Functional Location
The introduction and explanation of the technical objects in Defense Maintenance are illustrated below by an example of a frigate. Of course, any other weapon system or building could be illustrated here.
Scenario
You are involved in implementing the SAP Defense and Security (D&S) industry solution. You need to learn about the different types of technical objects used in D&S-specific plant maintenance.
The business object functional location is a technical unit, that structures the maintenance objects of a company/army according to functional, process-related or spatial criteria.
Tip: Do not structure your Functional Locations by organizational criteria. This is recommended because, in the Defense industry, organizational structures are likely to frequently change.
A functional location represents the place at which a maintenance task is to be performed. The hierarchy levels of a functional location structure are determined by the so-called structure indicator. A functional location represents the system area at which an object can be installed. Objects that can be installed at functional locations are called equipment in the SAP System. The aim of creating a functional location is to structure a technical system or building into units that are relevant for Plant Maintenance.
Practice
A&D and Defense customers take the tail number of a complex weapon system, such as a helicopter or a frigate, as the primary functional location.
Equipment
The introduction and explanation of the technical objects in Defense Maintenance are illustrated below by an example of a frigate. Of course, any other weapon system or building could be illustrated here.
The business object equipment is an individual, physical object that is to be maintained independently. It can be installed in a technical system or a part of a technical system.
You can manage all types of devices as equipment (for example, production utilities, transportation utilities, test equipment, production resources/tools, buildings, PCs).
You must create an equipment master record for a technical object in the following cases:
You need to manage individual data for the object. Breakdown, or prepared or preventive maintenance tasks are required for an object and must be recorded. Technical data for this object must be collected and evaluated over long periods of time. The costs of maintenance tasks for this object are to be monitored. You need to record the usage time of this object at functional locations.
Examples for equipments:
- Means of Production
- Means of Transportation
- Test equipment
- Production resources/tools
- Customer devices
- Buildings/Properties
- Vehicles
Material
The introduction and explanation of the technical objects in Defense Maintenance are illustrated below by an example of a frigate. Of course, any other weapon system or building could be illustrated here.
A material is a tangible product that can be bought, produced and sold. When items are serialized, the assignment of material-serial number combination to an equipment is unique.
This uniqueness is important because the material/serial combination is the link to other SAP modules such as material management (SAP MM). In the SAP system, a material is usually defined as a number in a customer-specific number range, however it is customary for Defense customers to manage materials through external numeric codes sourced from either NATO (NSN) or Manufacturer's Product Numbers (MPN).
The material number uniquely identifies a material in the SAP system.
Example
In the example structure of the frigate, the material 4711 describes gas turbines with the same form, fit and function while the Equipment number 10000001 refers to a specific serialized item.
Technical Objects in SAP System
The screen-shot shows how these Maintenance Master data are related to each other and how they are mapped in the SAP system. Lets focus on Maintenance Master Data, because it´s very important to understand how these operate within the system.
The Functional Location is used for the structural setup of an asset. As seen in the example here of the propulsion plant. Other than the functional location, the Equipment is an individual, physical object. In this case the first gas turbine of the ship. The Material describes this Equipment with important Material Management Data, including valuation, planning and other relevant information.
Note
In this case, you can see that the ship has two gas turbines. Both turbines have the same material number. You can therefore see directly that the exact same turbines are installed. Of course, different turbines could also be installed here. But then the material numbers would also be different.
