Author: Courtney

Workflow Delegates

Pretend you are going to take a real vacation, two weeks in Spain with no work laptop. You have planned and prepared for your trip but, what about all the work that is going to keep going while you are away? Work orders still need to be reviewed, assigned, and approved by someone. Purchase Orders and Invoices need to be approved so vendors can get paid. You know that giving your username and password to your co-workers so they can log in and do your work is against company policy (and no one wants to get on IT’s bad side). Lucky for you Maximo has a way to help you out so you can eat tapas in peace knowing work is being handled, it is called Workflow Delegates.

Workflow delegates allow you to select a single person to receive all records that are sent to you via workflow in Maximo. Maximo allows you to set a start and end date for your delegate to receive the records or you can just enter a start date and never select an end date.

There are some things to think about when selecting a workflow delegate.

Any records that were sent to them while they are acting as a delegate will stay with them even after the delegation ends.
For financial records if the delegate does not have sufficient limits and tolerances they will not be able to approve the record. Depending on how Maximo is configured this may result in an error message or the record may be routed to an approver with higher limits and tolerances.
If the delegate does not have security access to the application the record was created in then the delegate will not be able to view the record. Selecting a delegate with the equal or greater security privileges is advised.

Once you return from your trip to Spain you can log into Maximo knowing that work has continued without you.

How to set a workflow delegate:

Navigate People application from Administration > Resources > People and open a Person record.
Populate the Workflow Delegate field and at least the Delegate From field.

How to Disassemble an Item Kit for Material Usage Within IBM Maximo

In a previous blog we talked about the benefits of Configuring Item Kits in IBM Maximo in the Item application and how to assemble a Kit in the Inventory application. Kits are a great way to cut down on time needed to pull commonly paired items by grouping them together in a single bin. Kits also cut down on the number of items that need to be issued or requested on work orders. However, what happens when you only need one of the items that is part of a kit?

Let’s consider the following scenario in which a warehouse storeroom supports Fleet maintenance.

A pickup truck comes in for emergency maintenance and only needs a top-off of oil. When the warehouse clerk checks the bin for oil, they find no quarts of oil are in stock. There are 5 quarts of oil in another bin, but they are part of a kit. The clerk has a few options:

Issue an oil change kit to the work order even though only the oil is needed. This would cause the cost of the work order to include all parts of the kit and result in leftover items that are now unaccounted for.
Pull the quart of oil out of the kit and just don’t record any actions. This would mean the next time a kit is issued it will be missing the quart of oil, causing more questions and frustration down the line.
The kit is disassembled and only the quart of oil is issued to the work order. This is the most effective solution and prevents future discrepancies.

How to Disassemble a Kit in Maximo Inventory:

Click into the Inventory application and open the item kit that needs to be disassembled.
In the More Actions, menu click the Dissemble Kit option.
Enter the appropriate value in the Disassemble Quantity field. This will indicate how many item kits will be Disassembled. Next, click OK.
Now, the Current Balance of your kit decreased while the items that make up the kit increased in balance.

By disassembling the item kit, we have not only insured that the actual cost of the work order does not exceed the necessary cost of the work performed related to inventory, and the actual inventory usage remains accurate for future purchase requests given the items used on the work performed. This not only prevents having excess inventory but also allows the item kit to remain intact when it needs to be issued for later usage.

Watch The Video Below For A Step-By-Step: