Enable bulk Data Import for Failure Codes (a.k.a. Failure Classes, PCR Codes)

Problem

Currently, all MAS customers cannot bulk import data (via flat files through application import or enterprise services) to the Failure Codes application. Customers are forced to create and enter failure code hierarchies one by one by hand in the Failure Codes UI.

Impact

An out-of-the-box solution for this pain point would deliver massive time savings as compared to manually creating and editing failure codes via the UI. Consider enterprise customers which manage hundreds of thousands or millions of assets who have a need to audit, standardize, and rework the failure codes related to these assets, or are migrating their failure codes into MAS from a competing EAM solution.

For a single client enterprise using Maximo, this feature could spare:

1. Hundreds if not thousands of hours of manual UI updates by business users creating and updating failure codes

2. Tens if not hundreds of developer hours spared not needing to deep dive, discover, test, release, and maintain customized automation script-based solutions

For IBM, this feature could spare:

1. Tens if not hundreds of IBM support and IBM developer hours working and reporting on support tickets, investigating and debugging, meeting with, and supporting MAS releases of customized automation-script based solutions for MAS clients.

The collective savings and reduction in costs (time, payroll, opportunity) for IBM and Maximo clients, compounded quarterly or yearly, would be material.

Key Context

IBM Community Forums post where several customers have shared this pain point, and expressed frustration: https://community.ibm.com/community/user/discussion/mas-9-failure-hierarchy-load-with-mxloader.

IBM Support case with important details regarding attempted solutions, and a solution which seems to be working using a custom object structure, two new fields in the flat-file import, two new non-persistent fields on the FAILURELIST table and an automation script which ties the pieces together: https://www.ibm.com/mysupport/s/case/500gJ000000kIBdQAM/importing-failurelist-failurecode-hierarchy-using-flat-file-data-import?language=en_US