Tools and facilities can be anything from big hangars to shop tools. Each tool and facility that can potentially be used in planning and/or in workflows are registered with a unique tool and facility ID.
Tools and
facilities can be planned and booked on work orders, standard jobs, separate preventive maintenance actions
and compatible units. When you plan tools and facilities on
a preventive maintenance action or a standard job, you will most likely plan
for the type of tool or facility you need, not for the specific ID of a tool
or facility since that specific ID might already be booked when the work order
is later generated. When the work order is generated, you can specify the tool
or facility ID you want on the order.
You can specify the maximum load level or the pre booking for the tools and the facility ID. The maximum load level would be either 0%, which indicates that the tool and the facility is not available for pre booking, or 100% which indicates that it is available.
You also can
connect tools and facilities to equipment objects in the following states: In
Operation, Planned for Operation, Out of Operation, and Scrapped. This
connection allows you to maintain your own tools and facilities. If you try to
plan a tool or facility with a connection to an equipment object that has an
Out of Operation status, you will receive a warning.
If
you have several instances of a
You can add tools and facilities to work order quotations. Further are economical follow-up on tools and facilities available and as own cost types. When tools and facilities are connected to a project, the costs are added as miscellaneous costs for the actual project.
Every tool and
facility ID must be connected to a tool and facility type to make the
pre-planning of preventive maintenance actions and standard jobs possible.
Each tool or facility also must be connected to the owner site and maintenance
organization. There could, for example, be several maintenance organizations per
site and it might be important from a planning perspective to know the
specific maintenance organization to which the tool belongs. You can also connect a sales
part to each combination of tool/facility + site + maintenance organization, so that the use
of the tool or facility can be invoiced to a customer.
You can
register cost and currency for each tool/facility type and tool/facility ID.
This makes it possible to register the individual cost per hour in a specific
currency. The currencies are, however, always calculated to the actual
company's currency when the tool is connected to a work order.
It's also possible to use characteristics technical class connection together with site and maintenance organization for tool or facility type and tool or facility ID.
You can plan
and report the usage of tools and facilities when performing any type of
maintenance except for routes. Tools and facilities are resources that are not
personnel, but is still needed to perform maintenance. A facility could, for example,
be a hangar that you need to perform maintenance on an aircraft. You also can
plan the usage of one or more tool or facility for an operation on a work
order. It is possible to plan a tool or facility without an operation if you
are not using MRO.
When you plan a tool or facility, a planning line on a work order is
automatically created for it. If the tool or facility is connected to a
different site than the work order, you can connect to the work order as long
as it belongs to the same company that is associated with the work order. For
each planned line, you can register when the tool or facility should be used.
This allows you to search and view the work load for a tool or facility within
a specific time frame.
If
a tool or facility line is planned, when the work status is set to Prepare or
higher, the system will check if the tool or facility ID exists and is
registered on the actual site and maintenance organization. If the tool or facility ID is
not registered, a dialog box will open to allow you to choose a valid ID. If a work order is pre-planned from IFS/Vehicle
Information Management (IFS/VIM) through a preventive maintenance action or a
standard job is most likely, only a tool facility type
given. In this case, a dialog box will open so that you can choose the tool or
facility ID to connect to the tool or facility type.
To
help you find the correct
tool or facility, you can search tools and facilities via Characteristics from the
Prepare Work Order window.
Tools and facilities connected to an equipment object which is out of operation cannot be connected to a work order. A warning message will be displayed when you manually save the record or when the work order status is set to Released.
The reported
time given for a tool or facility is added to (or subtracted from) the
previously-reported time, so the time continues to accumulate. This means that
the reported value can be increased and decreased depending on the value you
report.
Tools and facilities have their own cost type with posting control types. Pre-posting possibilities are available. The cost type is also available when viewing object and work order costs.
If you use
tools and facilities for a PM action or a standard job, you can plan as to which
type of tool and/or facility you need. You can also specify the exact tool you
want, but you must be aware that the tool or facility may be booked when the
PM action is later transferred to a work order. If you have planned only a
tool/facility type, you must specify the tool/facility ID on the generated
work order instead.
If you have several separate
PM actions for the same object - for example, if the object is a car - the car
might need a separate garage object planned for each PM action if they are
moved out one-by-one. However, if several PM actions are to be moved out at
the same time, you need only one garage object to carry out all scheduled PM
actions. If one garage object is planned for each PM action instead of for one
PM action, you will receive an incorrect availability planning situation in
which all garages seem to be booked when they are actually not needed. On
the other hand, if you plan several PM actions - for instance to simultaneous
change the springs of the car - you must book the specified amount of spring
tools for each wheel. This is something that needs to be handled manually by
the work order planner.
You can plan for tools and facilities (entering tool/facility IDs and tool/facility types) in IFS/Vehicle Information Management (IFS/VIM). These tools and facilities are later transferred to the work order. When the work order is finished, the performance time for the used tools and facilities is transferred back to IFS/VIM.