How You Manage Maintenance Forecasts
A forecast collects work requirements from all the active work requirements and suggests due dates based on the asset operating organization, maintenance organization, forecast method, concurrent work options, and last maintenance work order.
When generating the maintenance forecast, the application considers the value set for the Forecast Horizon in Days. This value is defined in the maintenance organization plant parameters, program header and work requirement, controlling how far into the future the forecast will generate due dates. The number of days value is used based on the lowest level of definition in a program. After a forecast is run, if some due dates aren't displayed in the calendar or Gantt chart, you can review the setup and adjust the horizon window values. For additional details, refer to the Guidelines to Set Up Maintenance Plant Parameters topic in the Implementing Manufacturing and Supply Chain Materials Management guide.
If an asset is operating in a maintenance organization, the due dates will be forecasted in the same organization. If an asset is operating in a non-mx organization, the program won't forecast in that organization as work orders can’t be created. Instead, the due dates forecast in either the program contextual maintenance organization or a primary maintenance organization.
You can create and periodically update the forecast by one of two methods:
- Within a single program, you can verify the forecast methods for the work requirements by selecting from the Actions drop-down the Generate Forecast button. This will generate a scheduled process to create and update the forecast.
- Once a program is validated, you should set up the Forecast to periodically run using a scheduled process. The job can be accessed from the Tasks pane on the Maintenance Management landing page by clicking the Generate Maintenance Forecast link. For additional details about this scheduled process, refer to the Scheduled Processes for SCM guide.
Review and Update of a Maintenance Forecast
You can view a graphical overview of maintenance programs within the current organization using the Gantt Chart, calendar, Maintenance Forecast page or REST API. You can also search and select specific maintenance programs for review. It's important to note that the forecast isn't constrained by resource or material availability. You can edit a forecast by editing the specific maintenance program that you want to update, then recreate the forecast to see the changes.
- Forecasts are always created and recreated from the date of the scheduled process into the future, per the forecast horizon in days.
- Existing forecast due dates, without work orders, are deleted and recreated. Past dates will be preserved and not updated.
- If a forecast due date has been manually set to be skipped, or a requested due date or organization is defined, then the forecast will preserve the due date and it will not be deleted and recreated. Additionally, all previous due dates before this date will also be preserved, which means the forecast will not deleted or recreated them. This is necessary to maintain history of the manual edits and allow the forecasted due dates to be later edited as required.
- If a forecast due date is manually reset to not be skipped, have a requested due date or organization defined, then the forecast due dates will be reconsidered for deletion and recreation. This includes the individual due dates and all due dates before it in history that are not preserved due to manual edits.
- Work Orders are created only for due dates and times in the future. Therefore, it's possible that due dates in the past are skipped and not considered for work order creation if that scheduled process isn't scheduled to run on a routine basis. You can use the Manage Forecasts page or REST API to manually create these work orders, as required.
- Changes to the work requirement forecast method or parameters may fundamentally change the future forecast cadence. It becomes difficult to verify the original or last modeling in the past. Therefore, it may be advisable to create new work requirements when a significant change in cadence is required.
- Define and update a requested work order start date if a work order has not been created yet. This is helpful to manually define when a work order will be created, instead of its due date, by the work order creation scheduled process. The requested start date can only be set to a value between the last and next due date.
- Define and update a requested maintenance organization where the work order will be created. If the due date is forecasted by a program that is enabled for cross-organizations, then you can request the work order to be created in another maintenance-enabled organization, instead of its forecasted organization. This requested organization must have the same work definitions in order to be defined.
- Skip a due date for an asset. You may wish to not create a work order for a due date. Setting the skipped indicator to Yes will not consider the due date for work order creation using the work order creation scheduled process. You can also un-skip a due date, which will allow the due date to be reconsidered by the next run of the schedule process if the due date is in the present or future. Else, you can manually create a work order.
- Manually create a work order for a due date. For a due date without an active work order, you can create a work order based off the forecasted due date and location, or by using the requested start date and location, if defined. This action will launch a scheduled process request to create the work order for the due date. This action is useful for due dates with a status of Planned, Unplanned, Skipped or Cancelled.
- Manually cancel a work order for a due date. You can cancel the work order if no transactions have been created in execution. Once cancelled, you can still view the work order reference, but it will be set to a status of Cancelled and will not be available for execution. The work order and due date will be considered by the forecast scheduled process to generate future due dates. Additionally, for a Cancelled work order on a due date, you can manually create a new work order in the same or requested location.