Project: Maintenance Management System (MMS)
Primary UITS contact: Trish Smith
Last update: January 2, 2009
Description: Maintenance Management System (MMS) is an enterprise-wide application that tracks many of the university's maintenance functions including maintenance requests, current project costs, new building plans and additions, inventory, timekeeping for departmental billing, financial data for maintenance, and project management. For accounting purposes, MMS has a linked interface with the FIS and with the FMS application Interdepartmental (ID) Billings. To more effectively manage inventory and its cost, the system also interfaces with EPIC. MMS is used to track work requests for the physical plants on the Bloomington, Indianapolis, South Bend, and Southeast campuses and for the Bloomington and IUPUI residence halls. It is also used as an inventory control system for these departments as well as Dentistry and IUPUI Environmental Health and Safety.
MMS is a vended application from AssetWorks, whose applications are used by over 90 college and university campuses throughout North America. Currently, MMS is using an AssetWorks application called FacilityFocus, which is a PowerBuilder application distributed over Citrix.
AssetWorks has a new application called FMax, which is FacilityFocus rewritten in J2EE using many of the same tools and platforms used by other enterprise applications at IU. FMax is currently being implemented to replace FacilityFocus.
Outcome: At the beginning of the FMax implementation project, current functionality found in FacilityFocus will be replaced. Then new modules and functionality will be added, including replacing Crystal reports, currently hosted by the Physical Plant on its own server, with BIRT reports hosted in the IUIE.
Milestones and status:
- First quarter 2009: Phase 1 will include implementing the current functionality and interfaces.
- Summer 2009: Phase 2 will include adding an interface to the CAFM system to update room building information, expanding the workdesk usage, and adding the Utility module and the FCA module.
- Fall 2009: Phase 3 will include adding Key Management/Access, GIS, KPI reports, and EHS modules.
Comment process: Email Trish Smith.
Benefits:
- Major technological upgrades to MMS system
- Use of standardized, virtual J2EE environments, moving away from Citrix hosting environments, which will soon be retired
- New BIRT reporting functionality allowing reports to be hosted in the IUIE environment instead of in a separate reporting environment
- Many new features and enhancements
Risks: The user interface is changing from client-server to the web. The web experience will be substantially different, and it will take users some time to get used to the differences. Effective communication and training will be important.
The data from the current system has to be converted to the new system. In some cases data structures have changed dramatically. There is a chance of losing some data.
Issues: Several things will change with this project for MMS users: the user interface, the method of access, and the reporting environment.
Primary client: Staff dealing with the management and maintenance of IU facilities in Bloomington, Indianapolis, South Bend, and New Albany
Project team: The project lead is Trish Smith.
Governance: Project priorities are driven by the VP, the Chief Administrative Officer, and the needs of the Physical Facilities departments.
