Where does the maintenance dollar go?

Where does the maintenance dollar go? What assets are the costliest? …over budget?

As the Computerized Maintenance Management / Enterprise Asset Management systems are enhanced with technology, processes, and connectivity, the focus and buzzwords get to change. The continuously moving spotlight on how these changes can improve reliability gets much of the press, demonstration, marketing, etc.

Still, let us not forget about cost. From my earliest experience (1996) with Maximo 2, the ability to charge cost to the asset (labeled equipment then) was already in place. Maximo 3 implementations had more business side involvement that included valid General Ledger (GL) Accounts and financial periods on transactions, even though some clients would just have loved to select ‘Deactivate GL Validations’. The focus was on the work order (no Service Requests at this point) and on getting the asset identified on the work order for better historical analysis, and to properly route the charges for the rollup report.

This groundwork that was done by PSDI and MRO long before IBM’s acquisition in 2006, is still part of the core architecture. For those that have used it, great additional benefits await. But before we get to that, let’s recap some of what is available.

The asset record has a place for multiple costs including Purchase, Replacement, Total (life-to-date), YTD (year-to-date), and Budget. The asset rollup report handles the maintenance of the Total and YTD on a regular basis; are you running it regularly?

The chart of accounts application is the place where general ledger accounts approved for use in Maximo, are stored and maintained. The financial periods are here as well. This allows for all transactions to have the GL’s (debit AND credit) and financial period referenced at line level.

Transactions would include those that are internal such as inventory moves and adjustments to quantity and cost, as well as expenditures for labor, materials, services, and tools where each transaction has a place for the asset, GL’s and financial period.

Inventory records store the cost that will be charged to work orders, as well as for usage year to date (YTD), 1, 2, and 3 years ago. These are tracked automatically as items are issued (as well as returned if any), and there is a place for GL’s and financial period on each transaction. Issuances of parts can also build the spare parts for assets. What assets consume your most expensive parts? How often? What assets consume the most material dollars?

Labor rates can be maintained for both internal and outside personnel, so they may be charged to work orders, and now, service requests. What assets consume your most costly for labor?

End of Year processing needs to be done as a part of administration, so the proper buckets such as YTD’s can be reset; financial periods added when needed.

And now, the good stuff. Fast forward to 2017, and the long-awaited Budget Monitoring capability was quietly introduced with Maximo 7.6.0.8. At this point, you could examine the past as far back as you have data. So, if you have been tracking costs for 10 years, and you have used the GL’s and financial periods on your transactions, you can look at how well you performed in those years, which may help you going forward. Budgets may be examined by GL as well as assets and locations.

Getting the chart of accounts from the financial side of the house has sometimes been difficult. But, allowing the financial management to determine what is valid for use in Maximo will typically win them over. So, you don’t get the full chart of accounts – that just means you don’t get records you won’t use – win / win.

Looking forward, as part of Asset Health, the Asset Cost as well as the Maintenance / Repair Cost of the asset, can go into the health scoring and be part of the decision in choosing to repair / replace.

The dollars spent for your facility are known. Maintenance & project costs are known from the bills that are paid. Maximo provides you an excellent vehicle to drill down and see what assets are costing you and keep the financials a part of the decision making.

Are you tracking your labor, material, service, and tool costs in Maximo yet? Feel free to stop by booth #816 at Maximo World, and let’s talk.

If you wish to dig deeper, a number of references are supplied here: https://bit.ly/3x0HcEt

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