Maintenance Plans are used to define your requirements for keeping each asset in a state of control. Each plan can contain one or multiple segments, which are defined as Maintenance Tasks. Each task in the plan defines the service type and the service interval between each step. Maintenance Plans can be configured to use results to determine the next steps.
To configure or review your Maintenance Plans, hover over the Assets tab in the top navigation bar, and click "Maintenance Plans" from the drop down:
Instantly review active Maintenance Plans, the number of tasks/steps in the plan, the number of assets assigned to the plan and the total number of services performed for those assets within the last 12 months.
To generate a new Maintenance Plan, click "New Maintenance Plan..." in your TOOLBOX on the right side of the screen.
Maintenance Plan titles are ad hoc and should be named based on internal SOPs or naming convention standards. Each plan is assigned by product category or generically to "Any Category". Qualer recommends configuring plans based on product category so that you can assign steps in the plan to a specific vendor and specific service levels.
Once the Plan is created, we must define Tasks in order to establish service intervals.
Click on the title of the plan to open it. Next, click "Add New Maintenance Task"
Add a name of the service, and select the service interval. Follow your internal SOPs for configuring advanced recall or past due grace periods. You can schedule Service Interval On Specific Weekday/month/etc, maintenance tasks can be triggered following a fail event on a previous task. For instance, if your equipment failed a calibration, you can set up a repair for that asset.:
Maintenance Plan Advanced Forecast Options
There are new options available for the maintenance task set up on determining the Original Due Date logic and Next Service due logic. Below are explanation of how the new options work.
Note: The first option in each drop-down is the default way, as the system is working right now.
Original due date is based on:
Next interval (shift on each event): The next “original due date” will be based on the last Maintenance Plan Service Order generated. (This is how Qualer currently determines the next “original due date”)
- When a new order is entered into the system, the system will attempt to populate the Original Service Due Date. Once this record is created, a new calendar forecast is created immediately based on that date and the interval. This works well for daily or weekly services, where a new order needs to be generated regardless of whether yesterday's order is completed.
Submission Date + Grace Period: The next “original due date” will be based on the date the Maintenance Plan Service Order is generated. Thus, each Maintenance Plan Service Order determines the “original due date” independently, without any regard to any future similar Service Orders.
- This option assumes that any service is due on the date it was created plus whatever grace period is set in the maintenance plan. So, if you have a grace period of "End of month", any number of events created before that date will assume that they are due for that end of month date. This takes care of a situation when you need to create multiple work orders around the same due date. In contrast to the first option, it ignores the future forecast completely.
Exact Submission Date: Performs the same function as “Submission Date + Grace Period”, but without the Grace Period.
This option is similar to the 'Submission Date + Grace Period' option, but ignores the grace period adjustment.
Next service due is based on:
Use Original Due Date for Early Completion: The Service Due Date will be based on the “original due date”, not the date when the Service Order is completed.
- This option goes hand and hand with the Original Due Date Based On option 'Next Interval (shift on each event)'. This works well for daily or weekly services, where a new order needs to be generated regardless of whether yesterday's order is completed.
Always Use Exact Completion Date: The Service Due Date will be based on the date the Service Order is completed.
This option will always calculate the next due date based on the completion date of the most recent work order. If the order is not completed yet, it will preliminarily forecast next service based on the original due date value, which is determined by the previous option. The next due date may fluctuate a little every time the new work order is created, but once all work orders are completed, it will settle.
Use the Instructions tab to indicate procedural information or notes, or to initiate automated order generation.
Note: Auto-generation features are enabled during implementation by Qualer personnel. If you are interested in enabling auto-generation features, please reach out to Qualer Customer Support
This is ideal for weekly or daily processes. An owner must first be selected. The owner will be the person who "creates" the order. Tip: create an employee called abcautogen@nomail.com for example then link this employee as the owner to help see what orders are autogenerated. To turn on autogenerate orders, the first checkbox must be clicked. There are other options:
Require the "Approve Order" button to be clicked before the order moves to the next work order stage.
Generate one order per asset. When assets have the same due date, they will autogenerate on the same order by default. This button can be checked to instead do just one asset per order.
Generate on advance recall date refers to the advance recall period option selected on the Maintenance Task tab.
A time can be set for when the order should be generated.
Note: a service level must also be selected in the Service Provider tab in order for autogenerate to be turned on.
Note: a new autogenerate order will only occur if it's the first time an order is being autogenerated for an asset on that plan OR if the previous order for the asset on that plan is in the Completed stage.
Note: a next service date must be set for the asset on the plan in order for the first order to autogenerate. The date is in the Maintenance tab of the asset.
Use the Service Provider tab to indicate which vendor will be completing this Task and with which Service Level and also associate different price list. You can assign tasks to internal teams or external providers.
The Assignment tab will allow to pre-select main assignee and additional employees similar to how it is done in the Schedule tab of the work order. When order is created based on this specific maintenance task, the main assignee is assigned to work item (FulfilledBy) and to the order level.
Additional assignments are simply added to the order level.
Click Select Technician or the “+” to open the employee selection window. Find the employee you would like to assign to the maintenance task and click Select Employee.
Use 'Subcontractor' to indicate which vendor the service is being outsourced to, with the associated service level.
Press "Update" when the Task is completely configured. Additional tasks can be scheduled in a whole host of ways, independent, contingent, on demand, etc. A completed Maintenance Plan may look something like this:
Add assets to this plan in your asset manager.
Go to the Asset Manager screen, select existing assets, and click "Add to Maintenance Plan" in the Toolbox:
Or select "Assign Maintenance Plan" in the Maintenance tab of the Asset Info pop-up:
Whichever approach you choose, you will then see the following pop-up dialog with your available maintenance plans:
The checkboxes on the left activate the drop-downs and indicate the appropriate logic for initiating the next service due date.
Click "OK" when you are ready to assign the new plan and associated logic to the selected asset(s).
You will then receive a confirmation message of the assignment:
In the screenshot below, you can see that the asset already has a service record without a maintenance plan.
This will calculate the next service date for the new plan based on the last service record + interval (7 days).
For example, we choose 12/1/2021, and this will be the service due date:
You also have the ability to reset your service date. Select the calendar icon in the Maintenance Plan's row you are looking to reset:
The Next Asset Service Date window will pop up. To adjust the "Next Service Date:" field, you can either select the calendar icon and a calendar will pop up for you to select a date from:
Or select your cursor in the date field and type the desired new date:
To remove the asset's service date, so that alerts will be silenced for example due to an upcoming initial service, simply delete the date in the "Next service date:" field. Once you've changed the service date to your desired date, click "OK."