Scheduling of Crontasks needs to be logically sequenced. Overlapping the same Crontask twice or running crontasks with inter-dependencies can lead to surprising and erratic results.
Manage your Crontasks logically.
In my experience i have seen a few times where customers are running crontasks always at a specific time. This time is often exactly at midnight. Because that is the default Maximo would come up with if you set up a cron task on a daily basis.
Why should you care?
Crontasks can have dependencies on each other, and it could give you unexpected results that are likely not consistent. Why is this happening? Lets take this scenario: You have a Satellite Storeroom that replenishes from your Main storeroom. Your Main storeroom replenishes from a vendor. Imagine if your Satellite storeroom is still in the process of placing orders on your Main storeroom, while your Main storeroom is already running its routine to order spares from suppliers. You can imagine, that its a matter of 'who is first' that will determine if your requirement for the Satellite store is included in the re-order routine of your Central storeroom.
What can you do?
My recommendation is to maintain e.g. an XLS sheet with timeline when to run which crontask, as they can create dependencies. Look at duration of each crontask to see if there is no overlap between different re-order routines.
The sequence to use would be most logically to run the crontasks for:
Potentially any Escalation tasks if they update data for Assets/Locations/Work orders if they could change schedules or contents of records
Measurementpoint crontasks - depending how you use your Measurementpoints
PM Work Order Generation (as they will generate materials demand)
Lowest level storerooms that generate demand on higher level storerooms
Higher and highest level storerooms that generate PR/PO depending on your settings
Bonus: Utilize other crontasks
There are a number of other crontasks worth while exploring. For example, Budget update crontask, KPI History and KPI History Cleanup, PM Forecasting and Material Status Update. Are you using them?
If you are unsure how to use this at Amosa we can help you further. Talk to us or email via our contact form.
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