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Work Triggers

Work triggers tell APM when to create work orders from standard jobs. You can define triggering rules, triggering cycles, and the standard tasks and jobs that they trigger as part of the asset reliability program. This section explains triggering rules and triggering cycles.

Triggering Rules

Triggering rules tell APM when to create work orders from a standard job or preventive maintenance (PM) route. For example, you might define a triggering rule for a standard job that says “trigger every 30 days OR every 2000 miles.” You can create a triggering rule for each standard job or PM route.

You can create rules using a combination of conditions. Conditions can be based on:

•	A time-based frequency (for example, every 30 days)

•	A shutdown occurrence (for example, the Annual shutdown)

•	A cumulative measurement (for example, every 2000 miles or when the vehicle reaches 50,000 miles)

•	The asset’s operating condition (for example, when the temperature exceeds 100o or when the pressure is less than 10 PSI)

Put these conditions in a triggering rule using rule clauses. For example, the rule “trigger every 30 days OR every 2000 miles” uses two rule clauses: every 30 days and every 2000 miles. When one of those clauses is true, the work order is generated from the standard job.

Time-based rule clauses can be based on calendar days or “in-operation” days. If you base a rule clause on in-operation days, APM tracks the status of the triggering asset and counts the number of days that the asset had a non-operational status. Only days that the asset had an “operational” status are counted for the triggering rule. For example, if the rule says to trigger the job every 30 days but the asset was out of operation for five days during the 30-day period, the job is triggered after 35 calendar days.

You must indicate the relationship between the rule clauses in a triggering rule. You can join several clauses with either the AND or the OR operator. You cannot enter brackets around clauses; instead, APM supports brackets implicitly. Whenever you enter an OR operator, APM treats what precedes it and what follows it as though they were within brackets. For example, a triggering rule that states Clause 1 AND Clause 2 OR Clause 3 AND Clause 4 would be treated as though it included the following brackets: (Clause 1 AND Clause 2) OR (Clause 3 AND Clause 4).

Once you have entered the clauses for your triggering rule, APM converts the clauses into words to create a triggering rule description. If your triggering rule includes more than one clause that requires data from indicator readings, it is evaluated as true whenever the most recent readings meet the conditions in the clauses.

APM evaluates the triggering rules whenever indicator readings are entered and whenever you run the Generate PM Work Orders procedure. When a triggering rule is evaluated as being true, APM creates a work order. APM creates a work order task for each of the standard job’s tasks, with the following exceptions:

•	If the standard job has triggering cycles, only the standard tasks associated with the current cycle are triggered. See Shadowing and Triggering Cycles for more information.

•	Standard tasks with asset and site status prerequisites are only triggered if the linked asset and site currently have one or more of the statuses selected on the standard task.

Note: If you create an indicator with alarms and use the alarm states to trigger work (through a standard job triggering rule), you might end up with a duplicate work order when the alarm is acknowledged. To trigger work from an indicator reading, we recommend that you use either indicator alarms with acknowledgments or standard job triggering rules based on non-alarm states. Using both methods can produce duplicate work orders.

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Projecting Indicator Readings Into the Future

When you create PM work orders, you can select a date in the future (horizon date) and tell the system to create work orders up to that date. The system evaluates the triggering rules for the standard jobs for the site or selected asset and then creates work orders for any jobs that are due to be triggered in the time period up to and including the horizon date.

If a job has an indicator-reading based rule, the system estimates when the job may be triggered based on past indicator readings. For example, if the rule says to trigger “every 3000 miles”, the system estimates when the indicator will reach 3000 miles. If the estimated trigger date falls within the horizon date, the system creates the work order for that date.

However, in some cases your organization might not want to trigger work orders based on projected indicator readings. If this is the case, you can turn off this feature for the site. In a multi-site implementation, each site can have a different setting.

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Fixed vs. Variable Time-based Rule Clauses

The time interval for a rule clause can be either fixed or variable. For a fixed rule clause, APM always triggers the work order on the time interval that you selected (for example every 30 days).

For a variable rule clause, APM adjusts the next work order’s start date based on the actual completion date of the last work order that was triggered from the job (for example, 30 days after the last triggered work order was closed).

If you are triggering variable work orders for a time period that goes into the future, an initial assumption is made that the work orders will be done on their planned completion date. The system starts counting from the requested completion date of the last work order. The requested completion date is calculated based on the planned start date, plus the total estimated duration of all of the work order tasks. As you complete the work orders, the start dates on the future work orders are bumped forward or brought in accordingly. So if you complete the first work order five days late, the future work order dates are bumped forward by five days.

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Early Warning Rules

You can set standard jobs to trigger work orders automatically using triggering rules. If you want APM to warn you when a job is about to be triggered, you can add an early warning clause to a triggering rule. You can add early warning clauses to time-based triggering rules and to rules that are based on cumulative asset indicators.

For example, you might have a job that needs to be done “every three months OR every 5000 miles.” This triggering rule could have the following early warning clauses:

Triggering Rule Clause	Early Warning Rule
trigger every three months	warn five days in advance
trigger every 5000 miles	warn 500 miles in advance

Every time that APM evaluates a triggering rule for a standard job, it checks if the job falls under the early warning condition. If the job is in an early warning condition, APM flags it so that you can see that the job will be triggered soon. Planners can review the early warning flags on their jobs to get a preview of work that is coming up. Planners can also see the early warning flags if they use the Generate PM Work Orders method.

You can also have APM automatically trigger the standard job when the early warning condition occurs. This gives you additional time to plan and schedule the job.

Early warning clauses for cumulative indicators only work if the indicator includes a daily average calculation. APM uses the daily average to predict when the triggering rule will likely be true and, therefore, when it will trigger the standard job.

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Exception Triggering Rule

The standard job’s triggering rule defines the job’s normal triggering frequency or condition. However, sometimes you might need to make an exception to the triggering rule. The most common exception occurs when you first set up the standard job in APM. Unless you have set up the standard job at the start of the triggering cycle, the triggering rule might not be correct for the first triggering cycle.

You can add an exception to the triggering rule for the next cycle by defining either a specific date when the job will be triggered or one or more triggering rules.

For example, you might set up a job to perform pump vibration inspection every 2500 operating hours. At the time that you created the standard job in APM, the asset had been operating for 1000 hours. Because APM does not know this, the standard job is triggered 2500 operating hours from now — 1000 hours too late.

To avoid this problem, you can add an exception to the next triggering cycle. You can set up the job’s triggering values as:

•	Normal triggering rule: trigger every 2500 hours

•	Exception triggering rule for next cycle: trigger in 1500 hours

For the next cycle, APM will trigger the job at 1500 hours. Subsequent triggerings occur every 2500 hours.

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Shadowing and Triggering Cycles

You can create standard jobs that use shadowing to trigger different tasks at different times. APM does this using triggering cycles.

Each time APM generates a work order from a standard job, one triggering cycle has occurred. You can set up standard jobs where one set of tasks is triggered on some cycles and other sets are triggered on other cycles. For example, you might want tasks A and C to be triggered every week and task B only every four weeks.

You can set up different kinds of cycles for each task:

•	Shadowed tasks: minor tasks are performed at a certain interval, for example every week. Every so many cycles, a major task is performed instead of the minor tasks. When the major task is performed, the minor tasks are not.

•	Nested tasks: minor tasks are performed at a certain interval, for example every week. Every so many cycles, in addition to the minor tasks, a major task is performed.

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Combinations of shadowed and nested tasks: you might need to include both replacement and nested tasks on a standard job. For example, the job could consist of a weekly task, a monthly task, and an annual task. The weekly task is performed once a week. The monthly task is performed every four weeks; on the fourth week both the weekly and monthly tasks are done. The annual task is performed every 52 weeks, but on the 52nd week the weekly and monthly tasks are not done.

For example, to set up a shadowed job where the monthly task replaces the weekly task, the standard job definition would be:

•	Triggering rule: every seven days.

•	Number of triggering cycles: 4. The cycles would be identified as week 1, week 2, week 3 and week 4.

•	Weekly tasks: trigger on week 1, week 2, week 3.

•	Monthly tasks: trigger on week 4.

Or, you might have a standard job containing both weekly and monthly tasks, where both the weekly and the monthly tasks are performed on the monthly interval. To set this up, on the standard job you would select:

•	Triggering rule: every seven days.

•	Number of triggering cycles: 4. The cycles would be identified as week 1, week 2, week 3 and week 4.

•	Weekly tasks: trigger on “every” cycle.

•	Monthly tasks: trigger every 4th cycle (or week 4).

If you have a standard job with weekly, monthly, and annual tasks, where the weekly and monthly are performed together, and the annual replaces (shadows) both, you would select:

•	Triggering rule: every seven days.

•	Number of triggering cycles: 52. The cycles would be identified as week 1, week 2, week 3 through week 52.

•	Weekly tasks: trigger on week 1, week 2, week 3, through week 51.

•	Monthly tasks: trigger on every 4th week, stopping at week 48: week 4, week 8, week 12 through week 48.

•	Annual task: trigger on week 52.

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