Maximo Open Forum

Hello all, 

I have a few questions related to the management of inventories in Maximo. I'm relatively new to the Maximo game, so I apologize in advance if any of these are overly simple questions. 

Background: We currently do not track inventory levels. We do however use the inventory items to associate materials and costs to work orders. We have several storerooms set up currently, one for each of our respective shops or departments (HVAC, ELEC, PLMB, ETC.) As I am relatively new in my role, there hasn't really been anyone maintaining the list of inventory items for several years... as a result many of the items are outdated and need to be "removed" from the system and new ones added. 

This brings me to my questions:

1. Is there a way to remove items from storerooms? I see plenty of items have been assigned an "Obsolete" status. I would assume this would essentially be removing them from the system, much like deactivating an asset. The issue is that they still show up in the storerooms. I would like to remove them from the storerooms and just have them listed in the inventory app in obsolete status if possible.
2. When adding material actuals on a WO, the select list that populates has seemingly all of our inventory items on it, including those in obsolete status. This creates a lot of sorting/filtering when adding actuals to a WO. Is there a way to get this list to populate with only active inventory items?
3. Is there a way to get only items associated with a particular storeroom to show up when adding material actuals to a WO. For example, if it is a HVAC work order, I want to see only the items in the HVAC storeroom and not those items in electrical, plumbing, etc.
   1. With #2 and #3 combined I am hoping to cut down on the large amount of time spent sifting through thousands of items when adding materials to a work order.
4. If anyone could give me a quick rundown of how the Item master, Inventory, and storerooms applications interact with each other that would be wonderful. I'm fairly sure I understand it but just want to be sure. 

Thanks in advance for any help/insight!

#Administration
#Inventory
#WorkManagement

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Brett Hawkins
LVCVA
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Re: #1:  Changing the status within the Storeroom to OBSOLETE is indeed the way to "end" that item's life within that storeroom (but it could live on in other storerooms; changing the Item record's status to Obsolete would end it for all storerooms).  There is no way to remove it via the UI, on purpose -- you'd lose UI access to all the historical transactions.  Worse yet would be to actually delete it -- you'd either end up with orphaned data (leading to bad reporting, troubles on future Maximo upgrades, etc.) or, if it did cascade the delete to all the related child tables, you'd lose a lot of transactional data showing where your materials went/where the costs came from.

OOTB, the Inventory application has a default filter on the table, !=OBSOLETE, so you don't see the old stuff by default -- much the same way that Work Order Tracking has a default filter that hides all the History (Status = CAN or CLOSE) work orders.

OOTB, the Items tab in the Storeroom application does not have a table filter like that, but it should be pretty easy to configure one.  I should be able to walk you through that if you need help.

RE #2: It depends how you do it.  If you use the "Select Materials" button, it calls a dialog box found in LIBRARY.XML, which uses a relationship from WORKORDER to ITEM (catch that!  It's looking at Item, not Inventory!) that, indeed, does not filter on anything but OrgID.  I'd bet we could build a table filter on that (or, a little more questionable, adjust the OOTB relationship definition) too, so it would at least filter out Obsolete Items -- but you'd still have a problem with Items that are Active but are Obsolete in Inventory.

If you're clicking New Row and then maybe using the lookup, that should only show non-obsolete inventory items.  So. . .maybe you have an Item in two or more Storerooms.  In one storeroom, it is Obsolete but in another it is not.  Here, that item would still be available as a choice, since it could be used from that other Storeroom.  Unless the User fills in the Storeroom field first -- then the lookup should only show non-obsolete inventory within that Storeroom.

Re: #3:   Again, depends on how you're doing it, maybe.  "Select Materials" is looking at Items not Inventory, so it's not going to filter by Storeroom; I think you're out of luck there.  If using "New Row" -- could you settle for teaching the user to fill in the Storeroom field in first?  And maybe you adjust the UI so the Storeroom field is before the Item field?

Re :4:  It starts with Items and Tools (Tools being a view of Items, enforcing some different behavior that makes sense for non-consumable tools vs. consumable items).  These things get added to Storerooms.  Use the Inventory application to add Items to Storerooms; use the Stocked Tools application to add Tools to Storerooms.  "Between" Items and Inventory there's actually an Item/Organization layer.  So you end up with 3 levels of Statusing something:  The Item can be globally Active, and therefore Active within the Organization, and let's start with Active within a Storeroom.  But then you decide you don't want it in that Storeroom anymore.  You can change it in the Storeroom to PENDOBS.  Before you can Obsolete it, you'd need to, one way or another, zero out the Inventory (e.g. transfer it to another Storeroom, or write it off via an Inventory Balance Adjustment).  But that still leave the Item globally Active and available to be added to & used from other Storerooms in the Organization.  You could shut that Item down for an entire Organization by following the same pattern -- go to Item Master, find the Item, click the "Item/Organization Details" action, and change the status within the Org.  To fully obsolete it in the Org, you'd have to zero out ALL of the Inventories in ALL of the Storerooms within that Org.  Or you could globally Obsolete it (e.g., the manufacturer has discontinued the product and your existing supply has been exhausted) by changing the status on the Item record.

That's a VERY simplistic overview.  I could go on for days. . .I'll instead refer you Andrew Jeffery's excellent work at maximosecrets.com .

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Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
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Travis, 

First of all thank you for the very detailed explanation, it helped tremendously.

#1. That is exactly how I thought it would work for data retention purposes. I went ahead and configured a column in the storeroom application where I can now filter by status, which has already been very helpful. 

#2/#3 I think we are just going to move forward with telling staff that they should add the storeroom first, as you mentioned. That seems to be the easiest way to tackle the problems they are having. Adjusting the UI so that storeroom is before Item is a wonderful idea, hopefully that will help reinforce the need to enter storeroom information first

#4 Thank you for this explanation. The interactions between the apps, as you explained, work much how I thought they did. I had actually already watched a lot of Andrew Jeffery's content, and it has been VERY helpful! His "maximo bitesize" series on Youtube was a great help to get me somewhat up to speed on the basic interactions within maximo.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain everything!

------------------------------
Brett Hawkins
LVCVA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 01-24-2024 09:52
From: Travis Herron
Subject: Inventory Management Questions

Re: #1:  Changing the status within the Storeroom to OBSOLETE is indeed the way to "end" that item's life within that storeroom (but it could live on in other storerooms; changing the Item record's status to Obsolete would end it for all storerooms).  There is no way to remove it via the UI, on purpose -- you'd lose UI access to all the historical transactions.  Worse yet would be to actually delete it -- you'd either end up with orphaned data (leading to bad reporting, troubles on future Maximo upgrades, etc.) or, if it did cascade the delete to all the related child tables, you'd lose a lot of transactional data showing where your materials went/where the costs came from.

OOTB, the Inventory application has a default filter on the table, !=OBSOLETE, so you don't see the old stuff by default -- much the same way that Work Order Tracking has a default filter that hides all the History (Status = CAN or CLOSE) work orders.

OOTB, the Items tab in the Storeroom application does not have a table filter like that, but it should be pretty easy to configure one.  I should be able to walk you through that if you need help.

RE #2: It depends how you do it.  If you use the "Select Materials" button, it calls a dialog box found in LIBRARY.XML, which uses a relationship from WORKORDER to ITEM (catch that!  It's looking at Item, not Inventory!) that, indeed, does not filter on anything but OrgID.  I'd bet we could build a table filter on that (or, a little more questionable, adjust the OOTB relationship definition) too, so it would at least filter out Obsolete Items -- but you'd still have a problem with Items that are Active but are Obsolete in Inventory.

If you're clicking New Row and then maybe using the lookup, that should only show non-obsolete inventory items.  So. . .maybe you have an Item in two or more Storerooms.  In one storeroom, it is Obsolete but in another it is not.  Here, that item would still be available as a choice, since it could be used from that other Storeroom.  Unless the User fills in the Storeroom field first -- then the lookup should only show non-obsolete inventory within that Storeroom.

Re: #3:   Again, depends on how you're doing it, maybe.  "Select Materials" is looking at Items not Inventory, so it's not going to filter by Storeroom; I think you're out of luck there.  If using "New Row" -- could you settle for teaching the user to fill in the Storeroom field in first?  And maybe you adjust the UI so the Storeroom field is before the Item field?

Re :4:  It starts with Items and Tools (Tools being a view of Items, enforcing some different behavior that makes sense for non-consumable tools vs. consumable items).  These things get added to Storerooms.  Use the Inventory application to add Items to Storerooms; use the Stocked Tools application to add Tools to Storerooms.  "Between" Items and Inventory there's actually an Item/Organization layer.  So you end up with 3 levels of Statusing something:  The Item can be globally Active, and therefore Active within the Organization, and let's start with Active within a Storeroom.  But then you decide you don't want it in that Storeroom anymore.  You can change it in the Storeroom to PENDOBS.  Before you can Obsolete it, you'd need to, one way or another, zero out the Inventory (e.g. transfer it to another Storeroom, or write it off via an Inventory Balance Adjustment).  But that still leave the Item globally Active and available to be added to & used from other Storerooms in the Organization.  You could shut that Item down for an entire Organization by following the same pattern -- go to Item Master, find the Item, click the "Item/Organization Details" action, and change the status within the Org.  To fully obsolete it in the Org, you'd have to zero out ALL of the Inventories in ALL of the Storerooms within that Org.  Or you could globally Obsolete it (e.g., the manufacturer has discontinued the product and your existing supply has been exhausted) by changing the status on the Item record.

That's a VERY simplistic overview.  I could go on for days. . .I'll instead refer you Andrew Jeffery's excellent work at maximosecrets.com .

------------------------------
Travis Herron
Pensacola Christian College
------------------------------