The new suite incorporates the advantages in Artificial Intelligence and a revamped user experience for greater resource optimization and better results.
The technologies that underpin Asset Management continue to advance. Among its greatest allies is Maximo®, the powerful IBM software that for 40 years has supported the administration and management of industrial infrastructure, physical assets, facilities, and manufacturing plants. Now, Maximo Application Suite (MAS) 9.1 arrives with powerful new advantages, such as the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence, which will allow for continued leveraging of Asset Management and Industrial Maintenance and better user experience.
The new MAS 9.1 version incorporates a GenAI assistant, Maximo Assistant, which will facilitate work in the dynamics of Asset Management and Industrial Maintenance, where orders, reports, and asset information requests are a constant. With this new assistant, users will be able to easily access asset performance information (crucial for decision-making and strategy development), even using natural language.
Can you imagine telling your Maximo Assistant, “show me expired work orders,” in a direct, simple, and almost colloquial way? Well, now it’s possible. And that has tremendous value in the industrial context and asset management in general.
Some of the challenges faced by asset workers and managers include accessing equipment and facility information: information fragmented across multiple systems, difficulty collecting or processing real-time asset performance data due to manual or obsolete systems, and permissions to access sensitive information, among others.
Based on Watsonx.ai, Maximo Assistant will not only allow information to be obtained in much less time, but the interaction model designed for users facilitates the understanding of information and accelerates decision-making for better operability.
MAS 9.1 also includes improvements such as Qualifications in Job Plans and Work Order Tracking, making it possible to select the workforce that meets the required qualifications. This impacts industries such as transportation, for example, which requires workers or drivers with certain certifications or licenses. The level of monitoring and traceability of these new features significantly improves not only operational decision-making but also human capital management and the appropriate selection of jobs.
AIP: the CAPEX ally
One of the great advantages of Asset Management approaches is the ability to look at the big picture. Overview, forward planning, and continuous improvement are distinctive features of this approach. The new MAS 9.1 version helps planners go further with the addition of Maximo Asset Investment Planning (AIP) functionality, a sharp strategic tool ideal for investment decision-making, thanks to solid data support from analysis and detailed information on the asset lifecycle. AIP also includes the study and comparison of investment scenarios, studies of costs, risks, and returns, among other variables.
Capital expenditure (CAPEX) investment is an integral part of Asset Management, where the strategic acquisition of physical assets or facilities is aimed at increasing the value of the company and improving its competitive capacity and productivity. These are high-cost projects, where investment planning and asset lifecycle projections are crucial. With AIP, investment risks are minimized thanks to its strategic approach to investment planning and the multiple layers of data, scenarios, and projections it can offer.
This new suite is more accessible for several reasons, including:
- More user-friendly navigation menu
- Simplified access to content
- Application-specific language support (supports 22 languages)
- Data import and export for database updates
- Map creation, asset scanning (present in previous versions), and GPS location
IBM Maximo Real Estate and Facilities: another significant advantage
As mentioned above, the new MAS 9.1 suite facilitates the daily work of maintenance managers and blue-collar workers in the context of large industrial plants or online manufacturing companies by offering easy and direct access to information on asset status, performance, or history for efficient operational decision-making. But it also allows you to manage the space where assets perform their operational functions, i.e., the management of both industrial facilities and administrative buildings within an organization.
In Asset Management, everything counts. Equipment is important, and obviously so are facilities. The integration of Maximo Real Estate and Facilities into MAS offers many more advantages to the overall vision of Asset Management by facilitating the management of real estate assets and workspaces, including tasks such as monitoring, evaluating, and collecting data on facility maintenance, managing services (water, ambient temperature, electricity, waste disposal) inherent to industrial activity or to offices and administrative spaces.
A screen capture of M.A.S 9.1
In addition to physical factors, this tool also covers legal aspects such as leases and contracts, environmental regulations, or industrial safety in workspaces, making it ideal for real estate capital investments or the optimization of industrial spaces, offices, and complex facilities such as hospitals and large urban spaces (public parks, universities, or sports centers).
Aspects such as relocations, meeting room reservations, real estate portfolio management (and its consequent financial impact analysis), accounting (related to leasing), or reviewing plans to calculate staff relocation can also be resolved with this integration of facility management into MAS 9.1.
Evolution + Interoperability + AI
Maximo began as a suite 40 years ago. The Maximo Application Suite (MAS) runs on a common platform based on RedHat OpenShift, which in turn is compatible with multiple cloud providers. MAS is specially designed to manage the asset lifecycle, and version 9.1 is the fourth modification of its architecture, created to improve interoperability and integrate AI. The first MAS dates to 2020, MAS 8.0. Experts expect this latest modification to its architecture to be comprehensive enough to be used for several more years.
On a technical level, MAS 9.1 is fully compatible with Java 17, an update aimed at achieving better performance and security. However, extra actions may be required on the part of users to test reports, automation scripts, and web services. This is to ensure optimal performance.
It is worth noting that the mobile version also features improvements and new advantages, such as data and time zone synchronization, rich text formatting (including links), creating new work orders (even when others are in progress) with support reports, scanning assets, sharing the technician’s GPS location, duplicating service orders and viewing orders issued by other users, entering meter readings in newly created work orders while offline, selecting team members to perform certain tasks, among other advantages.
For Asset Management and Facility Management, the enhanced features and updates in MAS 9.1 enable new levels of proactivity, efficiency, and security. The granularity of information, accessibility and interconnectivity capabilities, visibility of processes, work orders, workflow, and real-time asset information and performance enable a much greater scope, where proactivity is not only appreciated in strategy and culture: AI becomes a tool for thinking, analyzing, and autonomously managing the best decisions for industrial maintenance, industrial asset management, and facility management.
Is this the final frontier? Probably not, but it is certainly a new step forward that translates into greater levels of operational excellence, financial strength, technological advancement, and more sustainable businesses.
To showcase the impact and scope of the Maximo suite, Reliabilityweb.com holds the annual MaximoWorld Conference, in which we at the Association of Asset Management Professionals (AMP) have participated with a booth. As an organization focused on certification and expansion of Asset Management, we understand the value of having advanced technological tools to optimize the asset lifecycle and obtain maximum performance in a safe and sustainable manner. This year, AMP participated in the 2025 edition of MaximoWorld, which focused on the latest strategies for obtaining maximum value from assets. We were there, sponsoring and supporting this magnificent event to promote the development of our industry and contribute to a dynamic that strengthens business, provides economic stability, and cares for the environment and people.
