Contents
A couple of weeks ago I was asked to explain what an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system is and what you would expect to find in a world leading EAM system like Maximo. I considered that if I started with explaining what we have today with Maximo Application Suite (MAS), a top-down approach drilling down into Maximo Manage and what many people consider as Maximo, then I thought I would probably lose my audience in the first hour as what MAS is today is so much more than just an EAM system. I decided to provide my audience with the history of Maximo and how it has evolved over time. My first question to them was “How old do you think Maximo is?”.
The first decade (1985-1995)
It may surprise you, but Maximo is now close to 40 years old. I can vouch for its age because when I started at PSDI (Project Software Development Inc) in London, UK in March 1987 as Europe’s 10th employee there was a Maximo salesman who had started the year before, the first Maximo salesman in Europe.
A couple of years ago I spent a lot of time in the evenings researching the history of Maximo, and I found a Computerworld article from May 1985 referring to Maximo Maintenance Manager, a turnkey system running on an IBM PC/AT. It had work order tracking, equipment history and inventory control. Each work order could specify craft, crew, and spare part requirements. Requisitions could be automatically generated from a job plan and closed against the inventory control system. The IBM PC/AT had a 20MB hard drive and 512K RAM, a colour monitor, and a mouse, all for $25,000. A 20MB hard disk was no misprint.
PSDI was a Cambridge, MA. based company who had command driven project control software running on IBM mainframe and Dec VAX. They also had two PC products, one called Qwiknet for planning and scheduling and Maximo as a maintenance system. These were file-based single user systems running on the IBM AT which had been launched less than a year before in August 1984. It wasn’t long before multiple users could use the same data when ethernet local area networks were introduced, but a few more years would pass before that data could be saved to a SQL database. All of this was pre-Microsoft Windows 3.0, which didn’t release until 1990, this was the first windows operating system, unless you were an Apple user.
After a break from PSDI for nearly 5 years I re-joined in 1996 to work on Maximo and 28 years later the Maximo bug has still got hold of me.
In 1996 Maximo was a Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS), the version was 3.0a. The manuals (which I still refer to today) says Maximo is 12 interconnected modules working against a relational database, including Work Management, Planning and Scheduling, Asset Management, Inventory Management, Purchasing and Invoicing, and Resource Management. There is also the capability to integrate with finance systems. There was an interface with the other PSDI product, P/X, referenced as the Maximo Scheduler.
When we hear today of a client requiring an asset management system, we generally think of them needing a suite of applications supporting asset, inventory, purchasing, and work management working on a SQL database and with the ability to integrate to other systems including financial. The Maximo system that provided this existed in 1996. The functional footprint of Maximo has not stopped growing in the years since.
The second decade (1995-2005)
Just before our second Maximo decade and on the 21st of April 1994, PSDI floated on the NASDAQ exchange. In January 1997 IBM and PSDI/MRO entered a joint marketing agreement for Maximo and nearly 10 years later, on 3rd August 2006, the IBM acquisition of MRO Software and the Maximo product was announced.
Maximo 4
I found this slide when I was hunting around some old files. By the time Maximo 4.0 was released in March 1998, in English only, the development of PSDIs previous project management software including P/X had ceased. A year later Maximo 4.01 was released, and this supported both year 2000 issues (Y2K) and for clients moving to the Euro, a second base currency. Support for a greater number of primary languages was a theme which persisted throughout this Maximo decade, and by the end of 1998 the primary languages supported were Brazilian Portuguese, Dutch, French, German, Japanese, Latin American Spanish, and Swedish.
The Maximo functional footprint increased with Maximo 4, not only were there enhancements to the core modules and the Maximo P/X interface, but Safety Plans, Request for Quotations (RFQs), Inspections (via Routes), Classifications (called Asset Catalog), Document Links and Workflow were added. Maximo was now working with Oracle, SQLServer and SQLBase databases and it was based on Microsoft Windows 95.
PSDI had started working with Java, first released in 1995, and the first Java based Maximo products were released in 1998, with Workflow and the self-service Work Request, and Desktop Requisition applications. PSDI was one of the first companies to support Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), introduced in December 1999.
After the release of Maximo 4.0 PSDI headed down the path of eCommerce. They had acquired a company called A.R.M whose M|Net solution provided a platform for manufacturers, distributors, and purchasers to buy/sell Maintenance Repair Parts and Operating (“MRO”) supplies. These were reworked into Java based Supplier and Purchaser applications and Maximo was given an eCommerce adapter, the functionality of which still exists today in work orders, desktop requisitions and purchase requisitions. A subsidiary of PSDI was created in 1999, called MRO.com, and we were asked to choose between joining this or staying with Maximo, I stayed with Maximo.
MRO.com had several new products, mroBuyer, mroSupplier, mroNetwork, mroMarketplace, and mroTransaction, a server that communicated using XML. MRO.com was also acquiring other companies. Intermat provided content management tools and cataloguing services, Applied Image Technology provided the Illustrated Parts Catalog, a digital representation of the parts of equipment, Collego Corporation provided suppliers with catalog management software. There was also the acquisition of an EAM based consultancy company, and a newsletter publisher.
Why all these acquisitions? If you are going to buy and sell and have a marketplace for industrial goods then you need a way for buyers to understand what suppliers are selling, and to find the items they need from an electronic catalog. The Structure software provided by Intermat provided the Standard Modifier Dictionary (SMD), a two-tier classification hierarchy with the attributes defining industrial goods, in today’s Maximo terms the data that would populate Classifications and Item Specifications. But there is a need to see drawings and documents, and for suppliers to provide variations which might be buyer specific, and there was a need to get the word out, hence the newsletter publisher.
By March 2000 the dot-com bubble burst, the NASDAQ having risen 400% in the previous 5 years, dropped 78% over the next 30 months to its low point in October 2002, the descent continuing through a series of accounting scandals which led to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of the same year. The fall was so fast that on 11th December 2000 the board voted to rename the company MRO Software, and by September 2002 the eCommerce solutions were providing less than 10% of the company’s revenues.
Maximo 4.11 was released in 2001, the last client-server version and a very stable platform which many clients stayed on for years. Simplified Chinese was also now a supported language. The R&D team were also working in two other areas. Maximo has always had a scheduling product, and an integration to Microsoft Project became available replacing the use of P/X for scheduling.
In September 1997 the first mobile applications were released, collectively called Maximo Mobile Application Suite. It consisted of three applications, Maximo Rounds, Maximo Procedure Builder and Maximo Lockout/Tagout/Lineup, all of which were work or safety based, they could utilise bar coding technology. Five years later in 2002 and using different technology there were two mobile applications Mobile Work Manager and Mobile Inventory. These were later followed by Mobile Auditor, for assets, they are all mobile applications supported multiple languages. By 2004 MRO Software had come to an agreement to market Syclo mobile products which functionally had a similar footprint but had the advantage of being more easily customisable.
Industry Solutions also kicked off in 1998 with MAXIMO Enterprise for Transportation, and in 1999 Maximo Enterprise for Utilities, Maximo Enterprise for Energy, and Maximo Enterprise for Process. After the collapse of the eCommerce solutions of MRO.com MRO Software were saying they were focused on Industry Solutions for public sector, utilities, oil and gas, nuclear, aviation, transportation, pharmaceuticals, power generation, and power transmission and distribution. The Maximo footprint was rapidly expanding, and it was around this time that trying to know everything about Maximo ceased to become a reality although it remained a goal.
Maximo 5
Maximo 5.1 was released on March 29th 2001, with an upgrade utility from 4.11 being available in July 2002. Maximo 5.2 was released on September 5th 2003. Maximo 5 was the start of the journey towards an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system and introduced the multiple organizations and sites feature and the sharing of vendors and items across organizations.
Maximo 5 was a reworking of the non-administration and configuration aspects of Maximo in a Java architected product working from a browser without the use of Citrix, it was J2EE compliant. This was a big change; languages, mobile and add-ons had staggered releases all the way through 2003 and 2004. Korean and Italian had also been added into the mix of languages. The add-ons included adapters for SAP, Oracle and Peoplesoft, all based on the Maximo Enterprise Adapter (MEA).
By the end of 2003 Calibration was available as an add-on, mobile calibration arrived in 2004. Industry Solutions included Pharmaceutical, Nuclear, Transportation, Oil & Gas, and Transmission and Distribution. There was also a host of add-ons developed by the Services organisation, many extending the configuration aspect of Maximo. Services products included Dynamic Value List, Field Security, Data Flow Control, Notifications, 21CFR Part 11 (electronic records and electronic signatures), Maximo Estimating, Budgets, and a Primavera Integration.
Maximo Enterprise Suite (MXES) aka Maximo 6
On June 14th, 2002, MRO Software acquired MainControl and its MC/Empower product which was soon rebranded as Maximo MainControl. It was our entry into the IT Asset Management marketplace (ITAM). MainControl also included Procurement, Contracts, Software License Compliance, Inventory, Finance, Service Management, Business Continuity and IT Asset Retirement and Disposal. I remember seeing diagrams showing the rapid convergence of the physical asset and IT asset worlds, complex assets were becoming more instrumented with onboard software. Twenty years later the convergence is still arriving, but perhaps now gathering more pace.
MXES was first released on March 25th 2005, extending the functional and configuration footprint. Not only did it include the MainControl functionality, but it became totally browser based and included the configuration capabilities that had remained in the old Centura client/server software.
Maximo Enterprise, Maximo Service Desk and Maximo ITAM coexisted on the same set of base services and introduced Service Management to Maximo. Maximo had been designed to support the IT Service Management (ITSM) processes defined in the IT Information Library (ITIL). It included Service Requests, Incidents, Problems, Change, Release, Service Level Agreements and Knowledge Management (Solutions) and was duly certified by Pink Elephant’s PinkVerify Enhanced Verification certification for ITIL compatible software solutions. ITIL version 3 was released in May 2007.
Not only did MXES include applications to support Service Management but there was a set of Contract Management applications, and inventory functionality supporting consignment stock, lot management, kitting, condition codes, and the support for service items and tool items. Asset Management saw enhancements to meters with meter groups and characteristic meters, rolldown of meter readings, user/custodians, and mass asset moves. There was additional functionality elsewhere including support for centralised purchasing, log notes and communication logs on work orders, creating work packages, labor skill levels, secondary crafts and labor qualifications, etc.
The new Database Configuration application included support for language tables, electronic records, and electronic signatures, you could also create your own objects and attributes and not only were all the relationships exposed but you could also create new ones. Application Designer, Domains, Bulletin Board, Communication Templates, Email Listener and the Cron Task Setup applications were all new. Classifications could now be applied to tickets and work order based applications. Workflow was reworked with Escalations, Actions and Roles, multiple processes per object were supported and workflow could be applied to any main object/application in Maximo. Security Groups became role-based, data restrictions were added, along with a host of other security/login options. Finance and Reporting which at the time was still Actuate also received major changes, particularly with report request pages having the same look and feel as the rest of Maximo and being able to pass the result set from a Maximo query through to a report.
From an IT perspective Configuration Management was supported, configuration items (CIs) could be discovered and mapped to the known actual CIs of your Configuration Management Database (CMDB). This was not just the discovery of hardware, PCs, servers, and network devices, but also the software, allowing software license compliance to be achieved by mapping to your known software contracts.
The release of MXES was the catalyst for a lot of upgrades from existing clients, it was a challenge to the services and support teams who not only had to handle the volume of interest but had to learn the new functionality, including the new configuration toolset and customization capabilities.
But with MXES Maximo had arrived as an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) software solution. We had a product that could be used across the globe, with multiple languages, and supporting from a single system the various types of assets that an enterprise might have, manufacturing, facility, transport, and now IT assets. Maximo has been in the EAM world for nearly 20 years. I expect other products being claimed today as an EAM solution, do not have this footprint.
The third decade (2005-2015)
IBM acquired MRO Software in August 2006, shortly after MXES and its add-ons had been released on all platforms and supported languages. Maximo was a key component to IBM’s Smarter Planet Strategy. We entered the Tivoli software division, or rather more accurately we were split up, as some went to Global Business Services (GBS), others to Global Technical Services (GTS), and others disappeared into HR, Support, and Finance. Tivoli had been looking for an ITIL based Service Desk, GBS had been working with Maximo for a decade, and GTS saw potential in Maximo supporting its customers outsourced services. Maximo was on its way to having an add-on to support customers called Service Provider, first released in July 2007.
Prior to the acquisition Maximo already had planned new releases for several industry solutions, the support of Service Requests on the mobile platform and the first release of the Asset Configuration Manager (ACM) used in aviation, trains and other complex assets that are repaired at different facilities. In 2004 MRO Software had acquired Raptor ASA, and the first release of ACM was in 2006, this is complex functionality.
The acquisition by IBM accelerated the features needed to support a wider range of service providers. Nuclear power and utilities also had a boost, and the Government Industry Solution was released but was later withdrawn when TRIRIGA was acquired.
There was really two design and development teams, one for Maximo, and the other for Tivoli who soon had extended the MXES footprint and created three products Tivoli Service Request Manager (TSRM), Tivoli Change and Configuration Management Database (CCMDB) and Tivoli Asset Management for IT (TAMIT). These were later merged into one product Smart Cloud Control Desk (SCCD) in 2013, and later still renamed IBM Control Desk (ICD). But throughout, the client base that I came across kept calling all this Maximo and my first response was what Maximo do you mean, the one for physical assets or the one for IT assets. Fast forward to 2024 and ICD has come back into the fold as Maximo IT, and although it is considered an add-on, from a non-license perspective you might consider it as a very large industry solution for IT assets.
The Tivoli team certainly had an influence on the direction of Maximo or rather the base services which are common to both Maximo and the three Tivoli products TSRM, CCMDB and TAMIT. Early after the acquisition there was support for the DB2 database and there was entitlement to use Cognos BI against the Maximo database. Base Services was renamed with the snappy title of Tivoli Process Automation Engine (TPAE), generally to mean the parts of Maximo that was common with the three Tivoli products, which was a bit more than just the configuration toolset of Maximo. As all the products shared the same base, they could coexist on the same middleware and database.
Maximo 7.1
Maximo 7.1 was released on May 29th, 2008, and the headline enhancements were support for linear assets, migration manager, conditional user interface and data restrictions, and Maximo Everyplace which allowed the Maximo screens to be configured for a mobile device using a browser. But there were enhancements across nearly all applications, for example nested job plans, support for multiple assets/locations on a work order, work order flow control between tasks, a new Activities and Tasks application, extending classifications to many more objects including service request and work order specifications, item statuses, item images, etc. There were also extensions to the configuration of Maximo with the applications of System Properties, Logging, and Conditional Expression Manager. There were integration enhancements including LDAP, enhancements to the Email Listener and enhancements to reporting with the introduction of the Eclipse based BIRT.
There were also many additions across the Industry Solutions which in 2010 were Utilities, Transportation, Life Sciences, Government, Nuclear Power and Oil and Gas. Enhancements to the add-ons Service Provider, Calibration, and Asset Configuration Manager, were frequent and two new add-ons Maximo Scheduler and Spatial were released. There were other add-ons, adapters for SAP, Oracle, Primavera and Microsoft Project, a data archiving solution, support for RFID with Maximo Real Time Asset Location, Maximo for Data Center Infrastructure Management, Maximo for Energy Optimization, Maximo for Space Planning. These last three had either a short life, were consumed into the Tivoli products or were dropped after the acquisition of TRIRIGA in 2011.
At the end of 2008 there was a host of usability and reporting enhancements in 7.1.1.4. A year later at the end of 2009 with 7.1.1.6 there was support for webservices, and the two Interactions applications, additional linear functionality, and migration manager enhancements. Now, new features were appearing in fix packs and keeping track of what was in the Maximo product was a constant issue.
Maximo 7.5
Maximo 7.5 succeeded 7.1.1 and was released in 2011, another large functional release with focus on supply chain. It introduced the Inventory Usage application with staging and shipping and the Shipment Receiving application for transfers between storerooms. There was support for soft reservations, LIFO/FIFO inventory costing, consignment inventory enhancements, purchase order revisioning, receipt tolerances, returns for services, receipt voiding, invoice reversals, the handling of invoices from sites across the same organization, and many other smaller features.
Away from the supply chain, GL account structures could now be defined at the organization level, up to 27 tax types could now be specified, job plans had revisions, there was support for repair facilities, work order material status/visibility controls, BIM models could be imported and visualised. Calibration, Linear and Scheduler add-ons were all added to the core Maximo code and enabled with license keys. This allowed PM forecasting and asset templates to became available to all clients. Linear assets were enhanced with visual controls.
The big change in the configuration toolset was the introduction of automation scripts, but application import/export was new and there was a big enhancement to migration manager. Even the online help was reworked to support the IBM standard DITA and Maximo 7.5 was now fully compliant with IBM accessibility standards. There was some work to move processing to the browser with simple validations and type-ahead features, and rich-text editing in long descriptions.
With all the products, industry solutions and add-ons there was work to make the installation process and the upgrade process a little easier, for example by extracting the application presentation layer to XML, comparing it with the new application XML and then merging the old into the new.
IBM continued the process of moving features that existed in add-ons or industry solutions into the core of Maximo. In June 2012 with 7.5.0.3, Service Addresses moved from Service Provider, Crews functionality from Utilities, and Public Mapping from Spatial. This allowed Maximo Scheduler to support crews. There were new graphical applications including a dispatching view showing labor and crews on a map and the technicians street-level route between work orders. GPS tracking of labor and crews was also enabled on the dispatching map so that you could better choose how to reschedule/reassign emergent urgent work. Conditional job plans were added as part of this release.
The configuration toolset also continued to be enhanced, features to exclude attributes during duplication, in integration there was support for Open Services for Lifecycle Collaboration (OSLC) and there was a new application called Email Interaction Setups which utilised the Email Listener, allowing simple email-based interactions to occur. Maintaining the currency, the support for later versions of middleware, database, operating system, and various other components is a constant and with Maximo 7.5.0.3 there were updates to support WebSphere 8, Cognos 10 and BIRT 3.7.1.
In 2013 Maximo 7.5.0.5 saw the new Tivoli13 skin introduced to align the UI with Smart Cloud Control Desk, but there were also new UI features like hover over dialogs, and field level icon menus. Maximo Scheduler also received an optimization option which used some ILOG components for schedule optimization in Graphical Scheduling and automatic assignment of labor/crews to work orders in Graphical Assignment. The Maximo team had built a new Maximo Scheduler product and support for the Microsoft Project adapter and Primavera adapter would soon be terminated.
Health, Safety and Environment Manager (HSE)
On 21st Sep 2011 a new add-on was included in the product portfolio, the Health, Safety and Environment Manager (HSE). This was effectively the same code set as the Oil & Gas Industry Solution with a few exceptions but as an add-on it was available to all clients. This suite of applications and additions to core Maximo applications would grow almost each year for several years. Today there are over 50 applications.
The release of HSE was to show that Maximo supported PAS 55:2008 and ISO 55000 standards.
TRIRIGA
On 22nd March 2011 IBM acquired TRIRIGA a provider of facility and real estate management software, the acquisition was to accelerate IBM’s smarter building strategy. It included 5 main modules, real estate, projects, facilities, operations, and TREES (TRIRIGA Real Estate Environmental Sustainability). This was another occasion where there was the option for Maximo practitioners to move to become TRIRIGA consultants. I had heard that here was another suite of applications, some say bigger than Maximo with its own set of add-ons and adapters. TRIRIGA started to appear on the Maximo roadmap and there was some talk about the two being combined, with the convergence taking at least a couple of years, but whose configuration toolset (base services) would win?
Spatial
MRO Software started working with ESRI under a formal alliance back in 2005 and Maximo was an early adopter of new ESRI server-based GIS using webservices as opposed to showing a static map. Using webservices avoided the duplication of data. It was designed so that any Maximo object could be spatially enabled, not just assets, and all three asset types were supported, points, linear and area. Initially Spatial was supported on assets, locations, work orders and service requests, and the design was such that Spatial felt embedded in Maximo. Spatial was initially a part of Maximo for Utilities (6.3.3) but by the end of 2008 it was made available as a separate add-on so that it could be used with other Industry Solutions, or with just Maximo or TAMIT. It did require a separate ArcGIS license and installation.
At the end of 2009 with Maximo Spatial 7.1.1. there was a major technology change to using JavaScript REST APIs which provided performance improvements. A spatial map was added to the Service Addresses application, but there were also several other enhancements including the ability to create work orders or service requests based on a map-based selection of assets. Simple redlining was also added.
With Maximo 7.5 in 2011 there were further Spatial enhancements including support for public maps Bing, OpenStreetMaps, enhanced redlining, configurable map tips and linking, improved queries, etc. There were further releases in August 2012 and there was a further release in 2014 which allowed Maximo linear data to be displayed on an ArcGIS map. This included dynamic segmentation of the linear data, for example you could see on a map where the road speeds of the linear asset changed.
By 2015 there was a significant set of functionalities in the core EAM applications, support for calibration, linear and service providers, integrated spatial capabilities, scheduling and mobile solutions, and a range of additional applications in Health, Safety and Environment Manager (HSE) that provided support for those clients working towards asset management standards. Maximo had a range of Industry Solutions for various asset intensive industries and IBM had a community of business partners across many parts of the world with experience of implementing Maximo and their own set of add-on products that would fill any potential gaps. It was no surprise to us that the industry analysts had been making and were continuing to make Maximo their number one Enterprise Asset Management software choice in both completeness of vision and the ability to execute.
The fourth decade (2015-2025)
As we entered the fourth Maximo decade there were four primary investment themes for Maximo; scheduling, mobility, analytics and Software as a Service (SaaS). However, there was soon a shake up and Maximo found itself part of the IBM Watson IoT division, with a new global headquarters in Munich, Germany. The Internet of Things (IoT) and Industry 4.0 were the two big topic areas driving innovation. To support this IBM acquired The Weather Company in 2015. In August 2023, IBM announced that it would be sold subject to regulatory approval. IBM will continue to leverage weather data and it will retain the Environmental Intelligence Suite.
During this period Maximo Application Suite came about, with the Maximo element being called Maximo Manage. A lot has happened over the last 8 years, and I have split this section rather than trying to write about the changes chronologically.
Maximo 7.6.x
Maximo 7.6 was released on 12th December 2014. If you were already using Maximo Scheduler and other add-ons, it didn’t feel like the big update that we had grown accustomed to, as some items that existed in Scheduler were being made available to all clients. The headlines were support for Crew Types, Crews and Crew Work Groups, Service Addresses, Public Mapping, and Maximo Everyplace. There were user interface style changes and a new skin.
There were improvements to KPIs and the introduction of KPI Templates and the KPI Viewer. The ad-hoc reporting wizard was enhanced with calculations and summaries and BIRT was updated to version 4.3.1. There were four Business Intelligence Packs used with Cognos 10.2 and Automation Scripts could now be applied in integration.
There were three new SaaS offerings, one called Maximo SaaS Fundamentals, for clients with a small number of users and limited requirements, this was on a multi-tenant version of Maximo using a DB2 feature that allowed multiple clients to share the same database while keeping their data separate. Maximo SaaS was a single tenant system but with limited scope for add-ons and Industry Solutions and which did not allow customizations. The third SaaS offering was Maximo SaaS Flex which supported the add-ons, industry solutions and allowed customization.
When Maximo 7.6 was released, there was a change to continuous delivery and there were subsequently several feature packs over the next few years. IBM introduced enhancements to Inventory Usage, support for Asset Depreciation, they replaced the Java applets and this introduced a new Workflow Designer application. A Formula Library was added to Database Configuration, Building Information Models (BIM) were added to Assets, and there were new applications for License Usage Monitor, Time Zone Rules, and Budget Monitoring.
The period starting on 23rd June 2016 with 7.6.0.5, through to 7.6.1.2 will be remembered for the introduction of Work Centers. This is a new user interface based on Google Polymer that provided a responsive UI that could be used on a mobile, tablet, or desktop. Unfortunately, the technology turned out not to be able to support offline working and several years later Maximo Mobile (a replacement for Maximo Anywhere) and Role-Based applications started to appear, these were based on React-JS and could work offline. A lot was learnt with the Work Centers trying to cut-down the Maximo functionality to something that is more process and role-based, while simplifying the user interface, the fields which are displayed may be dependent on whether the data exists.
During this period Work Centers were developed for Work Supervisor, Work Execution, Service Request, and Business Analyst which provided an integration to IBM Watson Analytics, which a few years later was rolled into Cognos Analytics. In 2017 with Maximo 7.6.0.8 Inspections was introduced both Manage Inspection Forms and Conduct an Inspection. Inspections would be enhanced several times through to 2018. New features for the Work Centers first appeared on the multi-tenant SaaS version of Maximo before they became available for general release. The SaaS Fundamentals version had some features, for example, Manage Assets for creating locations (places) and assets, which were never released to other Maximo clients. By 2019 there were just two offerings SaaS and SaaS Flex with SaaS Fundamentals now being called SaaS, but it had greater capability as Scheduler was now provided and integration via REST APIs was supported.
On 27th July 2018 Maximo 7.6.1 was released with another new skin, IoT18, and entitlement to a very recent version of Cognos Analytics 11.0.11. As with many releases there were further enhancements to the Work Centers, for example in Work Supervision to review Service Requests. There was also a utility to anonymise personal data to support privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe.
On 24th May 2019 Maximo 7.6.1.1 was released with further updates to Work Centers, including two new ones Administration, for defining Service Request categories, and API keys, and Manage Inventory for managing reservations and adding items to storerooms. There were several enhancements to the Work Execution and Work Supervision Work Centers and a rich text editor could now be used with your automation scripts. Dynamic Job Plans was also introduced.
On 24th July 2020 Maximo 7.6.1.2 was released with a few more enhancements, so not just a fix pack. There were enhancements to the Manage Inventory Work Center with picking and staging capabilities. There were also several enhancements to the Work Execution and Work Supervision Work Centers. Storeroom Hierarchies were introduced, and there was an optional enhanced location and asset drilldown. You could now add multiple attachments in one action. Scripts could be deployed on asynchronous integration. Push notifications could be sent to mobile devices. There was a License Usage Monitor application and Token based licensing was introduced. There were enhancements to BIM and you could import manufacturer data from a Digital Twin Exchange.
On 30th August 2022 Maximo 7.6.1.3 was released, it was mainly a fix pack but there were a few enhancements. In the Assets application there was a Roll Up Maintenance Costs action that replaced a BIRT report. Migration Manager packages could now be automated with REST APIs. There was also support for BIRT version 4.8.
This is the last release in the 7.6 series, in parallel IBM have been introducing the Maximo Application Suite (MAS) and End of Support for this version will be 30th September 2025.
Maximo 7.6. Industry Solutions and Add-ons
In the period between 2015-2020 before Maximo Application Suite was introduced, there was still a lot of investment in the Industry Solutions and add-ons. In 2015 there was a new Industry Solution – Maximo for Aviation and this was enhanced several times during this period.
Maximo Anywhere
While Maximo Anywhere was first released in late 2013 for android only and with limited work management functionality it did initially support offline working and using an offline map. The aim was for a single product set to support Maximo, TRIRIGA, and eventually SCCD, based on Worklight (later renamed MobileFirst), another IBM product. This would be the replacement for Maximo Mobile and the Syclo mobile suite, Syclo had been acquired by SAP in April 2012 and could no longer be sold by IBM or its Business Partners.
It was the period between 2015 and 2020 when the Maximo Anywhere product footprint expanded to cover the Work Management applications, work execution, inspection, approval and service request, Inventory Management applications, physical count, issues and returns, transfer and receiving, and Asset Management applications, asset data manager and asset audit. There were four Industry Solution based applications, for calibration, incident reporting (HSE), flight logbook and work execution for complex assets, both of which needed the Asset Configuration Manager or the Aviation Industry Solution. There was also an Anywhere Administration application.
In February 2020 Maximo Anywhere 7.6.4 was released, it would be the last one. It saw a simplification of the architecture with the removal of MobileFirst and added support for Push Notification Services.
Maximo Scheduler
In 2015 with Maximo Scheduler 7.6.1 the applications started to be reworked to use new technology and avoid the use of Java applets. Repair Facilities were added to locations and graphical applications provided to support assignment and capacity planning for repair facilities. Graphical Scheduling could also now support Location and Asset based scheduling. By 2016 the replacement of the Java applets was complete, and some graphical applications were merged. Graphical Crew Management became available and in Graphical Assignment there was support for multiple craft/skill levels.
Resource Planning buckets became available in 2017 along with optimization enhancements and performance improvements. Variable alternate resource availability was provided, and dependencies could now be shown between assignments.
On 21st October 2016 a new product Scheduler Plus was introduced, providing more advanced features including adding precedence logic between work orders, a new application for Graphical Appointments and adding weather forecasts following the acquisition of The Weather Company. This was followed by Weather Alerts, notifications for alerts and appointments, CPM backward pass scheduling, progress percent complete, and dynamic dispatching of emergent work.
On 8th December 2017 Scheduler Plus received a new application called Graphical Scheduling (Large Projects). SMS Messaging became available with a Twilio account. The Scheduler Administration module was added and included the ability to configure tool tips and hover over text. A new application Scheduling Alternate Resources allowed resource availability to be defined without having labor or crew availability. The Graphical Assignment application received several usability enhancements and there were several enhancements to improve the overall performance of the graphical applications.
The Scheduler release of 7.6.8 on 24th July 2020 was a very large release, not only because it merged Scheduler Plus into Maximo Scheduler but it also provided three new applications Graphical Resource View, Graphical Work Week, and the Scheduler Data Manager. The Scheduler Optimization was improved by moving to ILOG CPLEX Studio.
Health, Safety and Environment Manager (HSE)
We had been used to frequent big releases of O&G/HSE prior to Maximo 7.6 but in the next 5 years there was just two. In the 7.6.1 release there was a new Bypass Management application and changes to Audit and Surveys and how it interacted with other HSE applications. Incidents, Permit to Work and Risk Assessments applications all saw several enhancements but there were many others elsewhere.
On 17th November 2020 HSE saw further enhancements to Permit to Work, and Incident Management, but there were also new applications for Training Courses and Training Modules, and Lock Management.
Service Providers
On 12-Dec-2014 Maximo for Service Providers supported the multi-tenancy SaaS model and on 11-Sep-2015 and 3 months later on 11-Dec-2015 there were two releases which together saw a lot of new functionality. Nothing much happened in 2016 apart from fix packs and a couple of minor enhancements, but in the period 2017-2019 there were four more minor releases, that together added several features mainly in the areas of pricing and billing and probably driven by the needs of SCCD/ICD and Maximo for Aviation which both include the Service Provider add-on.
Maximo Spatial
In the period between 2015 and 2020 the three add-ons Spatial, Scheduler and Maximo Anywhere were being pulled closer together, the phrase being used was location-based services and advanced mapping capabilities. In 2018 you could view linear assets on a map, receive directions to your next place of work on a mobile device, and receive real-time updates from a dispatcher who is rescheduling/reassigning based on new emergent work. New spatial tools including redlining/markups and the ability to filter work, assets, or labor/crew based on device position were being added through most of this period.
Maximo Spatial continued to be enhanced as it still is today. Work Centers and Maximo Mobile both have maps and there must be continued support for later versions of ArcGIS. On the 24th July 2020 there were enhancements to offline mapping, extending mapping support on the Work Supervision and Work Execution work centers and support for ArcGIS online.
MRO Inventory Optimisation
There had been an Inventory Optimization product for Maximo in 2014, perhaps earlier, it was called IBM Maximo Inventory Insights. In the 2015 roadmap it was called Inventory Analytics on Cloud. It used a model from IBM SPSS Predictive Analytics, to calculate an optimal reorder point based on item lead time and item usage patterns over the last year. As you trace the roadmaps and look at the product page there was no Inventory Optimization for a few years.
On 15th June 2018 IBM acquired Oniqua, which had a leading cloud-based Maintenance Repair and Operations (MRO) Inventory Optimization solution and services, and with an interface to both Maximo and SAP. The acquisition was made by IBM Global Business Services (GBS) and was for several years not available to be implemented by anyone outside of GBS. On the roadmap of May 2020 Maximo MRO Inventory Optimization appeared but disappeared again some time in 2022. If you search for it today, you’ll find it is part of the IBM Sterling Supply Chain Intelligence Suite. It is an application that in MAS 8.11 you will find as a card in the applications tab of the MAS Suite Navigator. It is available to be used by Maximo clients, the APIs exist, and it is very relevant to those who have implemented inventory in Maximo. A separate license was required previously, and one is still required today, it needs to come from the IBM Supply Chain Intelligence Suite team. Licensing is based on the dollar value of stock and uses a different type of AppPoint whose scale is unlike Maximo AppPoints.
Other Industry Solutions and add-ons
Other Industry Solutions continued to be enhanced especially for the newest Aviation, and Nuclear. In 2017 Utilities had features added to support smart meters. In 2018 the SAP adapter supported S/4 HANA. Overall, it did look as if investment in the traditional industry solutions was reducing, perhaps making way for something else.
In 2018 Maximo Asset Registry on Blockchain was added as an integration, later renamed Maximo Network on Blockchain, now you won’t find it as a Maximo product although the capability may still exist.
Maximo Application Suite (MAS)
We first heard about Maximo Application Suite (MAS) and the Journey to Predict in May 2020. MAS would have applications called Manage (Maximo), Scheduler, Monitor, Health, Predict, Mobile, Assist, Safety, Visual Inspection, and Industry Accelerators. MAS would be based on Red Hat OpenShift and there would be a new licensing model. The completion of the acquisition of RedHat by IBM occurred on 9th July 2019.
Maximo Application Suite was first released on 26th June 2020 as MAS 8.0. It contained the Monitor application and a few components for handling users. For MAS 8.1 on 28th August 2020 Health and Predict were added, and a few months later MAS 8.2 on 30th October 2020 provided Visual Inspection. MAS 8.3 was released on 29th January 2021 adding Assist, Safety, and globalization support for 22 languages.
11 months after Maximo Application Suite was first released on 18th May 2021 MAS 8.4 arrived and it now included Manage and Mobile, Scheduler being included as part of Maximo Manage, as were the Industry Solutions and add-ons like HSE, Spatial, Service Provider, ACM and Anywhere. Maximo Health & Predict for Utilities was also part of MAS 8.4 and there were enhancements to Monitor, Health, Predict, Visual Inspection and Assist.
MAS works on a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) and can now be hosted by IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, or on-premise. It can also be installed in an AirGap environment, a disconnected environment where there is no public Internet.
MAS has a modernized user interface, with a design pattern that is being used across IBM products providing a consistent look and feel. For users upgrading from Maximo 7.6.1.x the changes need explaining and a small video or Powerpoint would be required, but face to face would not be necessary. You cannot maintain any previous skin and a few System Properties that provide some options for controlling how the UI looked have been removed.
In MAS there is a single license, a simplified license model that uses AppPoints. A Maximo client is entitled to use everything in the suite. The number of AppPoints is consumed depending on what a user has access to, and when a user logs out the AppPoints are released for another user. Subscription can be based on a perpetual or term basis. Some installs will consume a certain number of AppPoints, for example a Spatial install consumes 20 AppPoints, the SAP/Oracle Connectors 80 AppPoints. Some integrations to other products like Maximo MRO Inventory Optimization need to be licensed separately as they are not included as part of MAS.
For existing clients upgrading they should consider that Spatial, Linear, Calibration and Scheduler all now exist in Maximo Manage, these used to be separately licensed. Maximo Mobile which we shall discuss a little later is also included. A technician who has access to the applications of the work order module, perhaps as a Limited user giving access to 3 modules, also now has entitlement to use Maximo Mobile. Access using a work order based 3rd party mobile application would also consume the same number of AppPoints.
A client can install any of the industry solutions or add-ons that make sense to them without increasing the number of AppPoints they need. As they start to use those applications, they would need to consider whether a user has moved up from Limited (5 AppPoints) to Base (10 AppPoints) or to Premium (15 AppPoints). For a technician who is only using the applications within three modules then they would stay on Limited even if they were using the features of an industry solution or add-on that existed in their three modules. Existing clients who did not have access previously to the Health, Safety and Environment Manager (HSE) add on will find they can use aspects of these applications with no increase in the number of AppPoints they need, however, if you invite a new set of users, say the HSQE department, the likelihood is that with new users you would need to increase the total number of AppPoints. AppPoints are sold on a concurrent or named user basis.
Maximo Manage
Since the MAS 8.4 release until the current release MAS 8.11 there have been continuous development across the suite applications, one roughly every 3 months. The latest Industry Solution Maximo for Civil Infrastructure was first released on 23rd October 2020.
On 27th July 2021 MAS 8.5 was released. The only Manage enhancement to note was the Maintenance Cost Rollup in the Assets application. There were enhancements to Maximo Mobile and other suite applications. On the roadmap of September 2021 there was no longer a reference to the Industry Solution Maximo for Life Sciences, perhaps because Calibration one of its main components was now part of core Maximo. However, the applications Incidents and Problems which were used for Corrective and Preventive actions are not available in MAS, unless HSE is also installed. Other parts of Maximo for Life Sciences, the ECRI Interface and the Compliance Assistance Documentation used to support validation, are available for download. In its place as a new Industry Solution was Health and Predict Utilities.
On 26th October 2021 MAS 8.6 was released. There was no core Maximo Manage changes to note, but it was a big update for Maximo Mobile and the new Civil Infrastructure Industry Solution was enhanced. There were updates to the APM applications of Monitor, Health, and Predict, and Visual Inspection also received a set of enhancements.
On 22nd February 2022 MAS 8.7 was released. This was a platform change with support for OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) 4.8. The other change was announcement that MAS will adopt a continuous delivery support model that would incrementally delivers regular product fix packs. The Asset Data Dictionary was launched to help synchronise Manage assets and locations with the other suite applications, like Monitor. There was an update to BIRT version 4.8 and unfortunately, for security reasons, the Update button was removed from three Inventory reports that calculate ABC values, Economic Order Quantities (EOQ) and Reorder Points (ROP).
From the Roadmap of May 2022, it was announced that ICD would be coming back as an add-on to MAS. Cognos Analytics would similarly be added and longer term there would be a move away from BIRT in favour of Cognos Analytics. A new integration was available, the WorkDay Connector which uses AppConnect which is also a part of MAS.
On 15th August 2022 MAS 8.8 was released. There were additional installation options including providing MAS as a SaaS offering on AWS. Initially in July 2022 this was the Maximo Manage component with the industry solutions and add-ons, but by December 2022 this was expanded to include Assist, Health, Monitor, Predict and Visual Inspection. In MAS 8.8. Maximo Optimizer replaced Maximo Scheduler Optimization; in effect it provides a framework for managing optimization jobs while the scheduling optimization models still use IBM ILOG CPLEX Optimization Studio for solving optimization models. It allows expansion into other optimization areas. There were also some enhancements to the suite administration.
On 22nd November 2022 MAS 8.9 was released, this was quite a big release with all suite applications being enhanced. However, Maximo Safety had now been dropped from MAS. Maximo Safety had originated from research work on integrating sensors in industrial hats, smart watches, and other wearables, and proximity sensors which could detect someone entering a designated dangerous area. Both aspects were introduced into the IoT Platform with a POC interface to automatically create an HSE Incident and alert both the worker and supervisor on their mobile device. This appeared in the 2016 roadmap as Maximo Worker Safety and later in 2018 as Maximo Safety Insights. However, while there had been interest in this, there were privacy concerns during the sales cycle, and it was decided to drop the Safety application from the suite because the thought was that if a client wanted to do this their wearable IoT devices could be integrated through Monitor.
For MAS 8.9 and Manage 8.5 the Operational Dashboard was introduced, as the future replacement of the Start Center. There was a new role-based Work Orders application, how much this will grow towards Work Order Tracking we will need to wait and see. There was also a new role-based Workflow Assignments application and Manage Monitoring Information application with a set of monitoring metrics which replaced the Maximo Management Interface Work Center. Each of these four applications are developed using the Maximo Application Framework (MAF). Similarly using the MAF there was a new Scheduling Dashboard. Indoor/2D maps can now be used with Maximo Spatial and ArcGIS indoors configuration.
Most of the Work Centers were dropped from MAS 8.9 and Maximo Anywhere is no longer supported on this version or later. The functionality was said to be replaced by Maximo Mobile and the role-based applications, except while the majority of features have been replaced there are gaps, the biggest gap being that there is no support for calibration on the technician application, not even on the latest version MAS 8.11.
In MAS 8.9 there were enhancements to the Civil Infrastructure Industry Solution to better triage the images coming from drone or robot inspections, and Health received a matrix view of future asset condition. Monitor received performance and scalability enhancements, the time taken to refresh a new dashboard is now counted in milliseconds, and it is technology changes like these in one part of the suite which will ultimately filter through to other parts.
Three new adapters were added, MAS – Envizi Connector, TRIRIGA – MAS Connector and TRIRIGA – Envizi Connector, all of these utilise App Connect. In MAS 8.9 there were also further enhancements to the suite administration, certification management, password policy settings, and configuring user sessions so that AppPoint tokens are released promptly.
Also in MAS 8.9 was the option to install MAS Mange, Mobile and Health on Single Node OpenShift (SNO) providing a lower cost option for clients that only want to deploy Manage.
On 28th March 2023 MAS 8.10 was released, the suite components and all suite applications being enhanced. There was now integration to Cognos Analytics where object structures are published to Cognos metadata packages. In Security Groups access to Cognos Analytics reporting can be authorised, with the synchronization of those security groups to Cognos Analytics.
In 8.10 the Operational dashboard was enhanced with KPIs, Favorites, Quick Actions and Workflow Assignment Actions. The new Work Order application now supports rich text, including images and links and an advanced search, the Scheduling dashboard also saw further enhancements. The Maximo Optimizer was enhanced for both scheduling and dispatching and there are now two options, Optimizer (requires 220 AppPoints) and Optimizer Limited (requires 60 AppPoints), the difference between the two is that with the limited version there is only a serial execution of jobs for one model and two Virtual Processor Cores, which should be enough to get going without committing to the full Optimizer. Calendars can now use breaks to reduce the availability of labor and crews.
On 26th September 2023 MAS 8.11 was released. In Manage, Migration Manager folders have been provided with read/write access in the Maximo Manage pods allowing you to download the package file from the source environment and upload it to the target environment when migrating configuration content. A warning framework has been provided for automation scripts to help identify common issues leading to poor performance or unexpected output. There were further enhancements to the new Work Order application, including a map tab and communication log. There is a new Work Queue Manager application, a work queue is the result of a query with optional actions that can be associated with it.
There were further enhancements to the Scheduling dashboard and a new Dispatching dashboard was provided. There were enhancements to the Maximo Optimizer including accelerated travel time computations and a what-if analysis function. The Operational dashboard received a work queue tile, and a KPI comparison tile. The Reliability Strategies application was introduced to support RCM and Maximo IT became an add-on to Maximo Manage.
In MAS 8.11 Health and Predict Utilities has been merged into the suite applications Health and Predict, as a result there is no AppPoints for its install. The Health application has received the Asset Investment Optimization (AIO) and matrices that were in Health and Predict Utilities. Health and Predict Utilities no longer exists in this version.
Also, in MAS 8.11 the Maximo Parts Identifier, which could use the camera on your mobile device to detect the part that you may wish to replace, has been removed as an add-on. I don’t know the reason for this but if you follow the roadmaps closely as I have done over many years, there is the occasional add on or integration which appears one year and on another it has disappeared.
If you were wondering what happened to the Watson IoT Platform, it was deprecated on 1st December 2023, a close alternative is the IBM Maximo Monitor application in MAS.
The products of the IBM Watson IoT division became part of IBM AI Applications, this included Maximo, TRIRIGA, Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) applications, IBM Sterling Suite, and Weather Business Solutions.
Maximo Application Suite is now part of IBM Sustainability Software along with TRIRIGA, Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) applications, Sterling Supply Chain solutions, Envizi ESG Reporting, IBM Turbonomic for sustainable IT in data centres, and the Environmental Intelligence Suite for Weather Risk Management. Envizi was acquired by IBM on 11th January 2022.
Maximo Mobile
Maximo Mobile is the replacement for both Work Centers which were online only and Maximo Anywhere which worked both online and offline. Maximo Mobile is a single application downloaded from the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, it also works with Windows 10 and 11. Configuration and customisation are possible, it is currently XML editing in the tool called Maximo Application Framework (MAF). IBM are aiming to have the configuration functionality similar to Application Designer, and at the time of writing this has gone a long way past the configuration that was possible with Work Centers.
Maximo Mobile works both offline and online; when a connection becomes available the switch between the two is seamless. It is really a suite of integrated applications that appear as one on a mobile device. For each of these applications there is also a Role-Based Application (RBA) which is browser based, hence online. The differences between Maximo Mobile and the equivalent RBA application are marginal, with just a few things which require you to be online, and other things which require you to be on a mobile device rather than a desktop.
With the latest version which at the time of writing is MAS 8.11, the applications include Service Request, Work Approval, Technician, Inspections, Inventory Receiving (which includes Shipment Receiving), Issues and Transfers, Inventory Counting and Asset Manager. It doesn’t quite replace everything that was in the Work Centers, although it is close, there are gaps in Inventory and there is no replacement yet for Manage Inspection Forms. It also doesn’t yet replace Maximo Anywhere, the gap is a little wider, especially as there is no support for Calibration or the Industry Solution applications, but for many clients it has reached a point where they can start their evaluation and planning. To support the transition to MAS, IBM have made Maximo Mobile for EAM available on Maximo 7.6.1.3.
Monitor
In 2015 the three new buzzwords were Instrumented, Interconnected and Intelligent and by late 2016 the roadmap was indicating that Maximo would be expanding beyond Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). An integration with the Watson IoT Platform would be coming, and an adapter was made available at the end of 2017, Maximo had an Internet of Things offering.
Today, with MAS 8.11, Monitor is the near equivalent of the IoT Platform, and it is the first of three Asset Performance Management (APM) applications. Monitor first appeared on the Maximo roadmap in 2020.
Monitor helps you connect to asset-based instruments and the data they produce, whether these are IoT devices, instruments connected to SCADA, Building Information Systems, or Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) or real-time data historians. Instruments produce a lot of data, which you do not want to transfer across a network. Monitor also includes Edge Data Collectors. On 3rd November 2022 IBM completed the acquisition of Omnio and the Omnio Edge connectors and this is now part of Monitor. Omnio Edge provides a library of software connectors to industrial devices provided by a wide range of manufacturers. The library of connectors collects raw device data and delivers it unified and ready to use, it connects operational technology (OT) data to Maximo thereby supporting IoT and Industry 4.0 initiatives. Analytics is also performed at the edge to interpret alarms or to perform anomaly detection.
An enterprise may have many assets spread across many sites and Monitor provides dashboards with hierarchies and drilldowns grouped by asset type that allow you to visualise current and historical trends and react to alerts where anomaly detectors have detected outliers, gaps or flat lines in data that need to be investigated. It can do this at scale, allowing a user to monitor many assets at the same time, reacting to the alerts when prompted and drilling down to perform an investigation.
When alerted you can create a Service Request in Maximo Manage. The data entering Monitor can also be used to create measurement data against Condition Monitoring Points in Maximo Manage.
Health
In 2015 we were introduced to IBM Predictive Maintenance and Quality (PMQ), which had come from research work to detect asset failures and quality issues with models for calculating asset health scores. This was split and in October 2016 Maximo Asset Health Insights (MAHI) was released with two further updates in 2017, it allowed health scores to be calculated using Maximo formulas. Real time data could be connected through the Watson IoT Platform to feed the asset health scores.
The user interface of MAHI was using the same Polymer based tooling as for the Work Centers. Asset health scores could be calculated and rolled-up the hierarchy, later there would be the ability to use weighted rollups. You could add historical weather to the formulas and import sensor data either into gauge meters or with an interface of real-time data stored in the Watson IoT platform.
In 2017 features were added to help with repair versus replace decisions. There has been continuous enhancement through to the present day where it is now called Maximo Health, and where the user interface has been modernized. Health is the second of the three Asset Performance Management (APM) applications.
In the most recent updates Maximo Health has inherited from the product Health and Predict for Utilities two new features. The first is the ability to forecast and visualise future scores by using a matrix. The second part is an Asset Investment Optimizer (AIO). You create investment projects, specify strategies, and compare the results of different analyzed investment strategies. These use end-of-life curves and predicted risk curves which need to exist before the assets can be optimized.
Predict
In 2019 we saw a Predictive Maintenance solution referenced for the first time as Maximo APM Predictive Insights. Maximo Predict today consists of five models that predict the probability of failure, the factors that contribute to failure, a predicted failure date, anomaly detection that can generate alerts, and it produces an asset life curve.
Predict is the last of the three Asset Performance Management (APM) applications, and the data that feeds Predict comes from IT data originating in Manage or Health, and OT time series data originating from Monitor. In the Journey to Predict both Health and Monitor are likely to have been implemented first.
The models in Predict can be tailored or new models created by a Data Scientist. There are several default Jupyter Notebooks that are used as templates to build and train instances of a predictive model. IBM Watson Studio on IBM Cloud Pak for Data is used, this is included as part of Maximo Application Suite, but it will need some setup. In MAS 8.11 several Asset Class Notebooks relevant to Electric Utilities can be made available by installing Maximo Models for Electrical Distribution, this used to be a part of Health and Predict for Utilities.
Visual Inspection
Originating as IoT for Manufacturing – Visual Insights in 2017 and then renamed IBM IoT Visual Insights, IBM Maximo Visual Inspection (MVI) was first referenced on a Maximo roadmap in May 2020 and its first release was on MAS 8.2 on 30th October 2020. MVI uses computer vision AI. It takes images or videos coming from drones, moving or static cameras, including a mobile phone, and analyses these images to determine whether a defect exists. The images are compared with a library of similar images showing assets at varying states so that defects or degree of deterioration can be detected, and when necessary a service request created in Maximo Manage or alternatively a defect created in Maximo for Civil Infrastructure.
There is a toolset for labelling, training, and deploying AI vision models, training the model is simplified with drag and drop. Developing a library of images has also been reduced in time through a process called image augmentation where AI is used to develop realistic images with defects, that have never actually existed, the more images you have the more accurate the training and this process helps to achieve an ROI much earlier than was otherwise possible.
With the asset objects classified in the image libraries, when MVI is active it first auto-detects the object before evaluating it against the AI vision model. This can be performed at the edge with a camera, or on a mobile device mounted on a tripod using the MVI Mobile application where the images are automatically captured. The mobile application can notify a supervisor if a defect is found using a Twilio account. The MVI application can also be used while a technician holds the camera pointed at an asset. Maximo Visual Inspection has an interface with Maximo Monitor.
Maximo for Civil Infrastructure is the newest Industry Solution and this uses Maximo Visual Inspection to not only detect defects, for example cracks or holes in concrete bridges, but it can also determine the volume of the defect using another AI model that originated from IBM Research. It was interesting to see that in the 2023 IBM Research annual letter, which highlights its technical achievements from the last 12 months, the projects that are shaping what’s next in computing, that both Maximo Visual Inspection and Maximo for Civil Infrastructure were referenced. AI isn’t just a vision for Maximo, it is already implemented in several places across the suite, and I have no doubt that this is just a start.
Visual Inspection requires 45 AppPoints for its installation and 1 AppPoint per Edge device, if there is a Production usage. Maximo for Civil Infrastructure requires 50 AppPoints for its production installation.
Assist
During 2018 we started to hear about the IBM Equipment Maintenance Assistant (EMA) which had originated from work with the US Army to monitor and repair the Stryker fleet of vehicles, it later changed its name to Assist. It uses similar AI models to some of those used when the IBM Watson supercomputer took on and beat the two greatest champions of the US quiz show Jeopardy.
In Assist today it is the ingestion of best practise documents, engineering manuals, manufacturer/owner manuals, historical data originating from Maximo, root cause failure analysis or failure modes effects analysis, it might be a training repository or a knowledge base, even journals or magazine articles. This data may be structured, or unstructured, video or audio. Assist allows the user to ask questions in natural language and AI provides the most likely answers with percentage confidence based on the data which you ingested into the model.
Later in 2018 we started to hear about Maximo Peer Guidance, and this has evolved into the second aspect to Maximo Assist. It uses the camera on your mobile device to ask for an online expert for guidance. This remote guidance session can be recorded and annotated and saved into the repository so that it could be useful to the next technician who asks a similar question.
Assist was added to the Work Execution Work Center and it is also available in the Maximo Mobile Technician application. Maximo Assist requires 150 AppPoints for its production installation.
MAS Platform Components
There are several software components which are delivered with Maximo Application Suite.
IBM Cloud Pak for Data is a modular set of integrated software components for data analysis, organization and management. It includes many different services for AI, analytics, dashboards, data governance, data sources, developer tools and storage.
IBM Watson Studio is used to build, run and manage AI models and optimize decisions on IBM Cloud Pak for Data.
IBM Watson ML is used after you have built and trained a machine learning model to deploy that model, manage input data and put the machine learning assets to use.
IBM Watson Discovery is an API to search and answer questions about business documents using custom NLP and Large Language Models from IBM Research.
IBM Watson Assistant is used to build a virtual assistant that understands natural language requests from users and responds with appropriate answers.
IBM App Connect is a solution that connects any of your applications and data, no matter where they reside. It has hundreds of prebuilt connectors and customizable templates.
Different components of the suite use these software components, but what I do not know is whether there are limitations in their use, I certainly would expect them to only be used with data that exists in Maximo.
Health and Predict Utilities
Originating as IBM IoT for Energy and Utilities in 2017, and later renamed APM for E&U (Energy and Utilities) wasn’t seen as a product in a Maximo roadmap until September 2021 when it appeared as an Industry Solution called Health and Predict Utilities. The original functionality has been broken up, with parts going to the MAS 8.11 Health and Predict applications, and another part can be downloaded from the IBM Maximo Accelerators Catalog as Maximo Models for Electrical Distribution.
The Vegetation Management solution which was referenced a few times in the Maximo roadmaps as a future product has ended up in the IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite and there is an integration in MAS which can also be found in the IBM Maximo Accelerators Catalog as IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite integration for Maximo Spatial Assets. The IBM Intelligence Suite must be separately licensed it is not a part of MAS.
As of MAS 8.11 the Health and Predict Utilities product no longer exists.
Envizi
On 11th January 2022 IBM acquired Envizi a global leader in energy and sustainability data and analytics software. The software automates the collection and consolidation of more than 500 data types in the areas of Emissions Management, ESG Reporting, ESG Performance, Energy Management, and Building Optimization. It provides customisable dashboards for companies to analyse, manage and report on environmental goals, identify efficiency opportunities, and assess sustainability risks.
Envizi is not a part of MAS, and it must be separately licensed. However, with Envizi now connected to both MAS and TRIRIGA I expect we’ll see Maximo being enhanced in areas that support the ESG reporting, similarly for TRIRIGA. In the European Union on 5 January 2023, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) came into force and companies now have to report according to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS).
Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM)
In the first quarter of 2023 IBM acquired the Asset Strategy Library from Uptake Technologies Software and by MAS 8.11 in the same year it appeared in Maximo Manage as the Reliability Strategies application. It is a library of failure details for specific asset types compiled by experts over many years. It is the first entry into providing Maximo with a Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM) capability. It has 800+ asset types, resulting in 58,000+ failure mechanisms, and 5,000+ preventive maintenance tasks and intervals that a user can leverage.
Maximo is so much more than an Enterprise Asset Management system
I was going to write a concise history of Maximo, but I got carried away, apologies for that, but if you are still reading, then well done. Through this near 40-year history Maximo was a well-rounded Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) in 1996, and in 2006 at the time of the IBM acquisition of MRO Software it was recognised as the leading Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) system. That was 18 years ago, and as you have read development didn’t stop there.
Maximo is an effective EAM solution for all industries, and many clients today will only use the parts of Maximo contained within the Manage application of the Maximo Application Suite (MAS). Maximo Manage is what we have traditionally called Maximo and it contains all the Industry Solutions and add-ons like Linear, Calibration, Scheduler, Spatial, and Maximo Mobile.
Occasionally software products go through an architectural change. Around 1990 Maximo went from a file-based system to a client server system with a SQL database. In 2005 with MXES Maximo had fully moved to a webserver so that users only had to use a browser. In 2021 Maximo is now part of Maximo Application Suite, a container-based platform using RedHat OpenShift. It needed to do this because the future ecosystem of components which Maximo will rely upon will not be found solely on the Maximo webserver but in other containers being run on other data centres somewhere in the cloud and accessed through APIs. It needs to do this to provide analytics, optimization and AI solutions which will shape the way that maintenance will be performed in the future. With Maximo Application Suite Maximo is now set ready for the next 10-15 years of its life.
Maximo Application Suite today could be described as a combined EAM solution and an Asset Performance Management (APM) solution. The three APM applications are Monitor, Health and Predict, with Monitor providing an Internet of Things (IoT) platform and solution. In addition to that MAS has applications for Visual Inspection and with Assist both an intelligent knowledge base and a mobile based solution providing remote peer guidance. Maximo Application Suite is already infused with AI components that can be found in Predict, Visual Inspection, Monitor, Assist and Maximo for Civil Infrastructure. It is an EAM+APM solution that is ready to face a future which will be dominated by AI.
Predicting the near future
I was asked to consider the direction Maximo would take in the next couple of years. I’m not from IBM and I have no knowledge of this, but I can make educated guesses, but I’ll stick with trying to predict the direction of Maximo Manage. I think there are several areas of development.
The first is to continue to build out the functionality of Maximo Mobile, at least to cover the functional footprint of Maximo Anywhere and the Work Centers, it is nearly there but there are some gaps, especially around Inventory and no support yet for calibration or linear. For a long time, the Industry Solutions have wanted to develop mobile applications themselves, and I expect this will now happen.
The second focus area will be the configurability of these mobile applications and the role-based applications. The overall user experience of Maximo, while many of us love it, it does need a different approach from the applications which are stuffed with tabs, fields, and table windows, which makes it more difficult to learn. This will require an application which is as easy to use as the classic Application Designer, and the Maximo Application Framework (MAF) tool is already a long way along the path to providing this, but it needs to be completed.
The third focus area will be in the role-based dashboards and a few other applications like the new Work Order role-based application that would make it easier for small clients to enter the world of Maximo. Dashboards for the Asset, Procurement and Inventory Managers would be obvious additions, hopefully Desktop Requisitions will get reworked into a role-based application. The Manage Inspection Forms Work Center still needs to be replaced. IBM will need to figure out how these get extended by the Industry Solution teams. Some time ago, it was rumoured that the work centers would replace the classic user interface of Maximo. I didn’t think this was necessary, some applications would only be used on a desktop, besides it would be a huge effort to replace all parts of Maximo with a new UI. But I have no doubt that there will be an increase in these role-based application based on MAF.
The Scheduling applications will continue to be enhanced and the Scheduling and Dispatching dashboards are I think just a start. Planning, scheduling, and assigning are areas that effect nearly all Maximo clients and IBM will want to have a modern user interface to support those users. Field Service Management solutions is I think an area which IBM will want to strengthen, and Maximo Optimizer plays a part in this.
IBM recently started its journey into providing Maximo with a Reliability Centered Maintenance capability, with the addition of a library of failure mechanisms for 800+ asset types, the application is called Reliability Strategies. Development in this area is likely to continue perhaps first with linking this data towards creating a Preventive Maintenance and Job Plan record, and hopefully allowing a client to create their own reliability strategy records. Ultimately this data needs to be linked so that when you update your reliability strategy based on feedback from the field that it updates the preventive maintenance records for multiple assets of the same asset type.
IBM Control Desk (ICD) has now been added into MAS as Maximo IT, but it is not yet compatible with all the Industry Solutions and add-ons that Maximo has, for example we discovered that Maximo IT and HSE could not be installed together. I expect IBM will want to bring the two products together, not just so that they can operate on the same platform, but to make it easier for existing Maximo clients to use ICD features, and vice versa. I think ultimately it would be better to treat Maximo IT as another Industry Solution. ICD is likely to take advantage of Maximo Mobile and the role-based applications and there is likely to be development work supporting the IT/OT convergence.
The recent acquisition of Envizi and the provision of an adapter between Maximo and Envizi is likely to see changes in Maximo to support sustainability initiatives which will feed through to the ESG reporting in Envizi.
We have heard that Cognos Analytics will be added as a component to MAS and that there was the intention to replace BIRT. I think IBM will provide something to make it easier for clients to move from BIRT to Cognos, something more than the object structures, something like the Business Intelligence Packs it provided when Maximo 7.6 was released.
There have been hints in the past to encourage the Maximo community to raise Ideas (Request for Enhancements) and now that MAS has evolved, I think there will be more of a focus on client-driven enhancements.
Then there is AI and Optimization. The MAS platform today supports both AI and optimization, and these are two areas which will expand over the next several years in all parts of the Maximo Application Suite.
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