Handling non-WO Material requests in MAS Manage Mobile

When we think about materials in IBM MAS Manage, we usually think of parts issued to a work order: bearings, seals, filters, shafts, and so on. That’s important, but it’s only part of the story.

In real life, technicians also need safety gear, shared tools, and common consumables that don’t belong to one work order. If the system forces everything through a work order, Work order costs look artificially high and Shared items is associated with a specific WOs, making cost analysis difficult.

Typical daily situations include:

• A technician goes to a hazardous area and needs extra PPE: flame-resistant coveralls, face shields, anti-static gloves.
• A crew notices that shared tools (insulated screwdrivers, torque wrenches) are worn out and need replacement.
• A technician uses the last of a common consumable – spill kits, cable ties, rags – and knows the storeroom will be empty for the next shift.

Good asset management practice is to charge these to a department or cost centre, not to one work order.

How Material Request in mobile helps?

On the desktop, MAS Manage already has Desktop Requisitions application. The same concept can be extended to technicians through mobile.

With good design, your MAS Manage mobile setup can allow technicians to raise general material requests (no work order link). For example: “Order 10 pairs of Class-00 insulating gloves for Substation team – charge to Electrical Maintenance GL.”

In mature mobile deployments (including solutions like EAM360 built on MAS Manage), this is often implemented as a dedicated Material Request flow that mirrors Desktop Requisition logic, but in a simplified, technician-friendly way.

Designing a technician-friendly Material Request flow

When you implement mobile for the Material request flow, focus on how technicians actually work.

1. Keep the request simple

The mobile screen should let a technician:

• Enter a short description: “PPE Gloves”.
• Select items quickly:
  • Search by item description.
  • Scan barcodes where available.
• Rely on defaults for:
  • GL account/cost centre (based on department or user group).

The back-end still treats it like a requisition, so your approvals and purchasing flow stay under control.

2.Make the UI truly mobile Avoid “shrinking” the desktop UI onto a phone:

• Show only essential fields on the first screen.
• Use clear steps instead of crowded grids.

3.Capture context with photos and notes

Technicians can submit better requests when they can attach:

• Photos of damaged tools or worn PPE.
• Pictures of labels or nameplates.
• Notes like “Same model as last order.”

Key implementation lessons

From actual implementations, a few points matter the most:

• Clean item master and GL defaults: Technicians must be able to find items easily, and GL/cost centre defaults should work out-of-the-box for common scenarios (safety, workshop consumables, replenishment stock).
• Use mobile without bypassing approvals: Mobile should trigger the same approval workflows as desktop requisitions (limits, routing by value, category approvals). The difference is where the request is captured, not how it is governed.
• Define when to use WOs vs Material Requests:

  • Use work order issues for parts that belong to that specific job.

  • Use Material Requests for safety gear, shared tools, and replenishment.