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Settings

Setting up Maintenance Groups

Employees who are maintenance workers are usually organized into maintenance groups. You can select the maintenance group for an employee on the employee’s APM employee record. Work planners will be able to specify which maintenance group will perform the work on each work order task.
When you create work schedules, you can create different schedules for individual maintenance groups. If you are tracking employee availability on schedules, APM uses the maintenance group to determine which employees to include on the schedule.
You can organize your maintenance groups into a hierarchy. The maintenance group hierarchy can reflect the reporting system of your site’s maintenance groups. If a maintenance group uses simple scheduling, it must be included on the maintenance group hierarchy before its simple schedule is created or selected.
APM comes with some maintenance groups already entered. You can edit these default groups, delete any groups that you will not be using, or add your own groups. This topic explains how to select the top maintenance group in the site’s hierarchy and add new maintenance groups.

To Set up Maintenance Groups

1.
From the Site window, select the Personnel view and the Settings tab. Select the Maintenance Group tab, and the Maintenance Group Settings node in the tree.
Tip: You can also click the Administration menu and then Personnel Management Settings. The Personnel Management Settings dialog appears.
2.
Click Edit to modify the site settings. The Edit button is replaced by the Save button.
3.
Select the Hierarchy tab.
4.
Select the top maintenance group for the site. This group will form the top of the hierarchy of maintenance groups.
Tip: If you need to create a new group, right-click the Top maintenance group box and click New. Enter the maintenance group properties (as described next), and click OK.
5.
Click Save.
6.
Select the site’s Personnel view, Maintenance Groups tab, and Hierarchy tab. For example:
The top group that you selected is shown at the top of the hierarchy.
7.
To add another maintenance group, right-click a group in the hierarchy, and click New Child or New Peer.
Tip: You can also select the Listing tab and click New.
The Maintenance Group dialog appears:
8.
On the General tab, enter the following information:
Setting Name
Description
Site
Site that owns the maintenance group.
Group name
The name for this maintenance group.
Abbreviation
Short form for the group name. The abbreviation is used in reports.
Parent Group
The maintenance group that is the parent of this maintenance group in the hierarchy.
If your organization includes multiple sites, the parent and child maintenance groups must be owned by the same site.
Type
Types, along with classifications, allow maintenance groups to be collected for easy identification. For example, useful types might be Maintenance and Operations. Classifications for the Maintenance type might be Electrical and Mechanical.
Classification
Classifications work with types to allow maintenance groups to be collected for easy identification. For example, useful classifications for the Maintenance type might be Electrical and Mechanical.
Keywords
Keywords are used to locate and filter maintenance groups.
Title
The name or short description of this item. You can enter up to 250 characters.
Supervisor
The name of the employee who supervises this maintenance group.
Default planner
The normal planner for the maintenance group. You can select from a list of employees on the site who are designated planners.
When a work request, work order, or standard task is created for an asset, the asset’s default maintenance group supplies the planner for the document, unless the user creating the document is a planner. In that case, the creator is named as the planner.
You can update the work documents created for the maintenance group with the default planner by clicking Update Work Documents.
GL Account Segment
The GL account segment for this maintenance group.
If offset accounts are used for labor transactions, APM may use this GL segment to create the complete offset account.
9.
Select the Hierarchy tab to view the maintenance group’s location in the hierarchy. You can modify the position as needed.
10.
Select the Priorities tab to restrict the work priorities that are available for selection on new requests for work associated with the maintenance group. Select Restrict the priorities and select the priorities that will be available for this group. For example:
Note: Support for restricting work priorities is generally available. To use this functionality, you must first enable feature 64. In the Enterprise window, select the Features view and the Enabled Features tab. Click Browse, select “Ability to restrict the priorities used on a work request based on the maintenance group” and click OK. If APM is running as a smart client, click Refresh Enabled Features on the server. Then restart the client to use the functionality.
11.
Select the Scheduling Options tab. On this tab you can select whether the maintenance group uses simple or availability scheduling:
Setting Name
Description
Scheduling method
The method used to schedule work. You can choose from availability and simple scheduling:
•
Simple scheduling allows you to add a scheduling date or work week to a work order. You can also view a list of scheduled tasks by date.
•
Availability scheduling gives you access to all the features of schedules and schedule templates, including tracking labor and requirements, and analyzing scheduling statistics.
Schedule availability percentage
The default percentage of time that employees of this maintenance group are available for work assignments. APM will use this percentage when calculating employee availability for a schedule. If necessary, you can override this default percentage for individual employees.
Simple schedule
The simple schedule that the system uses to schedule tasks for this maintenance group.
When a maintenance group uses simple schedules, all of the tasks for the group are included on one simple schedule. From this schedule, you will be able to view the groups’ scheduled tasks, and the dates or weeks on which they are scheduled.
Note: The maintenance group must be in the maintenance group hierarchy before you can create or select the appropriate simple schedule.
If a simple schedule has not yet been created, click Create Schedule to add a simple schedule for this group.
Scheduling date method
The method used to enter the date on schedules: maintenance work week or schedule date. Maintenance work week means the work is scheduled on the first day of the maintenance work week you select. Schedule date means the work is scheduled on the date you select.
12.
If it’s available, select the User Defined Fields tab. As many as five string fields and five date fields can be defined at the enterprise level for use in maintenance groups. The number of fields and their labels are specific to your organization. Provide information as required. For example:
13.
Select the Description tab to provide more information.
14.
When you are finished, click OK to save and close the dialog.