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Defining Locations in Maximo

Preventive Service Planning


Abstract

This document helps you define your locations in Maximo.

Content

One of the most common questions that planners who are trying to implement Maximo have to ask is "how do I define my locations?". The reason this is such an important question is that locations impact or are associated with many of Maximo's business related applications. Locations come in contact with work management, purchasing, asset management, and inventory related functions.

Unfortunately the answer to this question is never an easy one because it requires asking many more questions of the people who make up your business. The problem with this is that different teams and business segments define locations differently. It's important as a planner to think about what questions to ask of these business entities so that your locations within Maximo will reach their full potential and make your implementation successful.

For some entities a location might be considered a city, a town, multiple buildings, a single building, a room in a building, or segmented parts of a room. You'll need to find a way to satisfy these requirements by asking questions about why they need locations defined in these ways. You'll need to differentiate what is considered a location from what is considered an organization, a site or even a storeroom. The answers to the questions will help you to build your location hierarchies, systems, and networks. This location related information will eventually be used in conjunction with Work Order Tracking, PM's, Inventory, Item Master, Assets, Service Requests as well as many other Maximo applications.

Here are a few examples of the types of questions that you should be asking:

1. Is your location a physical geographical area with boundaries? If this is a far stretching area made up of multiple towns or business segments maybe this should be considered an organization or a site rather than a location.

2. Is this location a city, a town or some other entity? If the location is a city or town, what is the next smaller sized entity that it's made up of? Again, can this be defined as something other than a location?

3. Does this location require work to be done against it? Are work orders or PM's written against it? If not, maybe this should be defined as a site in which other locations are associated.

4. Do the smaller entities that make up the larger organization, site or location need to be broken up by different business processes? This is important to help define what kind of work or information will be associated with the entities.

5. Can the location be considered a storeroom where items are received, stored, issued from, transferred to/from? If so, maybe this entity should defined as a storeroom. If the storeroom however requires that work is done there (work orders, PMs etc.) then maybe this entity requires a storeroom record as well as a standard location record created for it.

6. Do the various locations have some connection to each other? Is there for example a business park that is defined as a site, that is made up of various buildings that are as defined as parent locations? Are these buildings then segmented into various offices and rooms that are also defined as locations? Are those rooms segmented even further into cubes where work might be done? This is important for you to understand to help build your location hierarchies. Visually this information might look something like this:



When dealing with Maximo locations, whenever possible it's always a good idea to map things out on a drawing board to visually see how the locations will come together so that when the time comes to add the data into Maximo your location hierarchies will be created correctly like the one below.


7. Are these locations connected to each other in some way? Are the locations rooms in a lager building or are they connected in some other way? For example, are they connected by electrical systems, plumbing, sewage, heating, air conditioning, security? This will help you to define systems within Maximo that might look something like this:










As you can see, many useful questions can be asked of your teams with regard to locations that will help you to design, build and implement your Maximo environment.

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Document Information

Modified date:
17 June 2018

UID

swg21623241