The most effective way to learn Maximo core concepts

After several years training Maximo end-users and consultants, I believe there is a right way to learn Maximo and also there is a wrong way to do it. Contrary to what many may think, to me, the wrong way to learn Maximo is through the job. This can take a lot of time, several full cycle green field projects for a consultant, or many months or years for end-users. By the time the person understands the software, it is often too late. For a consultant, it could mean many bad implementations or advice had been given to the customers; for an end-user, it could mean a lot of bad data had been entered into the system over time.

So what is the right way to learn Maximo? I believe it is through intensive, comprehensive training right at the beginning when a consultant starts the job; or for an end-user, it is before he/she starts to use the system.


But, you may argue, "how can I learn all of those modules and applications, trying to remember all the menus, buttons, text fields and check boxes and not spend a huge amount of time on it? Eventually, I have project (for consultants) or a ton of other daily work (for end-users) to do. I simply cannot spend several months to learn everything about this software". Well, I didn’t say you have to spend months to learn Maximo. It only takes a few days if you know how to do it in the most effective way.

From my experience, the most effective way would be a guided training through the key concepts and trying to relate those concepts with real world examples. In the case of training new consultants for our company, I would give the guy a real world problem to solve by drawing a motorbike on a whiteboard. I’ll have the guy to enter information of the motorbike into Maximo including: the asset - the bike, then the components and sub components such as the engine, the wheels etc. Then I’ll have him to enter spare-parts information such as tire, bearing, seal by creating Item codes for them and linking those item codes to the related asset (bike). Balances of the items also need to be managed in the Inventory app too. The motorbike needs to have an odometer where the end-user can enter the number of kilometers the bike runs each day. From that, I’ll ask the guy to enter a preventive maintenance plan to inspect, clean and change oil the motorbike for every 1000 km it runs or for every 3 months whichever comes first.

When the guys can carry out all of those activities in Maximo, I’ll review and ask questions to verify his understanding of the concepts and make sure that he understands almost all advanced functions related to each concept too. For example, when creating a new Item record, I’ll ask what is LOT? When should somebody want to manage an item using this feature? What is KIT? Give an example of how it is used.  When the “Add as spare-part” check-box is checked, how does it work in Maximo?

This exercise will extend to covers all core modules including Asset, Planning, Preventive Maintenance, Work Management, Inventory, Purchasing and Contract. Although it sounds a lot, I have seen many people, who have no prior experience with asset management software, managed to pick up all of the knowledge and able to answer almost 90% of my advanced questions only after 4-5 days of self-training. Very few people require more than 10 days to fully understand all Maximo key concepts This amount of time already includes the time to read books and watch through the training video recordings I provided in this earlier posts.

For the end-users, they usually have to learn on one or two modules, and only require practical experience in the main processes; it only takes one or two days of intensive training to get deep understanding of the concepts and able to use the software effectively without much problem.