Maximo Open Forum

I would like to be able to execute any of the WO Track queries from Maximo mobile.  We have almost any query available today, Maximo mobile limits you to a handful of predefined queries.  Several steps backwards.

I would like to be able to define the items I want to cycle count rather than the count books.  We have an auto-mated process today and this is very manual.  The ABC Types are limited to just ABC, but in our system we have I, R, W and D which have their own definitions. Several steps backwards.

I would like Maximo mobile to only download the data it needs.  I have 400k+ assets, 85k+ locations, 65k+ items, 28l+ job plans, 12k+ tools, It can't download all of those ahead of time but it tries.  For me the data model it uses is wrong.  It wants everything in memory and that works for small sites but doesn't for large customers.

I would like Maximo mobile to be able to handle large work orders.  We have examples that it struggles at 300+ tasks and can't do more than 500-600 tasks.  We have tasks where you check items or locations and each is a task but there is very little involved in each.  It never finishes loading them.  For those it will load, it locks up when you start work.  

This is just from my demos of the product and some testing.  I am not overly familiar with it but it seems particularly limited to make it easier to roll out to more customers.

I think this was focused on the remote collaboration feature only rather than Maximo Mobile as a whole. I think your feedback is good though, so I wanted to respond to a few items in case you weren't aware.

Regarding the queries, you can re-use any query that you have defined (IE add the saved query X defined in WOTRACK to TECHMOBILE) but it requires configuration to make available to mobile. An administrator can configure the query for server-side search if they want it to avoid downloading all the records that match the criteria. This is good for queries that return large result sets where the user can filter that result set (find work for a specific asset, or a specific WONUM, etc.) without downloading thousands of work orders. If it's a more reasonable result set, they can make it available offline and download immediately for all users.

Count books can be extended to handle other use cases if you wanted. At the end of the day, you can use specific items for example and select the items that match a desired count frequency. Or if you update the NEXTPHYCNTDATE on INVBALANCES you can use the count frequency option for count books to get all items due by a particular day. Count books provide some useful functionality for seeing discrepancies & sending people back out to recount any discrepancies.

The mobile download is tricky. The IBM approach is to setup a preload database which will have all that supporting data in it so it's faster from the user perspective. But there are still considerations around performance & storage utilization when you're downloading a lot of data you won't often need. There isn't an "online first" type persona today, but I imagine that will eventually happen. 

The task experience was changed in 9.2 which was just released. There is now support for filtering, sorting, task creation, etc. I also believe there was a bug on some earlier versions that caused it to fail to load beyond 50 records. Task related enhancements in Technician mobile application in IBM Maximo Application Suite 9.2

I would like to be able to execute any of the WO Track queries from Maximo mobile.  We have almost any query available today, Maximo mobile limits you to a handful of predefined queries.  Several steps backwards.

I would like to be able to define the items I want to cycle count rather than the count books.  We have an auto-mated process today and this is very manual.  The ABC Types are limited to just ABC, but in our system we have I, R, W and D which have their own definitions. Several steps backwards.

I would like Maximo mobile to only download the data it needs.  I have 400k+ assets, 85k+ locations, 65k+ items, 28l+ job plans, 12k+ tools, It can't download all of those ahead of time but it tries.  For me the data model it uses is wrong.  It wants everything in memory and that works for small sites but doesn't for large customers.

I would like Maximo mobile to be able to handle large work orders.  We have examples that it struggles at 300+ tasks and can't do more than 500-600 tasks.  We have tasks where you check items or locations and each is a task but there is very little involved in each.  It never finishes loading them.  For those it will load, it locks up when you start work.  

This is just from my demos of the product and some testing.  I am not overly familiar with it but it seems particularly limited to make it easier to roll out to more customers.

All of that sounds good when you say it fast but in our environment it is not practical.

I have over 8k users and 8k saved public queries under WOTrack.  The queries are "owned" by deparments and crews, everyone is different.  So you might be able to add some, but the underlying structure of you must pick from these 8-15 that are predefined is still several steps backwards.  For some of the data like Locations or Assets I can probably doing some of that filtering, but not for tools or items.  Job Plans would be questionable as some are used by multiple ones.

Count Books forces you to use a manual configured set of records.  I wrote a program that today looks at those that need attention (something wrong in the data / configuration), the oldest X% based on ABC Type and those that were missed last week.  Count Books does not have a method to get the list from a table or query that I define.  That is what I am wanting.  And again, it is limited to A,B and C.  I have W which is counted Weekly, I and R which are clones of A but different for tracking reasons, D which is Annual and N which is just not counted.  We also only count where the category is a synonym of STK.  Count books doesn't do any of this.  So you can say it can be configured but we have already checked and the only way to work with this is write an interface that creates the count book records weekly.

Today we have some work orders with more than a 1,000 tasks and we have a process where if we scan a QR code it finds the associated task and COMPs it.  To use Maximo Mobile we would have to split those into multiple pieces, but they were split into multiple pieces a few years back based on logical regions and responsibilities.  We want them done together, splitting them up adds complexity with PM Hierarchies and getting regions done haphazardly.  There are several other instances where a large number of tasks are needed where we are not searching through them and we want to know which are still open the inspection is done, for example.

I would also like it to be able to do more than 50 inspections when doing a batch inspection.  If you have more than that it says it does it but stops at 50 and doesn't tell you.

I think this was focused on the remote collaboration feature only rather than Maximo Mobile as a whole. I think your feedback is good though, so I wanted to respond to a few items in case you weren't aware.

Regarding the queries, you can re-use any query that you have defined (IE add the saved query X defined in WOTRACK to TECHMOBILE) but it requires configuration to make available to mobile. An administrator can configure the query for server-side search if they want it to avoid downloading all the records that match the criteria. This is good for queries that return large result sets where the user can filter that result set (find work for a specific asset, or a specific WONUM, etc.) without downloading thousands of work orders. If it's a more reasonable result set, they can make it available offline and download immediately for all users.

Count books can be extended to handle other use cases if you wanted. At the end of the day, you can use specific items for example and select the items that match a desired count frequency. Or if you update the NEXTPHYCNTDATE on INVBALANCES you can use the count frequency option for count books to get all items due by a particular day. Count books provide some useful functionality for seeing discrepancies & sending people back out to recount any discrepancies.

The mobile download is tricky. The IBM approach is to setup a preload database which will have all that supporting data in it so it's faster from the user perspective. But there are still considerations around performance & storage utilization when you're downloading a lot of data you won't often need. There isn't an "online first" type persona today, but I imagine that will eventually happen. 

The task experience was changed in 9.2 which was just released. There is now support for filtering, sorting, task creation, etc. I also believe there was a bug on some earlier versions that caused it to fail to load beyond 50 records. Task related enhancements in Technician mobile application in IBM Maximo Application Suite 9.2

I would like to be able to execute any of the WO Track queries from Maximo mobile.  We have almost any query available today, Maximo mobile limits you to a handful of predefined queries.  Several steps backwards.

I would like to be able to define the items I want to cycle count rather than the count books.  We have an auto-mated process today and this is very manual.  The ABC Types are limited to just ABC, but in our system we have I, R, W and D which have their own definitions. Several steps backwards.

I would like Maximo mobile to only download the data it needs.  I have 400k+ assets, 85k+ locations, 65k+ items, 28l+ job plans, 12k+ tools, It can't download all of those ahead of time but it tries.  For me the data model it uses is wrong.  It wants everything in memory and that works for small sites but doesn't for large customers.

I would like Maximo mobile to be able to handle large work orders.  We have examples that it struggles at 300+ tasks and can't do more than 500-600 tasks.  We have tasks where you check items or locations and each is a task but there is very little involved in each.  It never finishes loading them.  For those it will load, it locks up when you start work.  

This is just from my demos of the product and some testing.  I am not overly familiar with it but it seems particularly limited to make it easier to roll out to more customers.