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I am working with a client right now who is really struggling to understand the difference between Assigning work orders on the Assignments tab and designating ownership or a Lead, Supervisor, etc. in the Responsibilities fields. We are trying to put together an explanation for their training materials. Here is what we came up with. We would love to hear any feedback and/or suggestions to enhance this explanation even more. 

Maximo Term	Definition
Assignment	Assigning a laborer to a work order is performed on the Assignments tab of the work order or via an application like Assignment Manager, IBM Scheduler, AKWIRE, etc.   When you assign a work order to someone, you are using their LABOR record to create a stub labor entry in the Actuals tab and Labor sub tab of the work order. This process allows the laborers to use the SELECT PLANNED LABOR button when adding labor entries to work orders after they have physically performed the work.
Ownership	When you TAKE OWNERSHIP or SELECT OWNER on a work order, you are adding a PERSON record to the OWNER or OWNER GROUP field in the work order.   These ownership fields write to the work order edit history that can be seen by navigating to the More Actions list and selecting the View Work Order History option.   In addition, they are used in the out-of-the-box work centers to display work orders for the appropriate person.   Finally, they can be used on the start center result set or a saved query in the Work Order Tracking application..
Designation	When you select a person record or people group in any of the other fields in the Responsibilities section of the work order form, you are simply designating that person in that field.   Designating a LEAD, SUPERVISOR, or WORK GROUP in the Responsibilities section does not write to the out-of-the-box edit history of the work order. It does not create a stub labor entry in the Actuals tab and Labor sub tab for labor entries.   Designating a LEAD, SUPERVISOR, or WORK GROUP in the Responsibilities section does allow records to be filtered by these fields in a start center result set or a saved query in the Work Order Tracking application.

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Anne Antonelli
Technology Training & Consulting, Inc.
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I think I'd approach it from a historical perspective, like this:

• From the early days of Maximo, the way work was doled out & tracked was by use of the Supervisor, Work Group, and/or Lead fields; and that's all that was available.
• Then came the era where they tried to implement & integrate what is now called Control Desk, for IT Service Management and Asset Management.  Owner and Owner Group are concepts that come from ITIL guidelines for ITSM.
• More recently was the advent of the Assignments tab and improvements to Maximo Scheduler, with goals of not simply "assigning" work to a Lead or Work Group, but to make it easier to plan the work, assign it to as many people as you need -- even if these people aren't on the same Work Group or Crew, and schedule when the work will get done.
• There was also the adoption of Crews from the Maximo for Utilities add-on, which introduced Crews and Crew Work Groups as fields on the Work Order that you could "assign" work to.

So at this point in Maximo's development, there are multiple ways that an organization can "assign" work, and you can pick the parts and pieces that work for your organization.  For my organization, we're not using Maximo for ITSM, but we use the Owner Group field to track which department is responsible for executing the work; and it's handy since it tracks any time it changes and can be seen in the View Work Order History dialog as you said.  But we never use Owner; just Owner Group.  We don't use Crews because that just doesn't fit how we do our work.  We don't have Maximo Scheduler and we don't have employees doing the Planner/Scheduler function, so we continue to use the "old school" Supervisor, Work Group, and Lead.  But we want to work toward using Work Order Assignments (WOTRACK Assignments tab, Scheduler, etc.) as this seems to be the direction Maximo is heading, as Scheduler is included in Maximo 8, and, as you said, makes for easier data entry for the mobile technician when they complete the job.

So my advice to you, Anne, is even before you write the documentation -- talk to their people, understand their processes/"how they do work", determine which fields would be best for them to use, and do what you can to remove the rest from the UI's.  For example, for me, that meant removing Crews fields from WOTRACK, Everyplace Technician, etc.; changing the lookup on the Select Owner action so Person Groups shows up as the first tab instead of People; adding a way to filter the Person Groups so that only "Department-level" Person Groups show up in that list; making sure no one has security privileges to Take Ownership, and more.  Leaving it there just creates clutter, confusion (as you're experiencing with your client), and opportunity for a user to do something wrong.  After that's all done, document what they're going to do, not what all could be done.

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Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
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Your explanation is good but I would also put examples in the training material.
Example 1:  Person (patient) is on dialysis.  Lead/supervisor is the nurse-in-charge.  Assignment is to whomever is going to give the actual treatment.
Example 2:  Computer needs software updated.  Owner is whomever the computer is assigned to.  Work group is the team in charge of updates.  Assignment is to craft/person that is going to do the install.
Example 3: Pump is ready for a 6 month PM and WorkOrder was generated.  Supervisor is the head of the maintenance department.  Assignment is to craft/person that is going to do the PM.

Note:  one person can wear many hats.  The supervisor/lead might also be the assigned person to actually perform the job.

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Pat Morrow
PaLM Resources unLImited
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I like the answer from the other and your question opens a whole can of worms.  Firstly, Maximo for ITSM and TAMIT is now IBM Control Desk.  Essentially has Maximo under the covers, but a heap on top to support the IT world.

Responsibility fields:
As was noted about the history lesson, one thing missing about what is not the LEAD field, it used to be the LEADCRAFT field, so a LEAD=Labor or CRAFT=Trade could be used.  Therefore the SUPERVISOR was the person responsible to ensure the work was done i.e. they kick butt those in the LEAD field for not doing it.  The LEAD (as of current Maximo) is the person who is responsible to do the work i.e. the foreman or other nominated work. The could have been set automatically if the WORKGROUP field was entered.  So the WORKGROUP is the collection of people (as a team) responsible to get the work done, yet the LEAD is the person from that team to which the SUPERVISOR will kick butt if the work does not get done. Just remember that once you assign a WORKGROUP, you can only change the assigned LEAD to only those in the WORKGROUP.

The CREW WORK GROUP operates in a similar fashion to the WORK GROUP field.  So where does that leave the CREW, this again it's like the LEAD.

The OWNER and OWNER GROUP are independent of each other, in there only one can be assigned at a time.  Great for assigning the planner/scheduler team/person.

So where does the assignment fit into any other responsibility fields?  It doesn't.

Initially, the assignment table is built from the WPLABOR.  You can [optionally] assign people to those entries.  This then makes them responsible to do the work based on the dates in the assignment rather than the work order.  You do not have to use this table.

For those doing the work, it's usually based on the RESPONSIBILITY fields or the ASSIGNMENT.  Supervision does use the responsibility fields.

How does your customer want to work?

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Craig Kokay
ISW
Maximo Practice Manager
eMail: ckokay@isw.net.au
Phone: +61-411-682-040

IBM Champion 2021
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Two additional relevant points that I think are worth mentioning . . .

• When assigning work using Work Group and Lead, the values displayed for Lead are people that belong to the Work Group - this is useful, enabling PM work orders to be defined for a Work Group and then finally assigned to an individual person from that Work Group after the work order has been created.
• Another good feature of Owner and Owner Group is the capability of assigning values from the WO Track list tab, enabling changes to batches of records at once.

To echo the point made above, though, nothing is more important than a full understanding of the client's business processes so Maximo can be tuned to support and enhance.

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Mack Parrott
Projetech Inc.
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