Business process optimisation

Improve the work management process around IBM Maximo.

MaxIron reviews planning, scheduling, stores, permits and close-out with the people who run them. We agree a target process, configure the accepted changes in IBM Maximo or MAS and measure performance against an agreed baseline. Your process owner approves policy and remains accountable for adoption.

Discuss process improvement Meet the practitioners
Long-horizon infrastructure asset stewardship viewed across an operational estate

Measurement and responsibility

Agree the planning baseline before changing the process.

The process owner agrees schedule compliance, request-to-schedule lead time and the reasons for abandoned or deferred work. MaxIron reviews the records, proposes the sequence and implements accepted rules; the operations team owns adoption and reviews results against the same baseline.

One record, dissected

The same work order, on the old cycle and the new one

A planned seal replacement at Depot B. Six fields carry the process change and two deliberately do not, because the labour hours and the asset are the same on either cycle.

WO-118472, seal replacement, pump PU-4021

6 of 8 fields changed

Field Before After Set by
PRIORITY 3, taken from the wording of the request 1, derived from asset criticality Planner with the reliability engineer, Monday triage
MATERIALSTATUS Checked after the job was scheduled RESERVED before the job could be scheduled Storekeeper, Tuesday, against the reservation
PERMITREF Raised on the morning of the work PTW-4471, held before the week was accepted Supervisor, Tuesday
SCHEDSTART Moved twice during the week Set once the supervisor accepted the job Supervisor, Wednesday scheduling meeting
FAILURECODE Blank, or the nearest of two hundred codes BEARING-WEAR, from a list of nine Technician, at the asset, at close-out
DEFERRALREASON Not captured Recorded on each job that did not run Planner, Friday review
ACTLABHRS 3.5 3.5 Labour estimate retained for the same job.
ASSETNUM PU-4021 PU-4021 Unchanged

One record from an illustrative cycle, used to make the mechanism followable.

Before and after the process change

Readiness checks change the sequence of planning

An illustrative planning cycle compares two sequences for the same work. Actual benefits are measured against your baseline, using schedule compliance, lead time and the recorded reasons for deferral.

Schedule before readiness checks

  1. Prioritise request
  2. Schedule work
  3. Check parts and permits
  4. Resolve constraint or reschedule

A constraint discovered after scheduling creates another planning decision and changes the accepted work window.

Confirm readiness before scheduling

  1. Prioritise against criticality
  2. Confirm parts, permits and access
  3. Accept and freeze schedule
  4. Record completion or deferral reason

The supervisor accepts a prepared job. The Friday review compares actual work with the frozen baseline and assigns each variance to an owner.

Illustrative process design. The process owner approves readiness criteria; MaxIron implements the accepted rules in Maximo and supports measurement.

The decision that removed a step

Parts and permits are checked before a job may be scheduled, rather than after it has failed in the field.

The storekeeper and supervisor confirm readiness before the planner commits a job to the schedule. Maximo records the readiness decision and the reason for any deferral, so the weekly review can distinguish capacity, access, material and process constraints.

The cycle as it runs now

Five hand-offs, Monday to Friday

Each hand-off names the person on both sides of it and the time it takes. The frozen baseline on Wednesday is what makes Friday measurable, and the Friday review is what stops the whole cycle reverting.

  1. 01

    Monday: triage the backlog against criticality

    The planner and reliability engineer agree work type, priority and the disposition of each request. Deferred work carries a reason and a named owner.

  2. 02

    Tuesday: confirm parts, permits and access

    The storekeeper and supervisor confirm readiness before a job enters the schedule. Constraints are recorded on the work order and affect the planned window.

  3. 03

    Wednesday: accept a workable schedule

    Supervisors accept work against crew capacity and operational access. The agreed week is frozen as a baseline; subsequent changes carry a recorded reason.

  4. 04

    Thursday: capture close-out at the asset

    Technicians record failure mode, labour, parts and evidence. The reliability engineer reviews feedback against the job plan. Maximo Mobile can support capture at the point of work.

  5. 05

    Friday: review variances and assign actions

    The planner compares completed work with the accepted schedule. Process, material and job-plan issues receive an owner and a due date; accepted configuration changes follow the release process.

Where this has been done

Two process programmes with a configuration output

  • North Sea oil and gas operator

    Oil and gas

    Situation

    Failure and safety-critical element data could not answer the questions reliability and HSE engineers were asking of it.

    What changed

    An ISO 14224, API RP 14C and ISO 15926 aligned data standard defined and embedded inside Maximo rather than alongside it, so close-out feeds the same standards the regulator and partners use.

    Read the case study →

  • UK ferry operator

    Maritime

    Situation

    An inventory and procurement process carried into a Maximo 7.6 to IBM MAS 9.0 upgrade against a hard regulatory deadline.

    What changed

    Stock policy and the purchase to receipt sequence reworked as part of the upgrade, with purchase orders and goods receipts crossing to Dynamics 365 on a written contract.

    Read the case study →

Both are published case studies. Neither is the illustrative cycle used above.

Conditions on this work

Three conditions that decide whether to commission this

Process authority, baseline evidence and adoption capacity are agreed before the engagement starts.

A contested decision goes to the person entitled to take it

Most of what we find is a disagreement rather than a defect: operations and maintenance holding different views of what an asset is for, or two depots that solved one problem twice. Configuration encodes a decision once it exists, so we put the choice and its consequences to the owner and hold the platform work behind it.

Your planners, supervisors and storekeepers build the redesign

The sequence above was designed by the people who work it, which takes real hours from busy operational staff and a sponsor who will hold a decision when a depot pushes back. Where those two commitments are unavailable, we say the work is not ready to start.

The committed measures are the ones your data can back

Schedule compliance, planned to reactive ratio, inventory turn and audit readiness are measurable on most estates from the first cycle. Mean time between failure becomes measurable once failure coding is fixed and a year of clean history exists, so we name it as a later measure and commit to the rest now.

Process optimisation, frequently asked questions

What is business process optimisation in a Maximo context?
The work management, planning, inventory, reliability and PM process change that decides whether IBM Maximo drives operational behaviour or records it after the fact. It is organisational work with a configuration output, measured on a named cycle before and after.
How do you use ISO 55001 without turning it into a paperwork exercise?
As a test of traceability. ISO 55001 asks whether there is a line of sight from organisational objectives, through an asset management policy and its plans, to the decisions taken about individual assets, and whether that line is evidenced, reviewed and competently staffed. Applied to a PM programme it forces the question of why a given routine exists and who last reviewed it. Conformity itself is assessed by a certification body, not by us.
What if our own teams disagree about the process?
That is the usual starting position. Disagreements that are technical, such as two depots doing one thing differently, are settled on evidence. Disagreements about asset purpose need a decision from someone with the authority to take it, because configuring both versions leaves an estate with two processes and one report.
Do you do this without a Maximo programme running?
Yes. We are often asked to assess an existing work management or reliability process, name the changes that would improve the outcome, and either build them in your current Maximo or feed them into a planned upgrade.
Where does this sit against implementation or a MAS upgrade?
Usually alongside one. A mobile rollout makes the sequencing vivid: putting close-out on a phone exposes every ambiguity in the close-out process to two hundred technicians at once, so shortening the code list belongs before the rollout. See Maximo to MAS upgrade and implementation.
How do you measure whether it worked?
Against the baseline taken in the first assessment: schedule compliance on a frozen weekly baseline, planned to reactive ratio, jobs abandoned in the field, elapsed days from request to scheduled work, inventory turn and audit readiness. Each is reported from Maximo rather than from a spreadsheet.

Review one work management cycle.

Bring a recent schedule, completion records and the process owner. We will agree the baseline evidence and the operational decision the review should support.

What to bring to the first call

  • Last week schedule and the completed list beside it, however messy
  • The reasons the unexecuted jobs did not happen, in the words the supervisor used
  • Your close-out screen, and the failure code list a technician chooses from
  • The measure your board currently sees, and whether the operation believes it
  • The name of the person who can settle a disagreement between two depots
Discuss process improvement Meet the practitioners