Maximo Open Forum

Our issue is that on Job Plans you can add material from the Item Master (the default for "Select Value"), which means you could potentially add an item that is not in inventory in a storeroom. What is the best way to prevent this from happening? Changing the lookup in the Application Designer (and if so, to what)? An automation script? Some other method?

I see that there is an option for "Inventory" in the "Go To" flyout when adding items to the material tab, but we want to make this error proof.

The reason for this is that a PM cannot drop a workorder if the item isn't in a location (storeroom), it throws an error like the following:

BMXAA3212E - Error while generating work order for PM <pmnum>. BMXAA4607E - Cannot find an inventory location for Item <itemnum> on the work plan.

#Administration
#Inventory
#WorkManagement

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Jason Johnson
RSI
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This is tricky because job plans by design are intended to work across organizations and sites. If you provide a storeroom (and storeroom site) on the material, it will always attempt to fulfill it from that specific storeroom, doing a cross org/site transfer for another site. You could make the material site specific (setting the SITEID attribute for the material) to handle different storerooms for different sites but if you have a lot of items or something about the item changes (like the quantity required), you now need to update it in a lot of places instead of the one entry.

If you write an automation script to validate that it exists in a storeroom, you still could have a site that doesn't have the item in a storeroom. Or new sites could be added after the job plan is created if you try to check for every active site. Or a storeroom could be in an ACTIVE status but changed to an OBSOLETE status which makes issuing out of the storeroom impossible. It's hard to have something that avoids it all the time.

If I did anything, I would probably add a check via automation script that confirms it exists in at least a storeroom. It wouldn't be perfect but would avoid brand new items from being referenced that haven't been added to a storeroom yet. 

Hi Jason,

As Steven has said, by design, the JP is agnostic of the site /org and thus for items, the list can only come from the Item Master which is restricted to that item in the same ITEMSETID as referenced by the default site.

There is an opportunity to assign the storeroom, but you are then restricting it to be issued from only that storeroom.

We don't know how many org/sites/storerooms you have or the frequency of the issue you are experiencing, but maybe it comes down to process.

You could do this:

1. Enter the item number
2. Select the Detail Menu on the Item field
3. Select the Go To | Inventory

This will automatically list all the stores where the item exists within.  If it does not exist within the storeroom, then you can use your other processes to have the item added to the storeroom.

Or you could do this:

1. Assign the item without reference to the storeroom
2. Activate the JP when all else is completed on it
3. Assign the JP to the PM
4. Assign the storeroom to the PM
5. Activate the PM when all else is complete on it
6. Have the PM generate it, and when you get the error, just deal with it by adding the item to the store and regenerating the PM. You, of course, need to have the PM log sent to you, so you know that it failed to generate.

Or do this:

1. On activating a JP, an automation script checks if the nominated item is located within a storeroom(s) and if not, then raises an error and does not activate the JP.  This only means that it exists in a storeroom, not the storeroom that could be assigned on the PM.

Or do this:

1. On activating a PM, an automation script checks all the JPs on the PM, for each item in those JPs that it does exist in the storeroom that is mentioned on the PM (therefore, the storeroom needs to be populated) and raises an error if it does not.

Many options exist.  My preference is the last.  This is because it leaves the JP generic and forces the PM to be valid to activate it.

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Craig Kokay
Principal Consultant
COSOL

email: craig.kokay@cosol.global
#IBMChampion
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Thanks for the insights @Steven Shull and @Craig Kokay.

With the first solution from Craig, that leaves the possibility of the user still clicking "Select value" (which goes to the item master and thus may not be in inventory). We want to make this mistake-proof.

There is an issue with step 6 of the second solution. We'd rather not have to leave it up to a human to find the issue in a log and rectify it after the fact. This whole issue arose from the discovery of an absent PM months after it should have generated because the error was buried in a log somewhere.

I think the solution for us is to require a storeroom for items on the job plan (i.e. make "Storeroom" a required field). That eliminates the possibility of entering an item not in inventory. Even if that means it's the wrong storeroom or it changes over time, that can be fixed manually. At least this way, the PM can still generate, which is the ultimate goal.