Hierarchies are present in many areas of Maximo. Locations and Assets have hierarchies that are independent and related. Where do you start? Do you need both? Will the presence of rotating items make a difference? The answer is subjective, but I recommend both whether you use rotating items or not.
As with most applications in Maximo, there are multiple fields and tabs in each of the primary applications, and likely far more than many of us use, so I will focus on a few that all should use and why. You will also see a few additional reference links along the way in case you wish to delve deeper.
Before we get into locations, we need to talk about Systems. Systems create the capability for Maximo to have multiple location hierarchies. You start with a ‘primary’ system and you can name it whatever you want, but often you will find it labeled ‘Primary’ as well. The key is the checkbox in the systems list that identifies the system as ‘Primary System?’ and not the actual system name.
This ‘primary’ system should be a hierarchy and ideally you can consider it an organization chart for your operation (manufacturer, facility, fleet, etc.). This will help in creation of the locations that build the hierarchy. The examples shown from the standard demo are representative of what you would find across several industries and should help to prompt you in identification of those you want.
This system functionality allows you to maintain multiple hierarchies in the same Maximo instance, organization and site as shown below with location BR430 and how it appears in the hierarchy of the different systems:
The hierarchy on the top is in the ELECTRIC system, rolling up to the primary substation while the hierarchy on the right is in the ‘PRIMARY’ system, rolling up to the top level site location (NEEDHAM) for the demo database. Note that each system can have a different top level location, and there are even other types of systems such as address and network to be covered perhaps in a future blog.
How do you determine what is a location? Think of a location as a business reason for a record to be in the database, somewhere on the hierarchy, and starting with the ‘primary’ system hierarchy. Locations are often things that exist, and you can stub your toe on, but not always. In facilities, for example, a hierarchy can be Site->Building->Floor->Room->…. In manufacturing you will often find something like Site->Facility/Building->Department->Line->… Department and Line for example will generally have physical borders but are not likely to be a physical entity.
Consider the location as a placeholder that is a parent or child to other locations that may have assets at them. In the ‘primary’ hierarchy, they will help you leverage multiple features within Maximo, including in delivered reports such as ‘Costs by System’.
In addition to reporting, there are also querying capabilities that search hierarchies, so you can see work orders not just for a given location and its assets but also for the associated child location and assets.
These capabilities and reporting are delivered with Maximo, and you leverage them in your data setup and entry.
An important note on location creation is that it is a 2-step process. First create the location and save, and then add the location to the hierarchy at the ‘primary’ system (and other systems if you like).
Maximo comes with an extensive capability to capture transactions and associate them with your General Ledger at a very detailed level. The location records provide a great place to identify default accounts for charging. These default accounts are not typically ‘fully qualified’. That is, not all the segments are filled in. The leading segments as well as placeholder(s) for the trailing segment(s), however, will be copied to the work order when the location is assigned. When actual transactions (labor, material, services, etc.) are entered, the remaining entry will just include the proper ending segment(s).
This capability to capture the ‘accounting’ has existed in Maximo for many versions and decades. With version 7.6.0.8 in 2017, the Budget Monitoring capability was added which reads the assignment of those glaccounts to transactions and aggregates them across different focal points (locations, glsegment, etc.) and is now part of the core product. Additionally, you can look back in time, even before 2017 if you have that data available.
Meters are also available in locations and assets. The obvious use would be to capture the readings at these specific locations, but note that there is a great deal more functionality here. By having a hierarchy, the reading can roll down from this record to related assets if they do not have their own meters.
Imagine an aircraft where the meter is assigned to the location for the left engine. Each asset has a field to indicate if that asset will ‘accept rolldown’ meter reading or not and from where. This allows you to leverage the meters you have where it makes sense, especially since you are not likely to be able to install the additional meters on the parts in an engine.
Assets, have a greater number of fields and tabs than locations and if you have an industry solution, expect even more, so where do you start? Which assets? How far do you go? Again, the answers are subjective, but top considerations are often the value of having it present for reporting, and the cost of the asset.
As to what data to capture, start with nameplate data as it is often the easiest as it is usually still there, like the serial number which is helpful when confirming you are working on the correct asset.
Purchase information is often captured from records and you may need to add the Asset Tag field to the Asset application if that is available to you. This would typically capture the account reference number for the asset and provide you a link to their records on the purchase information to be used over time as you examine the history and health of your assets, and potentially justify major repair or replacement.
One of the most distinct capabilities Assets have that Locations do not, is the association with Spare Parts.
The spare parts listing can be entered manually and you can also leverage the ‘Spare Part Auto Add’ functionality built into core Maximo. This provides a field on the item master that, when turned on, each time you issue the part to a work order with this asset, the part will be added to the list if it is not already there.
This list of spare parts becomes available to you in:
There are other places this data is available, but the main points here are that once present, you can leverage the data from multiple places throughout Maximo, and often without ever needing to come to the Assets application.
Lastly, a few best practices I would recommend:
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