people with the same craft, then make the quantity two. The Hours are the hours required for each Labor, and not the total hours if the quantity is greater than one. Normally, the Hours and the Job Plan Duration are set the same. If you require two different crafts, for example an Electrician and a Kitchen Fitter then enter two Job Plan Labor records each with a quantity of one. 

When a Job Plan is applied to a work order and the work order is approved each Job Plan Labor creates a work assignment record at WASSIGN status (Waiting to be assigned). If there is a quantity of two, then two work assignment records are created, and this is how you assign a two-person job requiring the same craft. You could instead enter two Job Plan Labor records with the same Craft and each with a quantity of one. While this takes a little more effort, in the longer run it is more flexible as it allows you to change each record with a different skill level or with different qualifications. It is my preference to do this. 

Whenever you change the Hours on a Job Labor record, don’t forget to consider whether a change is required to the Duration field, in many cases these will be aligned. We haven’t discussed this yet but there is an application called the Scheduler Data Manager which validates the data you are using for a Maximo Scheduler application, providing a set of errors or warnings. For a work assignment you will receive a warning if the work assignment hours are greater than the duration – ‘W – Assignment hours are longer than the work order or task duration.’

Before you make the Job Plan active by using the Change Status action there are a few other fields you should enter.

The Template Type in most cases will be set to Maintenance, it is a mandatory field and so it needs to be set to something, consequently it is likely you would set it with a default value. Job Plans can be used for other purposes across the extended Maximo family of products, but for use within Maximo Manage, these are Maintenance job plans. When used with Tickets, Activity or Process might be used.

You might create some synonyms of Maintenance in the domain JPTEMPLATETYPE to provide some filtering capability when searching for Job Plans.

The Default WO Class should be set to the class of work order where you want the job plan to be used, normally it is set to WORKORDER. The importance of this may not be apparent immediately, but if you have HSE installed, then there are several work order classes and so this field acts as a filter which is specific to the application you are using. For example, in the Work Order Tracking application the default search is for job plans with a Default WO Class of WORKORDER. In the HSE MOC Request application, the Default WO Class is MOC Request. HSE is relevant to many Maximo clients, not just those where the HSE department is using Maximo, therefore I would just get into the habit of always setting a Default WO Class.

The WO Priority field is an important field for Maximo Scheduler, because along with status, work type and asset it is the most likely one that you will use for filtering, and along with target start and scheduled start it is used when sorting records.

The WO Priority field can be a value from 0 to 999 where 999 is high, there is no lookup. I would restrict to values between 1 to 10 where 10 is high and add a numeric domain to the field with a description for each value. Some clients will default on the work order to 0 meaning that the priority has not been considered, but the default is null and that serves the same purpose. If you are inclined to do a bit of configuration then make this field mandatory before being able to change status to APPR (Approved) and mandatory thereafter.

The WO Priority field is colour coded in Maximo Scheduler applications and the colours are controlled through System Properties, for example, skd.workorder.priority.1.background. There is also another System Property, skd.usestatuscolors which when set to false will make the bar colours the work priority, but I would normally have this set to true to use status-based colours.

Another reason for setting the WO Priority on the Job Plan or making the same field on the work order mandatory at approval, is that it avoids another Scheduler Data Manager warning – ‘W – Work records must have a priority’.

The Job Plan application is by default a revision-controlled application, the Status field has options for PNDREV (Pending Revision) and REVISED (Revised). When you are first starting out with Maximo you typically make several changes to Job Plans, so using the action Revise Job Plan every time you want to make a change is a bit tedious.

You can simplify the Job Plan statuses to Draft, Active, Inactive or Cancel and remove revisions through a System Setting found in the OrganizationsA structural element of a Maximo database which is used for data sharing. More application. In the Job Plans section there is a checkbox – Revision Control for Job Plans? – which can be deselected. When you get to the point where you wish to control Job Plans and record who makes the changes, then the System Setting can be reinstated. I suggested reinstating it at Step 9 in the 12 Steps to Planning and Scheduling Maturity.

Job Plan Search

The default search on the Job Plan field in the Work Order Tracking application has two check boxes which sets a filter on the Job Plans displayed.

The first is – Show Job Plans for the Work Order’s Asset and Location Only? This is using the Work Assets tab on the Job Plan application, and it is comparing it to the Asset and Location referenced on the work order. Two Job Plans are displayed JPOUTPR and JP11430A, let’s have a look at those two. The work order references Asset 11450 and Location BR450.

The Work Assets tab of Job Plan JPOUTPR references assets 11430 and 11450. Job Plan JPOUTPR is displayed because the primary asset is 11450, there is a match to the Asset field in the Work Assets and Safety Plans table.

The Work Assets has three fields used for selecting Job Plans; Location, Asset and Item, the three fields are mutually exclusive, only one of the three fields can have a value on each record. The Location field would work in a similar manner, if the primary location on the work order matches a Work Asset, then the Job Plan will be displayed in the Select Value dialog. 

There is no Item field on a work order, on the Work Assets tab, the Item is referring to the Rotating Item of the primary Asset or Location.

The other Job Plan that appeared in the Select Value dialog was JP11430A. This Job Plan does not reference Asset 11450 or Location BR450 but there is a reference to Item PUMP100 which is a rotating item. Asset 11450 references Rotating Item PUMP100, hence why it is displayed, as it happens Location BR450 also references Rotating Item PUMP100. You can easily verify that the Location’s Rotating Item is also used in the filtering of Job Plans by removing the asset from the work order.

After removing the Asset from the work order and using the Select Value on the Job Plan field only one Job Plan is now shown, JP11430A. It is selected because Location BR450 references Rotating Item PUMP100. The other Job Plan JPOUTPR is no longer shown because it referenced Asset 11450, and the work order no longer references this asset.

To summarise, the Select Value shows job plans where the location or asset referenced on the work is referenced in the Work Assets tab on the job plan, or if the location or asset on the work order has a rotating item, then it also shows the job plans where the Work Assets tab references that rotating item. If you have no work assets on your job plans, then by default there will be no job plans shown in the Select Value dialog, while ‘Show Job Plans for the Work Order’s Asset and Location Only?’ is set.

It is, therefore, good practise when creating Job Plans to indicate the Assets, Locations or in the case of rotating items, the Item to which it is relevant. Imagine having several thousand Job Plans; by adding the Work Assets you will have a much greater chance of making it easy to find and search for your job plans. However, many clients do not use Work Assets on Job Plans because they do not use Job Plans for anything other than Preventive Maintenance, which does make life a little more difficult in Planning and Scheduling.

Incidentally the Job Plans Advanced Search dialog has a section for Work Assets and the fields Location, Asset and Item, so you can search for Job Plans based on one of those fields. However, you cannot use the Advanced Search to find both Asset 11450 and Item PUMP100, because it is assuming a logical AND, the filtering used by the Select Value on Work Order Tracking is using a logical OR between those three fields. It is not possible to search in the Job Plans application to retrieve the same records as the search made by the Select Value on the Job Plan field in the Work Order Tracking application.  

I created an IBM Idea to enhance the Work Assets on Job Plans application to also include the Asset TemplateA template for generating and updating similar assets. More so that Job Plans could be filtered on a work order using this field. When you have many assets associated with an Asset Template, it would make it much easier to just reference the Asset Template rather than all the assets, those assets may not be rotating. https://ideas.ibm.com/ideas/MASM-I-939

On the Job Plan field on the Work Order Tracking application when the Select Value field ‘Show Job Plans for the Work Order’s Asset and Location Only’ is deselected and the Refresh button is used the table window shows Job Plans at ACTIVE status and where either:

• Organization and Site on the Job Plan are both null
• Organization on the Job Plan is not null and equal to the Organization on the work order
• Site on the Job Plan is not null and equal to the Site on the work order

But there is a second filter – Show Job Plans with No Classes Defined. When checked it shows Job Plans which do not have a WO Class AND Job Plans with the WO Class shown, in this case Work Order. When unchecked it only shows Job Plans with the WO Class shown. As most of the Job Plans in the MAXDEMO Database have no WO Classes, then unchecking this field probably results in no Job Plans being found. If you are using HSE or Oil & Gas, then you want to be registering the WO Classes that the Job Plan references otherwise you will have some Job Plans for Work Orders and others for MOC’s or Improvements and you’ll run the risk of selecting the wrong one.

The three fields at the top of the Select Value will be maintained during a Maximo session. The two check boxes will also be remembered in the same dialog in the Preventive Maintenance application. However, if you log out the field values will be reset.

As you can see, the only other standard way of filtering Job Plans is to use the Template Type. Instead of coding the Job Plan field, you could either change the Template Type domain or add an additional field on the Job Plan to provide a Job Plan Category and then to add this to the right of the Template Type in the table window. 

Job Plan Long Description – Attached Documents

The Job Plan Description may not be enough to describe the purpose, it is used as a default for the work order description if the description field is null when the Job Plan is applied. The DESCRIPTION field is defined as ALN 100.

When first creating Job Plans it is likely that there are existing maintenance plans with instructions in text form or as a file, or both. The Job Plan long description is the obvious place to record the purpose or copy existing instructions. It is a field with rich text formatting which can include images and links. The Job Plans’ long description is copied to the work order including if the work order already has a description. It is also displayed on Maximo Mobile Technician application.

If you have work instructions in PDF or have URL links to instructions in an accessible website, then these can be attached to the Job Plan. When the Job Plan has been applied to a work order, then in the Work Order Tracking application you will be able to see the same attachments that were on the work order along with attachments that may have come from the asset, location, or other associated records. These attachments will also be displayed on the Role Based Maximo Mobile Technician application. 

For offline working attachments need to be configured to prevent overload of the device with too many files. For Job Plan attachments it is best to use the preloaded data feature, but this is beyond Step 4 in Planning and Scheduling Maturity, apart from the upload of photos, when using Maximo Mobile stick to viewing attachments or URL links when online.

Job Plan Responsibility Section

You apply a Job Plan to a work order prior to approval, when the work order has reached APPR (Approved) status the Job Plan field becomes read-only. When you create a work order from a PM it is often at a status which is after APPR, the default is WSCH (Waiting to be Scheduled), but Maximo handles this for you. The Preventive Maintenance application has the same seven Responsibility fields. These fields are copied to the work order when the Job Plan is applied.

The question would be why would you use the Responsibility fields for Job Plans not associated with a Preventive Maintenance record?

If the Job Plan is defined at the Organization level, then most of the Responsibility fields are not relevant. Owner Group and Crew Work Group are both Person Groups and Person Groups allow you to reference people and associate them to a site. The Owner Group might represent the team of Planners. The Crew Work Group is the pool of labor that is assigned to crews that belong to the same crew work group.

If the Job Plan is defined at the Site level, then additionally the Work Group might represent the maintenance team. When the Job Plan is applied to the work order the Lead is derived from the Work Group Defaults defined in the Person Groups application. Therefore, if you use Work Group do not attempt to use Lead on the Job Plan as it will blank out the Work Group field, they are mutually exclusive.

Apart from this, most of the other responsibility fields are probably not relevant on a Job Plan, but every Maximo client is different. Incidentally, I would use a custom field to represent the person who is responsible for the Job Plan, likely a reliability engineer.

Several years ago, I wrote an article called Responsibilities on Job Plans, PMs and Work Orders https://maximosecrets.com/2017/01/28/responsibilities-on-job-plans-pms-and-work-orders/

I would use the Supervisor field on the work order when you start scheduling or assigning work. You can set the Supervisor field on a PM, but I wouldn’t use it on a Job Plan as the Supervisor field on the PM takes priority. 

Work Order Tracking

I’ve created a new work order for asset 11450 and applied Job Plan JP11430A. As a Job Plan is a template for a work order, unsurprisingly many of the fields and tables are copied to the work order. The Job Plan’s tasks, labor, materials and tools are all copied, and this is called the Work Plan, much of the information on a Job Plan will be found on the Plans tab of the Work Order Tracking application, but some fields like the Priority and the Responsibility fields will be on the main tab.

In the example shown JP11430A had two job labor records one for a MECH (Mechanic) and another for ELECT (Electrician) the quantity in both cases was one.

If you go the Assignments tab you will also find two work assignments one for MECH and the other for ELECT with the same Hours as was defined on the associated work plan labor record and both assignments at WAITASGN status, Waiting to be assigned. 

Therefore, applying a Job Plan with Labor defined will automatically create the work assignments ready to be assigned, which is why this step in the 12 Steps to Planning and Scheduling Maturity comes in just after assigning work. If you do not create Job Plans, then you will need to manually create the Work Plan Labor records or the work assignments depending on the work order status.

While the work order is at WAPPR status, if you go back to the Work Plan Labor record and adjust the Regular Hours the Hours on the associated Assignment record will also be modified. If you change the quantity on the Work Plan Labor record to 2, then a new work assignment record will be created. If you create a new Work Plan Labor record, then a new work assignment record will also be created.

While the work order is at WAPPR status you should change the Work Plan Labor records and not the records on the Assignment tab, but these can be modified after the work order has reached APPR (Approved) level or a later status. If you opt for some configuration, then you could hide the Assignments tab when the work order is at a synonym status of WAPPR, assuming you are using the default Work Edit Rules settings in the Organizations application. The Assignments tab should only be used after work approval.

Create Job Plan from Work Plan

You will want every work order to have planned labor, a duration, and a work priority even if you do not apply a Job Plan, the exceptions might be Emergency or Urgent work orders if there is no time to plan. From a Maximo perspective this planning activity occurs prior to work order approval. 

For a new work order in the Work Order Tracking application, I set the Duration to 4 Hours and the Priority to 4 and entered on the Plans tab a requirement for quantity one ELECT (Electrician) for 4 Regular Hours. The work order was against location NEEDHAM. This is all the information you need for the most basic planning.

There is an action – Create Job Plan from Work Plan, which will use the data created in the Plans tab and some fields on the main tab of Work Order Tracking to create a Job Plan. You will need to provide a Job Plan code or leave this empty and use the Autonumber button. The description will be the same as you entered on the work order.

I used the Job Plan Code of JP11431, and you can see that the status is Draft, the Template Type is whatever the default is set to, and the Default WO Class is WORKORDER. 

The Job Plan is defined at the Site level as it has come from a work order, you cannot change this. If your preference it to create Organization level job plans, then do not use this action.

The WO Priority and Duration have been copied from the work order; other fields are also copied.

The Job Plan Labor record is also at the Site level and has the same Craft, Quantity and Hours as the Work Plan Labor. If you had tasks, material, services and tools these are also copied.

A Work Asset record is also created, in this case for Location NEEDHAM.

The Create Job Plan from Work Plan is a useful action if you have put some effort into creating the work plan, particular with a long description or work order tasks, or a set of materials. It perhaps won’t be used at Step 4 in the Planning and Scheduling Maturity, more likely at Step 7. 

Apart from the Site level Job Plan created, the other downside to this action is that it is all too easy to use the action without first trying to find an existing Job Plan that may be serving the same purpose, and now you have created a duplicate. This is why some sort of coding structure for Job Plans is useful, if it helps to avoid duplicates, either by using the Job Plan code or a custom category field. I would consider restricting this action to those people who would normally create Job Plans as it is likely they will have the discipline to get any coding correct and to be following any instructions you have defined for the creation of a “good” Job Plan.

Service Addresses

If your work is spatially dispersed, then you will need to set up service addresses with latitude (Y) and longitude (X) so that the geographic position of the service address can be seen on the Map tab. I will only describe the steps rather than adding additional screen shots to this article.

This YouTube video provides an overview – https://maximosecrets.com/2022/07/08/service-addresses/

The Service AddressesA Service Address is a postal address and/or a record that positions a point on a map. More application creates a record that is both a postal address and defines the position of the service address with either latitude/longitude or Y/X co-ordinates. The Service Address application has a Map tab, which allows you to set the position using the right-click action Set Record Location, zoom in to position accurately (tip).

You typically associate a Service Address with a Location and/or Asset. A Service Address can be inherited on all the descendent locations and assets when you set up an Address system in the Locations application, this needs to be a hierarchical system. Alternatively, you can add a Service Address to each Location and/or Asset, or you can create a Service Address from those applications using the action Create New Service Address.

When you associate a location and/or asset to a work order in the Work Order Tracking application the service address will be copied to the work order, which you can then modify independently of the Service Address. You could use the Map tab on each work order to find the place where the engineer needs to go without creating a Service Address, this method would be used if it were unlikely that the engineer would return, or they need to go somewhere where the location or asset does not accurately define where the fault exists.

Conclusion

The first three steps in the Planning and Scheduling Maturity are to do with work assignment without planning work, in Step 4 we looked at the most basic planning step. 

Every work order should have planned labor hours defined against a craft or crew type. You do not need to use Job Plans to achieve this, but as many jobs do repeat themselves creating a job plan for work types other than for Preventive Maintenance is worth the effort.

We started with Crafts and Labor which both exist at the Organization level. When starting out with Crafts do try and set a Standard Rate as you will need cost data if you attempt to manage or monitor maintenance budgets in Maximo, the standard rates can be an approximation which is adjusted over time to make them more accurate. Every Labor record should have one craft which will be marked as the default, it will be easier to start your use of Maximo if each Labor only has the one craft. Each Labor should have a Calendar and Shift, and it will be useful in Maximo Scheduler applications if you can filter by the Work Location and Work Site. 

Job Plans are your work order templates that save you time when planning work. Job Plans can be defined at System, Organization or Site level depending on whether you enter an Organization and/or Site. Organization level Job Plans will work best allowing you to share the same job plan across multiple sites, but you will need to enter the Organization field before you save the record, otherwise it will be set read-only.

You will need a Job Plan code, description and the job labor records that define the number of hours required for each craft. For example, if you require two electricians, you can enter a Quantity of 2, or you can enter two Job Labor records, which is my preference as it provides a little more flexibility later when using Skill Levels or Qualifications. You should set the Duration to be the same or greater than the maximum Hours entered on any Job Labor record, otherwise you will receive a warning when using the Scheduler Data Manager in preparing to use the Maximo Scheduler applications.

The Template Type will normally be set to Maintenance for most clients, and I would get into the habit of setting the Default WO Class to WORKORDER, it will be used if you start to use some of the HSE work order based applications. I would restrict the WO Priority with a Numeric Domain to the values between 1 and 10 where 1 is lowest and 10 is highest, give each value a meaningful description. Priority is one of the main fields used in filtering or sorting work during scheduling, there is colour coding by priority and there are 10 System Properties to set a colour for each priority between 1 and 10.

New clients often have a document that describes the Job Plan procedure, the quickest way to get this up and running is to save as PDF and use an attached document to the Job Plan. If the information is just text or with embedded images, then you can try saving to the long description, but you should test the output of the images, there have been issues in the past. Both the Job Plan long description and attachments can be viewed on the work order where the job plan has been applied and on the Technician Role Based application, some configuration will be needed to enable offline attachments. It is possible to have the same Job Plan displayed in multiple languages.

When the Job Plan is defined at the Organization level, then in the Responsibility section the Owner Group, Work Group and Crew Work Group can be used, they are all Person Groups. You can associate team members with a Site on the Person Group. As the Job Plan will be applied (for non-PM work) prior to the work order being approved, it may restrict which of the other responsibility fields will be known, so I think they are less relevant.

The Job Plan is under revision control as a default, but when first setting up Job Plans you can disable this with a System Setting made in the Organizations application.

When a Job Plan is applied to a work order the Job Plan Labor records are copied to create the Work Plan Labor seen on the Plans tab of the Work Order Tracking application. Each Work Plan Labor record will generate one or more work assignments seen on the Assignments tab, multiple assignment records are created if the quantity is greater than one. Prior to work order approval you should only change the Work Plan Labor and leave Maximo to correct the work assignment records. Better to hide the Assignments tab prior to work order approval with a small bit of configuration.

The Select Value lookup on the Job Plan field in the Work Order Tracking application uses, by default, the records seen on the Work Assets tab on the Job Plan. It uses the primary asset and location on the work order and shows the Job Plans where the asset or location is referenced, if either the primary asset or location references a Rotating Item then it also shows the Job Plans where the rotating item is referenced as an Item on the Work Assets tab.

If your work orders are spatially distributed, then for Step 4 in the Planning and Scheduling Maturity you should be able to visualise on a map where the work is to be performed. This requires you to set up Service Addresses and apply them to Locations and/or Assets, however you can manually identify the geographic position of the work on the map tab of the Work Order Tracking application and enter a postal address on the Service Address tab. You will do this if the place where work is to be performed is unlikely to be needed again. All frequency-based work should have a Service Address.