Manage Global Work Definitions

Work definitions are defined at the maintenance organization level because they're based on organization specific work centers, material items, and resources. If you've definitions that are the same across some or all of your maintenance organizations, you can optionally create and manage them globally.

Before You Start

Global work definitions are only supported in the Redwood enabled Work Definitions page. See the Enable and Setup Redwood Pages for more information. After you have set up the Redwood page, do these:
  1. Enable the master organization for maintenance and ensure that the users have access.
  2. Ensure that the users have these:
    • Propagate Global Work Definitions Privileges
      • WIS_PROPAGATE_GLOBAL_WORK_DEFINITIONS_PRIV: View and manage the list of child organizations for which the global definition will be replicated.
      • WIS_UNLINK_REFERENCED_WORK_DEFINITION
    • Inventory access for the master organization in order to define a maintenance work definition and replicate it across child organizations.
  3. Ensure that the name of the work definition in the global master organization doesn’t exist in any child organizations, otherwise the replication will fail.
  4. Set up data attributes in both the master and child organizations:
    • Work areas
    • Work centers
    • Resources
    • Items
    • Standard operations

Global Work Definitions in Master Organization

You define the global work definitions in a maintenance-enabled master organization and then replicate it to the selected child maintenance-enabled organizations. This way you can source control them, at the same time, maintain revisions and new versions globally, instead of maintaining them for each local organization separately.

Global Work Definition to Child Organizations

Do this to copy a global work definition to child organizations:

  1. On the Maintenance Work Definitions page that's set in the master maintenance organization, select Assign Global Work Definition from More Actions.
  2. On the drawer that opens, assign a global maintenance work definition to a specific child organization or all the child organizations.

    The Propagate Global Maintenance Work Definitions scheduled process runs. You can monitor the process, review the output details, and take corrective action if any errors occur. After the job runs with no errors, the global maintenance work definition is automatically copied and replicated in the child maintenance organizations. Work definitions that are synchronized with the global master indicate Y under the Replicated column.

You can create a new version; the changes are replicated to the child organizations as a copy. However, if you make any additional changes an existing organization, you need to manually synchronize the changes.

Actions such as activation and deactivation of the work definition, or deletion of the work definition are propagated across the child organizations.

Replicated Work Definitions

Replicated work definitions are read-only, except for the following attributes:

  • Allow out-of-sequence completion
  • Allow return to inventory
  • Completion sub inventory and locator
  • Supply sub inventory and locator
  • Supplier and supplier site for supplier operations

A replicated organization can’t be removed from the list of child organizations; however, you can optionally choose to disconnect and manage the local copy. You can also manage the local copy if the work steps are fundamentally different.

Caution: Care should be taken when disconnecting a replicated work definition, as this can’t be reversed. Only users with the WIS_UNLINK_REFERENCED_WORK_DEFINITION privilege can disconnect them. To disconnect the association with the global work definition, clear the Replicated indicator in the child maintenance organization. After that, the work definition becomes independent and will no longer receive updates from the global work definition.