Maximo Workflow Development and Adoption

Maximo Workflow Development and Adoption

November 6, 2012

Agenda

ENMAX Generation

Workflows at ENMAX Background

Business Challenge

Case Study – Work Order Workflow

Steps to Workflow Adoption

Lessons Learned

Questions

ENMAX Corporation

Municipally owned, vertically integrated utility

ENMAX Corporation (ENMAX)

Vertically integrated utility: electricity, natural gas, renewable energy

Providing Albertans with electricity for over 100 years

More than 697,000 customer sites throughout Alberta

Wholly owned subsidiary of The City of Calgary

Core operations include: electricity generation, transmission and distribution

and sale of electricity, natural gas and renewable energy products to

residential and commercial customers in Alberta

Generation Assets: Wind, Natural Gas, District Energy

ENMAX Generation Plan

Peaking

Wind Farms

Combined Heat

& Power

Base Load

Distributed

Generation

Expertise increases with design complexity

District Heating

Workflows at Enmax Background

Maximo version 7.1 had been in use for 18 months at ENMAX

When it was first implemented a very rudimentary work order workflow was put in place.

Workflows have been developed for the following applications:

Purchase Requisitions

MOCR

MOC

Work Orders

Incidents

Problems

Operator Logs

Business Challenge regarding the Work Order Workflow

The old work order workflow was not providing the level of control required.

Too many cases of work orders being completed without every having been approved.

Lack of control of the work order backlog.

Too much flexibility in the old manual processes

It was impossible to tell which status work orders really should be in

Case Study Work Order Workflow Our work order workflow went from this:

To this:

•Very little control

status changes were

done manually.

•Once approved work

orders were never

workflowed again

•Complete control of status

changes and ownership

through workflow.

•Data validation at each step

in the work order life cycle.

•Ability to take any work order

into and out of workflow at

any point in lifecycle.

•Complete history of status

changes, ownership changes

and rework.

Steps to Workflow Adoption Involve the key business people in the design

Involve the key business users in the unit and acceptance testing

Be flexible in your design – adopt business changes to process

Develop excellent documentation

Workflow Diagrams

Desktop Guides (user documentation)

Set up workflows so that existing object (i.e. work orders) can enter at any stage in

their lifecycle

Implement workflow override option

Develop workflow KPIs, Reports and Queries

Add workflow assignment table to main tabs of applications

Ensure workflow assignments have good descriptions

Remove status change from application toolbar

Develop workflow assignment start center

Involve the Key Business People in the Design

Workflows belong to the business, so

they need to be involved in the detailed

design.

Your workflow efforts will have less

chance of success unless the business

has control and approval of the design.

Do not try to review the entire workflow

design in a single session, step through

it in chunks (one to two hour sessions

maximum).

Invite the right people to each session,

decision makers and doers.

Involve Key Business Users in Unit and Acceptance Testing

Through each stage of the testing process have business users involved.

When you are unit testing certain parts of the workflow have a user sit

with to do things like validate options available, and wording of choices.

When doing acceptance testing, do it in a large group setting. Go

through a checklist and validate the test results as a group. Getting

group results and feedback captured as test results will improve the final

product.

Publish the results of your acceptance tests to key business users, this

not only confirms the results, but sets expectations as to what is coming.

Be Flexible in Design – Adopt Business Changes to Process

When developing a new workflow the temptation is to “lock down the

design” and resist any changes that may come about during testing or

training.

As much as possible you should try to adopt all changes the business

identify, even if it means delaying your implementation of the workflow.

During our design/development/testing cycles we incorporated

some significant changes from the business, resulting in longer

testing cycles, and two delays in final implementation

This may be seen as “costing more” – but the end result was a workflow

that matched business processes and was better accepted by the end

users.

Develop Excellent Documentation

It is critical that when a new workflow is introduced into Maximo that the

users can lay their hands on documentation which will help guide them

through the process.

A detailed workflow diagram was

used throughout design and testing

of the workflow to validate the process.

Once the workflow went live this became

the “one page” overview that users

were able to refer to.

ENMAX develops detailed desktop

guides for major system functions.

When work order workflow went

live we had a new desktop guide

available to the users.

Set up Workflows so That Existing Objects Can Enter

There is nothing worse that opening an existing Work Order that is not in

workflow, hitting the “workflow icon” and nothing happens. Users will

quickly lose trust in the workflow icon if it leaves work orders in limbo.

Make sure any work order can enter workflow

based on status.

This will allow all work orders, even those created

before the workflow went into production to be

taken through to completion using the new

workflow process.

Implement Workflow Override Option

With work order workflow one of the issues identified by the business

was that a work order can be assigned to someone in workflow one

week, and then the following week they are away or too busy with other

tasks to complete the assignment.

In the past they would have to create an Service Reqiest to ask for the

assignment of the workflow from one person or group or people to

another.

Instead we added the OVERRIDE Workflow Assignment Option available

to select users.

This allows the user to take over an assignment from someone else.

NOTE: This was only done for the work order workflow, since re-

assigning workflow tasks is an approved business process for

work orders only.

Implement Workflow Override Option

Steps to Accomplish This Create new workflow process which

has one action – Override Workflow

Then edit Workflow

GO Buttons

to add this new workflow

to a separate button.

Pick a gif for this option

that will differentiate it from

the normal workflow icon.

Develop Workflow KPIs, Reports and Queries

Work Order Tracking KPIs for Monitoring Workflow Adoption and Use

Work Order Aging

Average age of work orders to completion 36 days

Average age of work orders to closure 66 days

Work Orders which Bypassed Workflow

Prior to the new workflow 61% of work orders skipped steps

After the new workflow only 1% of work orders have

bypassed steps in the process

Work Orders with Status Anomalies

Prior to the new workflow 24% of work orders had status

anomalies. (i.e work orders that were once approved, but now

had a status of WAPPR)

Since implementing new workflow this has improved to 6.5%

Work Orders with Stopped Workflows

Since implementing new workflow 3% of work orders have

had workflow stopped and then restarted.

This did not happen prior to this because the original

workflow was so simple

Develop Workflow KPIs, Reports and Queries

Work Order Tracking Reports

Develop Workflow KPIs, Reports and Queries

Work Order Tracking Queries

My Open Workflow Assignments

Work Orders in Workflow

Work Orders NOT in Workflow for user’s default site

Add Workflow Assignment to Main Tabs

When an object such as a work order has been put into workflow the

users really appreciate being able to easily see who it has been sent to.

This is already possible through the selection action menu, but that is not

the user friendly way of doing things.

Instead we have added a

Workflow Assignments table to

the main tab of

all of our workflowed objects

(PRs, POs, WOs, Incidents,

Problems) so

that with a single scroll of the

mouse the users can see who

things have been sent to.

This way they can immediately

see if it has been sent to the

right person or group of people.

NOTE: This feature was so well

accepted that it was

implemented in all applications

which had workflow functions.

Ensure Workflow Assignments Have Good Descriptions

Our original workflow, just had the work order number and a

brief assignment description. (see the first line above)

After a week in use, the business requested the addition of

the work order summary (short description) to the assignment.

This was done in Workflow Designer, by modifying the TASK Nodes Task Description

to include :description

Remove Status Change from Toolbar

If all status changes and ownership changes are to be controlled by your

workflow, then remove the icons from the toolbar so that people will not be

able to bypass using workflow.

This can be done in two ways, first is to remove the option using the application

designer and the second way (recommended) is to use the security module to

remove access to just those functions.

Develop Workflow Assignment Start Center

One of the issues identified by our business users was that with more

workflow assignments, their inboxes were cluttered and it was hard to

keep straight.

We solved this issue

by designing a new

start center for all users

that had separate result

sets for each application

where they could be

assigned workflow tasks.

This start center also

provides shortcuts to the

various applications which

have workflows.

Lessons Learned

When you implement a new workflow – with new business rules make

sure you test other workflows in the system to ensure they are not

impacted.

In our case we found the new work order workflow impacted the

MOC, MOCR and PR workflows.

When you first implement a new complex workflow, you can expect

several calls for help from the end users.

You can also expect that you will need to tweak the workflow with a

process revision within a week or two of going live.

Come up with a nickname for the Workflow Icon. We call it the Flux

Capacitor, or the Circle of Life. Much catchier than calling it the workflow

icon, and the users all know what we mean when we talk about it.

Questions