MRO Intelligence™

Sphera® Struxure™ 6.2.3

Release Notes
Struxure 6.2.3 Release Notes
March 21, 2017

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Table of contents
Overview ......................................................................................................................... 5
Quality assurance testing........................................................................................................ 5
Available documentation ......................................................................................................... 5

Enhancements and updates ......................................................................................... 6

Ability to prioritize items for a plant/site based on criticality .................................................... 6
Item criticality setup........................................................................................................... 7
Criticality questionnaires ............................................................................................. 8
Criticality codes ........................................................................................................... 8
New plant field datatype for item criticality ........................................................................ 9
Assigning new criticality codes to items for a specific plant ............................................ 10
New item criticality report ................................................................................................ 11
Sphera branding applied to Struxure .................................................................................... 11

Resolved issues........................................................................................................... 13

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Struxure 6.2.3 Release Notes

4
 Overview

Overview
This document communicates the changes in Struxure 6.2.3, and is for information purposes only. This
document includes the following sections:
• Enhancements and updates—describes the enhancements included in Struxure 6.2.3.
• Resolved issues—describes the issues corrected in Struxure 6.2.3.

In addition to the features and enhancements described in this document, Struxure 6.2.3 addresses a
number of critical, high, and medium priority issues.

Quality assurance testing

All changes and additions included in this release were unit, system, and functionally tested to ensure
the highest possible quality and reliability.

Available documentation
The Struxure 6.2.3 release package includes the following documents and other miscellaneous files
applicable to the release.

Document/File Description

Sphera Struxure 6.2.3 Release Reference document in PDF format that contains details
Notes regarding the changes included in the new version of Struxure

Sphera Struxure 6.2.3 System Reference document in PDF format that describes the
Requirements hardware and software requirements for installing Struxure
6.2.3

Sphera Struxure 6.2.3 Installation Reference document in PDF format that provides instructions
& Configuration Guide for the installation of the Struxure 6.2.3 release. This document
also includes upgrade instructions

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Struxure 6.2.3 Release Notes

Enhancements and updates

Struxure 6.2.3 includes the following enhancements.

Ability to prioritize items for a plant/site based on criticality

You can now determine the priority of each item based on the impact it has on a set of criteria defined
by your company such as plant safety, productivity, and efficiency. Each criteria carries a different
weighting (potential points) depending on the geographical location and other factors specific to the
plant/site. The different criteria is combined into a matrix where a criticality score or rating is calculated
based on the values selected for each criterion. The rating is then converted into a criticality code—the
concept of which existed in previous versions of Struxure. You can use the criticality code to make
decisions about procurement, warehousing, and inventory management. Due to differences in plants/
sites, the same item can have a different criticality rating for each plant.

The following example shows how you can use various criteria and weighting to determine item
criticality for a specific plant:

Table 1: <Plant A> MRO criticality matrix for <Item X>

Criteria Options Points

Potential Assigned

Frequency of failure A—Often (more than 5 times per year) 5 5

B—Average (between 3-5 times per year) 3

C—Rarely (less than 3 times per year) 0

Predictability of D—Difficult to predict 7 2

Failure
E—Easy to predict 2

F—NA - no impact if it fails -5

Annual turnover G—Frequently (more than 10 times per year) 3 3

H—Occasionally (between 3-9 times per year) 2

I—Rarely (less than 3 times per year) 1

Substitutability J—Unique (no substitutes) 5 3

K—Rebuild parts available on site 3

L—Readily available substitute exists 0

Lead times M—Long lead time (100 days or longer to 10 5

replenish)

N—Average lead time (1- 100 days) 5

O—Readily available (less than 24 hours to -2

obtain)

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 Enhancements and updates

Table 1: <Plant A> MRO criticality matrix for <Item X>

Criteria Options Points

Potential Assigned

Assigned points 18

MRO criticality code (based on the <Plant A> MRO criticality matrix summary table) B

Table 2: <Plant A> MRO criticality matrix summary

MRO criticality code Description MRO points range

C Low importance -6 to 10

B Medium importance 10 to 22

A High importance 22 to 30

The following sections describe the new features implemented in Struxure 6.2.3 to accommodate the
new item criticality functionality.

Item criticality setup

Before you can calculate the criticality code for an item, you must set up the following:
• Criticality questionnaire—a series of criteria, options, and points that are used to determine item
criticality
• Criticality codes—a series of codes that define the criticality of an item. Each code is mapped to
a range of values.

The questionnaire and codes are used together to determine an item’s criticality for a specific plant.

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Struxure 6.2.3 Release Notes

Criticality questionnaires
You can create the criticality questionnaires on the Admin > Item Criticality Setup > Questionnaires
page.

For each questionnaire, you must create a series of questions, where each question evaluates an
item’s criticality for a specific criteria. Each question contains a series of options that are assigned to a
specific number of points based on your company’s rules and regulations.

When you save a questionnaire, it is automatically created in all localities. You can localize or
customize the following parts of a questionnaire for each locality:
• Questionnaire name
• Criteria
• Criteria description
• Option description

The option code and points associated with each code are common across all localities, so if you make
a change in one locality, it automatically gets updated in all localities.

Criticality codes
You define the codes and corresponding point ranges that are used to determine item criticality for a
plant on the Admin > Item Criticality Setup > Codes page.

Add codes from

lowest to highest
value
•

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 Enhancements and updates

To create the criticality codes, descriptions, and corresponding point ranges follow the policies and
standards developed by your company. After you add the item criticality datatype to a plant, the codes
and descriptions you create are available for selection directly from the Item Criticality field on the
Single Items and Multiple Items pages. The points assigned to all codes can range from -9999 to 9999
and must be continuous. When you add a new code, the Min Points value is automatically set to the
following value: (Max Points of the previous code + 1). This value cannot be edited. As a result, you
must add the codes from lowest to highest value.

New plant field datatype for item criticality

After you have set up a questionnaire, you can create a plant field for item criticality and then assign it
to a specific plant or to all plants using a common plant field. To support this new functionality, the Item
Criticality datatype has been added to the Datatype (plant fields) dialog box.

New “Item Criticality” datatype

for plant fields

Assign a questionnaire to this

plant field.

When you select Item Criticality as the plant field datatype, you must select the questionnaire you
want to use for the selected plant.

After you have created the item criticality plant field, the field is displayed in the Plants section of the
Items page when you assign an item to the corresponding plant.

Item criticality plant

field on Items page
•

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Struxure 6.2.3 Release Notes

Assigning new criticality codes to items for a specific plant

When you create an item and assign it to a specific plant, you can now do either of the following:
• Select an item criticality code directly from the list

• Complete the item criticality questionnaire to determine the criticality code for the specific item

To complete the item criticality questionnaire, click (Edit criticality matrix) to open the Criticality
Matrix dialog box.

As you complete the questionnaire, the points for each selected option are added together to determine
the item’s criticality code for the specific plant. When you have answered all questions, click Apply to
close the dialog box and add the calculated criticality code to the plant field.

Criticality code added to plant field

•

If you completed the questionnaire to determine the criticality code, the following icons are available for
the item criticality field:

• (View criticality matrix)—to view in read-only mode how an item’s criticality code was
calculated.
• (Edit criticality matrix)—to adjust the responses for one or more criteria

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 Enhancements and updates

If you complete the questionnaire and then select a different code directly from the list at a later time,
the criticality matrix is cleared and the selected code is used. When you override the criticality matrix
with a manual selection, the View criticality matrix icon ( ) is no longer displayed.

New item criticality report

You can now generate a report to view the number and percentage of items assigned to each criticality
code for each plant. You can access the new Item criticality matrix summary report from the Reports >
Data Quality tab.

You can also access the new Item criticality matrix summary report by clicking Reports on the
Command bar of the Multiple Items page.

The report includes item criticality information only for the plants for which you have been assigned the
appropriate permissions. As with the other reports, you can add the Item criticality matrix summary
report to your favorites list and export the report to Excel for further manipulation.

Sphera branding applied to Struxure

Struxure has been re-branded to follow the new Sphera Solutions branding guidelines. As part of the re-
branding effort, the following changes were made:
• The new Sphera logo has replaced the IHS logo
• The following options have been removed from the application footer:
• Documentation
• Resources
• Privacy Policy
To access the latest Struxure documentation, you can do the following:
• Click the Help link in the header menu to open the Struxure Help
• Download the latest Struxure documentation from the Sphera Struxure section of the SCN.

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Struxure 6.2.3 Release Notes

• A new Reload Default button has been added to the Admin > System Configuration > System
Settings > Welcome and Login Setup page so you can revert back to the newly updated default
text.

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 Resolved issues

Resolved issues
The following table lists the issues that have been fixed in Struxure 6.2.3.

Note: Internal ID numbers refer to numbers assigned internally to identify issues. SCN ID numbers
refer to numbers assigned only to issues reported by customers on the SCN.

Internal ID SCN ID Issue

199965, 31507 In some situations, the temporary items numbers that were
202554 renumbered with item numbers from SAP or Oracle, were corrupted
with non-printable characters, which meant that the item numbers in
Struxure did not match the original numbers from SAP or Oracle.
The temporary item numbers are now renumbered correctly to match
the original item numbers in SAP and Oracle. The fix for this issue is
included in the following Struxure connector releases:
• Struxure - Connector for SAP 3.1.1
• Struxure - Connector for Oracle EBS 3.1.1

142915 - Audit log entries for transactions that changed the temporary item
number to Oracle EBS number incorrectly showed the source as “SAP
MRO Item”.
The source is now correctly shown as “Oracle MRO Item”.

143260 30604 When the name of a workflow stage was changed in the workflow
template after you submitted a workflow request, you could not move
the request to the next stage in the workflow. The following message
was displayed instead:
“Another user has already completed this task.”
You can now successfully move a workflow request through the
various stages even when the stage names are modified while the
request is in progress.

145612 30999 Item numbers with non-printable characters caused reports to be

displayed incorrectly.
The temporary numbers are now renumbered correctly using the
number from SAP and Oracle, which prevents the item number from
having non-printable characters. As a result, the reports are now
displayed correctly.

202766 - When you performed a search for a phrase on the Admin > System
Configuration > Interface Customization page, Struxure returned only
those phrases that were displayed in the interface and had been saved
to the database.
Struxure now displays all phrases defined in the application (including
those phrases that are not displayed in the interface) when searching
for interface phrases.

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Struxure 6.2.3 Release Notes

Internal ID SCN ID Issue

205000 32101 Oracle only

When you upgraded Struxure to 6.2.2, you received the following error
when running the Struxure Utility to set up the Struxure database:
“Error:ORA -29833 Index Type does not exist.”
The issue occurred because the following Oracle components were
not installed with the database:
• Oracle Text
• Oracle XML DB
This information was not included in the Struxure Installation &
Configuration Guide.
The required components for the Oracle database have been added to
the following documents:
• Struxure Installation & Configuration Guide
• Struxure System Requirements

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