Smarter Maintenance Starts Here: AI Innovations in MAS 9.1 Manage

By Lea Abitrante | September 18, 2025

In asset-intensive industries, time is money and better decisions made faster can lead to significant improvements in uptime, safety, and cost control. With IBM Maximo Application Suite (MAS) 9.1, the evolution of AI-powered features within Maximo Manage brings that promise closer to reality. From intelligent work order creation to streamlined risk analysis and conversational assistance, MAS 9.1 is designed to help teams work smarter, not harder. Let’s explore the newest AI capabilities included in this release and how they’re transforming maintenance operations. 

 Work Order Intelligence: Augmenting Data Entry and Decision-Making 

Work Order Intelligence in MAS 9.1 takes a major leap forward by expanding AI support to additional Maximo form fields and introducing new analytical methods aimed at improving productivity and reducing errors. Key enhancements include: 

  • AI-suggested field values based on historical data and best practices 
  • Faster creation of work orders with reduced manual input 
  • Improved classification, prioritization, and routing through pattern recognition and anomaly detection 
  • Support for additional form types and object structures, expanding its use across more workflows 

By embedding AI into everyday tasks, Work Order Intelligence enables technicians, planners, and supervisors to make better decisions, reduce administrative overhead, and ensure higher-quality data for downstream processes. 

 Maximo AI Assistant: A Conversational Interface for Getting Things Done 

Imagine asking your EAM system a question and having it understand and act on your intent. That’s exactly what the Maximo AI Assistant delivers. How It Works: 

Users can submit natural language questions or requests like: 

  • “Create a work order for pump 12345.” 
  • “What is the status of work orders for the shipping dock?” 
  • “Assign this inspection to crew B for Monday.” 

The AI Assistant routes the request to the appropriate skill and executes the task or provides the correct information, significantly reducing the learning curve and improving user adoption. Benefits include: 

  • Faster task execution 
  • Reduced need for training on complex navigation 
  • More intuitive user experience for both new and seasoned users 

The AI Assistant is not just a chatbot, it’s a smart digital coworker embedded in Maximo Manage. 

 FMEA Builder: From Weeks to Minutes 

Performing a Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) is a best practice in reliability engineering, but building them manually is time-consuming and often overlooked due to resource constraints. Enter the FMEA Builder in MAS 9.1, which uses AI to: 

  • Automatically generate failure hierarchies based on asset type, history, and known risks 
  • Recommend failure modes, effects, and recommended actions 
  • Link failure analysis directly to Maximo assets and job plans 

This reduces FMEA creation time from hundreds of hours to just minutes, enabling: 

  • More comprehensive risk management 
  • Faster alignment with reliability-centered maintenance (RCM) strategies 
  • Better linkage between failure prevention and planned maintenance 

It’s a leap forward in risk-informed maintenance planning. 

 AI Service: The Backbone of AI Across MAS 

Behind the scenes, MAS 9.1 introduces a robust AI Service Layer that delivers the foundational components necessary for enabling and managing AI use cases across the suite. Key functions of the AI Service include: 

 Common AI Components 

  • Provides shared infrastructure and APIs for AI-driven features 
  • Supports consistent integration across applications like Manage, Health, and Predict 

 Centralized Usage Tracking 

  • Monitors AI feature usage to help organizations understand adoption and ROI 
  • Supports governance and reporting for data-driven decision making 

 AppPoint Consumption 

  • Automatically converts AI usage into AppPoint consumption, aligning with MAS’s flexible licensing model 
  • Provides transparent accountability for usage-based licensing 

This unified approach to AI management ensures consistency, scalability, and control—critical for enterprise deployments. 

 Why It Matters 

The AI enhancements in MAS 9.1 are not experimental, they are mature, integrated tools designed to: 

  • Reduce manual data entry 
  • Improve accuracy and consistency 
  • Accelerate time to value for critical maintenance workflows 
  • Democratize access to insights across the organization 

From frontline technicians to maintenance planners and asset managers, AI is becoming an everyday enabler, not just a future vision. 

 Final Thoughts 

As digital transformation accelerates, organizations need practical, high-impact tools that help teams do more with less. With MAS 9.1 Manage, IBM delivers just that through a suite of AI-powered capabilities that streamline work order management, risk analysis, task execution, and system interaction. This isn’t just about automation, it’s about augmenting your workforce with intelligence so they can focus on what matters most. 

Ready to make your maintenance operations smarter? Let’s talk about MAS 9.1 and how to put AI to work for your team. 

Posted in AI, Manage 9 Features, MAS