Work Order / Inspection Estimated Duration for Scheduling

Hi all - We have a fairly robust set of activity codes (1000+, 800+ with tasks) and maintenance schedules (400+ unit schedules, 1700+ group schedules) set up for our district, and are growing our group inspection schedules (1100+ on 2 inspection types today, just introduced 50+ more inspection types for piloting). One of our next challenges is doing a better job of planning and scheduling work. We have a lot of work to do in this area as we currently have different departments doing things slightly to significantly differently, but almost all of them are doing things in spreadsheets and spending a lot of time on emails etc. I thought that one of the easier tasks would be to set the standard / expected duration of different tasks and activities so we can use start using the schedule calendar, but after reviewing the documentation and sending in a ticket for clarification, it appears the only way out of the box to set a duration is in configuration editor, and it applies to every work order or inspection, no matter the activity or inspection type. We average 140-150K work orders and 20-25K inspections per year, so manually adjusting the duration after the item is generated isn't feasible.

I recognize that in some ways IPS is more like a Lego kit than an OOB solution and there are days when I love that flexibility, but the ability to set duration at the task and activity level seems like a pretty basic requirement of a CMMS / ERP system that I don't want to build from scratch, and I hope I'm missing a piece of the puzzle. Has anyone else tried to tackle this problem? What have you tried, sorted out, and/or implemented that has worked for you?

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Comments

Mary Green

Hi @heather-dodds thank you for asking. I'm working with our team to help you get an answer. I'll be in touch soon.

Gareth Langdon

Hi, just to clarify… what do you mean by duration exactly? Difference between scheduled start and scheduled finish dates on the work order?

Cheers

Gareth

Mike Carroll (Public Sector)

Heather, first, I will start with agreeing that there is definitely some validity in what you are asking and it would be nice to have an out of the box offered mechanism to calculate a scheduled finish similar to the calculation for the Due Date. Unfortunately, this is not currently offered, and I would recommend adding this as an enhancement request as the product team has been working on improving the scheduling areas for both CDR and Work Management (which you have have seen with the enhancements over the last few releases), and hopefully there will be more to come in the near future.

However, there are some reasons this has not been a priority. With 1000+, you have a LOT of activities, which gives you significant granularity. That differs from most of our agencies which have been tending towards fewer more generic activity codes. Having more generic codes makes it easier for them to manage their codes, for users to know which codes they should be using on work orders, and limits the configuration needed. This does come with a cost though, as with more generic codes it is difficult to have a "standard" job duration as the actual work performed on an activity may vary greatly. In addition, while there are some groups that do significant scheduling, the majority of our agencies do not use the schedule dates at all as they find there is too much change. They tend to have a backlog of work which is prioritized, and each day crews are assigned items to work by a planner/scheduler. This is partially due to the lack of known job durations, partially due to changing priorities, and of course partially due to the lack of time to manage a more long term plan.

The good news is that our activities due include the ability to specify an average production per work order, which if the production unit is hours or days may be used to set the scheduled finish date based on the scheduled start. This would require a simple workflow to calculate this date based on the scheduled start and activity average production and could be implemented without significant effort until the point it may be added to the out of the box offering. This does require a scheduled start, how do you intend to populate this? (User populated, auto populate based on initiated date, other?) This may be a more challenging issue to address.

Mike

Mike Carroll (Public Sector)

One further item which I wanted to separate our as my last response was already getting long, before you commit to this please ensure the schedule calendar will meet your needs. While it has a lot of promise there are a few limitations that many agencies find challenging. First, it is based on employee assignments rather than responsibility. Many agencies have been tending towards responsibility over direct assignment as it allows for a pull of employees to watch the same set of work orders. Second, the employees displayed on the Schedule Calendar are the logged in employee, and any direct reports as defined by the employee supervisor field. As this is usually an HR supervisor, and as many agencies utilize a separate planner/scheduler this can cause a disconnect.

There are some ER's around this form pending so hopefully we will see some future improvements here as well, but please ensure any current limitations will not prevent your usage before committing to the work required around defining durations as described above.

Mike

Mike Carroll (Public Sector)

Mike

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