Four identical industrial units under assembly in a row in a bright fabrication hall, each at a different stage, with a gantry crane overhead

Product · Engineering

The seventh estate costs a fraction of the first.

One IBM Maximo to MAS sequence run across a fleet on a wave calendar, with what each estate teaches folded in before the next wave. Five conditions hold that together, taken here from the bottom rung up.

What has to be true first

Five conditions that make a fleet upgradeable as a fleet

Cumulative, read from the bottom. The first rung you hesitate over is where a programme starts.

  1. Rung 5

    What one estate learns is written into the sequence

    Upgrade Factory sits here
    Requires
    Findings folded in before the next wave, so estate seven inherits six estates of them.
    Skip it and
    Senior people rediscover the same patterns twelve times, and the programme leaves projects rather than machinery.
  2. Rung 4

    One wave can slip without the calendar collapsing

    Requires
    Slack to re-date one estate without renegotiating eleven other windows.
    Skip it and
    The awkward estate is compressed instead of re-dated, protecting the date rather than the estate.
  3. Rung 3

    Each site has a named person who can stop it

    Requires
    One decision maker per estate, plus one programme owner for wave order.
    Skip it and
    Estates wait on decisions nobody owns, and the report shows technical delay where there is none.
  4. Rung 2

    One sequence covers the routine majority

    Requires
    Enough similarity that one test approach and one runbook shape fit most estates.
    Skip it and
    Estate four gets a fresh plan from people who were not on estate three, so cost per estate stays flat.
  5. Rung 1

    Every estate is surveyed on the same questions

    Requires
    Versions, customisations, integrations, data volumes and cutover constraints, at one depth per estate.
    Skip it and
    Twelve estates meet the same surprises separately, and dates publish before anyone knows which are hard.

What you are buying

One estate, or a fleet on a calendar

Both are run by the same senior people. The unit of work is what differs.

The MAS upgrade service

Your estate and your cutover window, planned around their own constraints. See Maximo to MAS upgrade.

Unit of work
One estate
Priced as
Its own scope and its own rehearsal
Right when
One estate, or a first estate proving the route

Upgrade Factory

One sequence executed many times, a date and window per estate. Usually combined with customisation modernisation and Blueprint.

Unit of work
A fleet, in waves
Priced as
Estate one highest, later estates lower
Right when
Five or more estates against a deadline

Where the effort goes

The lines repetition takes out, and the lines it leaves

Share of the effort on one estate in an illustrative twelve estate fleet

  • Customisation assessment, retirement and rework

    28%

    Decided today by: Your estate. Nine examined on estate one, four retired as unused since 2019.

  • Data volume work and conversion

    22%

    Decided today by: Your data. Quality and volume, not the wave number.

  • Integration proving, plant to finance

    18%

    Decided today by: Every interface, on every estate.

  • Survey, planning and runbook authoring

    17%

    Decided today by: The sequence. Paid on estate one, inherited by two to twelve.

  • Rehearsal, cutover and hypercare

    15%

    Decided today by: Site operations.

Repetition removes the planning line and most of the rediscovery buried in the others. Customisations, data and integrations stay.

The model behind every multi-estate MAS upgrade programme MaxIron runs today, including industrial customers with regulated cutover windows, fleet-scale form of our Maximo to MAS upgrade practice, run by the same senior people.

All five rungs holding

Twelve estates, fourteen months, one calendar

Four sites, two regions, twelve classic Maximo estates, one deadline.

Survey
Month zero

All twelve on one question set, before any date publishes.

Wave one
One estate

Mid complexity, and the most expensive of the twelve.

Wave four
Three estates

One month, smaller team than estate one needed.

Re-dated
Estate six

A plant historian integration, moved rather than compressed.

Last cutover
Month fourteen
Left behind
Survey, runbook, calendar

Reusable at the next MAS version step.

What this needed from the client

  • A named person per estate who can say when that site stops.
  • Windows confirmed by site operations, not by the calendar.
  • Process owners to test and accept each estate.

What no rung changes

Three limits that survive the whole ladder

Standardising the sequence removes rediscovery. It leaves these where they are.

Your estate sets your dates

A heavily customised estate needing a data conversion takes longer in wave one and wave four alike, and is dated that way rather than as a fleet average.

The first estate costs more than the tenth

The saving comes from repetition, so it does not exist on estate one. We say that before contract.

Below five estates the machinery costs more than it returns

A standard Maximo to MAS upgrade is the better shape, and we say which side of that line you are on at survey.

MaxIron Upgrade Factory, frequently asked questions

Who is Upgrade Factory for?
Customers running five or more IBM Maximo estates that are moving to MAS against a deadline, where a wave calendar is the unit of planning.
How do you decide which estate goes first?
A mid-complexity representative estate, neither easiest nor hardest. Awkward estates are surveyed early, scheduled late, and re-dated rather than compressed.
Do we still get senior MaxIron involvement on every wave?
Yes. Repetition removes rediscovery, not expertise, and customisation modernisation usually runs alongside so upgraded estates stay upgrade-friendly.

Bring your estate list.

Every Maximo estate you run, its version, and when its site can afford to stop. We return the rung you are on, a wave order, and a per-estate shape with the first costing more than the seventh.

Bring this to the first call

  • The estate list, with versions and rough customisation depth
  • The deadline driving the programme, and where it comes from
  • Who decides each cutover window, and which windows exist
  • The estate everybody knows will be difficult