Pre-Implementation Planning for Building a Maximo / SCCD Organization Part 1

Body

Hi Again,

A few years ago at the Pulse conference in Las Vegas I presented on the topic of Organizational Planning in Maximo.  I focused on the importance of thinking about how to define many of the entities that make up an organization such as sites, locations, assets, financial structure business process etc.  I decided to revisit this topic after talking with clients over the last few years who have "painted" themselves into a corner by defining these entities incorrectly.

One of the things that I can't stress enough, before Maximo or SCCD is even installed for the first time, is to spend the time in planning stage to help avoid huge headaches in the future.  What I mean by this is, as a planner, spend the time talking to the people who make up your business, the people in the trenches that make things happen.  Ask them what they need to do their jobs effectively.  Ask them how they do their jobs.  Ask them how they define the various entities that they deal with on a daily basis.  This will help you to think about the differences between organizations, sites, locations and business processes.

It's so important to make sure that you use what you've learned to help put your plans on the right path.  The decisions that you make can have a huge impact on how you use Maximo now and in the future.  You have to consider that many of these decisions, once made and put into motion within Maximo, can be difficult if not impossible to back out of. 

Financial, Currency and GL Structure.  Defining this data obviously is very important to keep track of your financial transactions.  In addition this will factor into how you define your organizations.  If you have multiple entities that use different currencies, different GL accounts or use different financial processes, you’ll probably want to define each of these entities as it’s own organization.  You want to decide what organizations maintain their own set of GL accounts and cost centers.  Again all of this will help you to define what an organization is in your business.

Business Process and Configuration.  Do entities in your business have separate business processes?  For example, does one entity handle a specific part of your business and maintain it’s own inventory, assets, tools etc?  Does another entity then handle a totally separate part of your business with it’s own set of data?  You might decide to define these entities as separate organizations.  Configurations can take place at multiple levels with your platform, however these are mainly made at the organization level.  Business processes and differences in configuration needs can help to determine organization and site definitions.

Security Procedures and Requirements.  This is generally set at the system level but can be applied at the site level.  You need to consider what data users are entitled to view and use.  This will help you to determine how you want to organize your users, what organizations they’re a part of, what sites they work at, and what data or information they can access.

Data.  In Maximo/SCCD can be entered on a variety of levels.  You need to consider in advance what levels data will be entered into Maximo with regard to all of these  considerations.  Data needs to match up with the respective data storage levels and with the appropriate database tables in order for the applications to be used as designed.  This is something you’ll most likely want to think about if you’re planning on using a data import tool to pull your data into Maximo.  This is why you need to determine the structure of your organizations, sites, locations etc.before moving the data. 


Organizations.  This is probably the single most important consideration you need to make.  How you define your organization or organizations is going to have a profound effect on how you set up Maximo.  It’s going to be important for you to understand how your business is set up.  Is your business set up with multiple organizations or a single organization?  If you have multiple organizations do the organizations have different or similar business processes?  Are you in a situation where these organizations share inventory or assets?  Keep in mind at this point we’re really just trying to look at how your business is constructed.

 

Geography.  This is another important consideration that ties in closely with how you define your organizations.  Maybe your company has offices in multiple locations or countries and because of this you have different business processes at these locations.  If that’s the case, you’ll probably need to think about the differences between them and then consider how you define these entities.  Are they different enough that you need to have each of these offices defined as organizations or are they similar enough that they can be defined under an umbrella organization as sites or locations?

 

Sites, Locations.  As I mentioned previously it’s important to think about how various entities are defined within your business framework.  Sites and locations have to be considered as important building blocks for your organization.  You need to think about how you define a site and how you define a location.  Is a site defined as a city or town, a road, or multiple buildings in a single industrial park, or is a site a single building?  After you determine how you define your organization and sites, you’ll need to then decide how you want to define your locations.  Are locations defined as a city, a road, building, a room in a building, a section of a room etc.  It’s extremely important to have an understanding of how the location structure in your business is designed.  Is the location system set up as hierarchy with a parent / child relationships or a networked systems with multiple parents / children etc.? 

Assets, Inventory, Tools.    Along with all the other considerations, it's important to think about how you define assets, inventory, and tools.  There's a considerable difference between a $5000 serialized component for an Abrams M1 Main Battle Tank and a screw driver that's used to work on it.  Likewise there's a considerable difference between a non-consumable part and one that is used once then tossed in the dumpster.  It's important for you to determine how your inventory is stored and tracked.  Maybe in your business model a $5000 component is a consumable and as such it doesn't need to be considered an asset so it's important to think about difference between these various entities.

To summarize, keep the following in mind:

• Organizations
• Geography
• Sites / Locations
• Financial / Currency / GL Structure
• Business Process
• Configuration
• Data
• Security Procedures and Requirements
• Assets, Inventory, Tools

In part two we'll take a look at some of the right questions to ask and them some final thoughts as well as suggestions......stay tuned.

Take care and stay safe out there!