How You Generate Maintenance Work Orders Based on a Forecast

When you have verified the Forecast for a Maintenance Program, then you are ready to create work orders for the future forecasted due dates.

You can create work orders from the forecast by one of two methods:

• Within a single program, once you have verified the forecast methods for the work requirements, you can manually create Work Orders by selecting from the Actions drop-down the Generate Work Orders button. This launches a scheduled process, returning a process id for monitoring until completion.
• After a program is validated, you must set up the work orders to periodically create using a scheduled process. The job can be accessed from the tasks pane on the Maintenance Management landing page by clicking the Generate Maintenance Work Orders link. For additional details about this scheduled process, see the Scheduled Processes for SCM guide.

Note: It's recommended to generate work orders using a scheduled process and not manually from within the program. You must evaluate your planning, scheduling and execution process to determine the best frequency in which to create them. Generally, daily, or weekly scheduling of the process is recommended to ensure that a contract creation of work orders into the future occurs on a known frequency. Else, it is possible that work orders will not be created for past due dates.

The work orders are generated based on the forecast, next work order option and the concurrent requirement rules defined in the maintenance programs are applied. The work orders are created with status as Unreleased and priority as 1, unless different options are defined in the work requirement. The work order type and sub type are derived from the asset. If these fields are empty for the asset, then the work orders are generated with type as Preventive and sub type as Planned. The work order description is defaulted from the work definition description, based on these rules:

• If the maintenance programs use a single work definition or concurrent requirements option is set to suppress, the work order description is defaulted from the work definition description.

• If the work order is created from merged work definitions within a single maintenance program's work requirement, the work order description is defaulted with the work requirement name.

• If the work order is created from merged work definitions across multiple work requirements within a maintenance program, the work order description is defaulted with the maintenance program name.

Work Orders won't be created in some cases, based on user setup or validation issues. For validation issues, it's recommended to verify the output logs from the scheduled processes that are used to create work orders to identify due dates that didn't create work orders successfully.

• If the due date is in the past, then work orders won't be created. This can occur if the scheduled process isn't scheduled to run on a routine basis. Work Orders can be manually created in the Maintenance Forecast page or using the REST API for past due dates.
• If a work requirement has the Create Work Orders Option set to Manually, then the scheduled process won't consider these due dates. Work Orders are expected to be manually created in the Maintenance Forecast page or using the REST API for past due dates.
• If a work requirement status is Draft, then it won’t be considered by the scheduled process.
• If an asset has the indicators, Allow maintenance programs or Allow work orders set to No, then it won’t be considered by the scheduled process.
• If work definitions aren't defined or active in work order or requested work order organization. For a work definition in a work requirement, the same work definition by Code must be defined in every organization for which an asset included in a work requirement may be forecasted and create work orders.
• If any other validation from the Import Work Orders program are encountered, they are captured in the output log.

Note: Your maintenance programs may reference work definitions that have a Default Work Order Type and Subtype values defined. These aren't considered during work order creation since one or more work definitions could be merged into a single work order.

Note: When the application generates work orders based on the maintenance forecast, it considers the value set for Generate Work Orders Horizon in Days. This value is defined in the maintenance organization plant parameters program header or work requirement. This controls how far into the future the forecast process generates work orders. After a program is run, if work orders for forecasted due dates aren't displayed in the calendar or Gantt chart, you can review the setup and adjust the horizon window value. For more details, see the Guidelines to Set Up Maintenance Plant Parameters topic in the book Implementing Manufacturing and Supply Chain Materials Management.