Introduction
In this unit, you learn ...
- … that different variants of maintenance plans for recurring services are supported.
- … how to configure a plan category.
- … how to set up a maintenance plan.
- … about maintenance plan call objects.
- … features, limitations and validations in maintenance plan creation and scheduling.
Recurring Services and a Maintenance Plan
Recurring services supports service planners to schedule and organize periodic services, such as regular maintenance, to occur at predefined intervals.
A recurring service helps companies save costs resulting from unforeseen outages or breakdowns, to plan services in a better and more transparent way, and to schedule resources, such as personnel or materials, more efficiently.
Key benefits are:
- Improve planning and increase visibility of vital resources.
- Reduce costs by moving from "break-fix" services to planned services.
- Leverage an upsell potential for service businesses by selling service contracts.
- Avoid customer escalations and increase asset uptime through regular servicing of an asset.
One of the key elements needed when setting up the process of performing recurring services, is a maintenance plan. The answers to questions presented in the slide above define the dimensions along which a certain maintenance plan is defined.
The Configuration of a Maintenance Plan for Recurring Services
Note
Call Objects
With call object 5, service orders and service quotations are supported as call objects. Service order/quotation items are copied from the service template linked to the maintenance item.
There is support for service items, service parts, expense items and execution order items.
The use of a service template is mandatory in this case. Either a technical object (equipment or functional location) or a service contract is mandatory in a maintenance item.
Supported maintenance plan types:
- Time-based single cycle plan
- Performance-based single cycle plan
- Multiple counter plan
For call object 6, a service contract is mandatory. The service contract item is copied into the service order as an execution order item.
The task list can be maintenance item-specific or generic at product level (OISD). The use of a task list is mandatory for strategy-based plan scheduling.
Supported maintenance plan types are:
- Time-based single cycle plan and strategy plan
- Performance-based single cycle plan and strategy plan
- Multiple counter plan
A BAdI is available to add items into the existing service orders rather than creating a new service order for each maintenance item (as is the standard).
Maintenance order types with one (or more) of the below characteristics are not allowed in this type of plan:
- Phase model activated
- Refurbishment order
- Investment order
- Revenue bearing order
- Compatible unit enabled at the given plant
- Operation-level accounting enabled at the given plant
Summary
- Recurring services supports service planners to schedule and organize periodic services, such as regular maintenance, to occur at predefined intervals. You can use a maintenance plan category to control different business processes for maintenance planning. In Service, call object 5 (Service Order) and call object 6 (Service with Advanced Execution) are supported.
Three steps/tasks need to be performed when setting up a maintenance plan:
- Service order and maintenance order mapping
- Copying control settings for transaction types
- Copying control settings for item categories
- With call object 5, service orders and service quotations are supported as call objects. Service order/quotation items are copied from the service template linked to the maintenance item (mandatory!).
Supported maintenance plan types:
- Time-based single cycle plan
- Performance-based single cycle plan
- Multiple counter plan
- For call object 6, a service contract is mandatory. The service contract item is copied into the service order as an execution order item. The use of a task list is mandatory for strategy-based plan scheduling.
Supported maintenance plan types are:
- Time-based single cycle plan and strategy plan
- Performance-based single cycle plan and strategy plan
- Multiple counter plan