The road to Advanced Maintenance Planning begins with the creation of production priorities and resources. These records are created within the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) but are an essential part of Advanced Maintenance Planning within EAM.
Although production priority and resource screens do not exist within EAM, the integration ensures the data exists in the EAM database for consumption. Further explanation of these terms is provided below:
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Production Priority is defined by the ERP Production Planner and will be referenced on EAM work orders and subsequent production requests. Production Priority enables Production Planners to prioritize work orders alongside their normal production orders for a more efficient production runs. These priorities describe the level of importance attached to a production request. Maintenance Planners will associate a production priority to each work order that impacts an ERP resource. Work order criticality and production order priority may be related directly.
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Resource is also defined by the ERP Production Planner and is used to represent a machine or equipment which produces finished goods. The Maintenance Planner will map the ERP resources that are impacted when maintenance is performed on equipment. A single resource can be related to many equipment and vice versa. For example, a filling line that produces one of many different soda products at a bottling company would be considered a resource. Accounting entity and resource type are additional attributes related to the resource by the Production Planner. Resources can be retired or taken out of service by unselecting the Active indicator.
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The integration between EAM and the ERP ensures the resources and production priorities available within EAM indeed reflect the latest information within the ERP.
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While EAM does not allow mixed or lower-case record codes in most cases, other software packages allow this sort of thing more frequently. For example, some ERPs may allow the administrator to create resources ‘ABC,’ ‘abc,’ and ‘AbC.’ Within the ERP itself these are three different and unique resources. This also applies to production priority, another ERP based concept that now exists within HxGN EAM. Therefore, when querying for resources or production priorities within HxGN EAM, please keep in mind that these searches are case sensitive while the majority of Extended EAM is not case sensitive.