Work Clearance Management

Objectives
After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

After completing this lesson, you will be able to:

  • Describe the Maintenance Safety

Maintenance Safety (Work Clearance Management)

The figure, SAP Fiori Launchpad - Role-based Entry Screen, above provides you with an overview of the Fiori Launchpad.

Maintenance safety solution / Work Clearance Management (WCM) has the objective of providing an integrated process between Asset Management and EHS to communicate pertinent safety risks and control the maintenance work being performed.

The solution provides you with the following capabilities:

  • Full electronic support for controlling hazardous work using permits and isolation procedures
  • Support for various levels of work permits and multilevel approvals
  • Manage necessary operational lists, tags, and test tags within the isolation procedures
  • Natively integrated with master data in the SAP Enterprise Asset Management solution and the maintenance work order process
  • Mobile app for Work Clearance Management supporting Lockout / Tagout Procedures

Customers can benefit from the following:

  • Completing hazardous work safely, while reducing the cost of maintenance and increasing equipment uptime
  • Prevent safety violations and incidents

Subsequently, the SAP standard maintenance safety process is described. Depending on company-specific requirements, this process can vary and the process in the solution can be adjusted to meet the user's needs.

An example of the process is as follows:

  • The maintenance planner creates a work order for the repair. A work order is called a maintenance order in SAP.
  • Since the work involves high risks and hazards, the technician who is designated to carry out the work requests a level 1 work permit for the work order, which is valid for a certain period. The work permit describes the work to be carried out and the requirements to be fulfilled. The responsible person prepares the work permit and applies for an approval for the work permit.
  • Due to the high risks and hazards associated with the work order, an Isolation Plan can be added to the work permit. This is an optional step.
  • The responsible person approves the work permit in the next step.
  • In this example, the work area needs to be isolated. This means that certain safety precautions or controls need to be applied. The necessity of this step depends on specific requirements and, therefore, might be an optional step.
  • Afterwards, the approved work permit will be issued. This usually means that a print-out of the work permit will be handed over to the maintenance person, who has been assigned to execute the actual maintenance job.
  • When the work permit is issued, the prerequisites are fulfilled so that the maintenance job can be executed. Therefore, the maintenance planner releases the work order.
  • Now, the technician carries out the work.
  • When the technician has completed the work, they return the work permit. All returned work permits are closed in the system.
  • Afterwards, the work area will be de-isolated.
  • The final step is the closure of the original work order. This is the end of the process.

Create Work Order

Create a work order, which is used for planning work as well as ensuring that safety measures are performed before beginning the work.

Request Work Permit

By using work permits, you can ensure that safety measures for carrying out certain works are complied with, and safety barriers are not taken out of service unless compensating measures are put in place. The work permit is an operational safety barrier to protect against undesired incidents.

A work permit is a written document that authorizes specified persons to carry out specified work at a specified time. It describes both the work to be carried out and the requirements that must be fulfilled. At the same time, it ensures that necessary and adequate safety measures are carried out before work can start.

It is the duty of everyone involved in the planning, approval, and execution of work to evaluate the need for a work permit for a particular piece of work.

Work permits are categorized in different levels, depending on risk considerations and the need for coordination.

Create a work permit to ensure that safety barriers are not taken out of service unless the work is finished.

Prepare Work Permit

Within a work permit, you can also assign Safety Certificates - if they are required for the maintenance job.

The Safety Certificate is a WCM object that is used for the lockout / tagout of technical objects and for other safety certificates like Excavation Certificate, Radiography Certificate, and so on.

Maintain the list of technical objects to be isolated during the performance of maintenance work. Choosing Set Prepared finalizes the required list of isolations.

Approval Work Permit - Issue of Tagging Approvals

Request approval for the work permit comes from those responsible for worker safety.

The business process step, Approval (of work permits), allows for the flexible design of approvals, automatism, and hierarchies.

Execute Isolation - Tagging Process

Isolate the electrical equipment and tag it so the equipment is ready for the maintenance execution.

Issue Work Permit

Tag Ready and Safety Environment have to be approved.

The work permit can be issued.

The maintenance worker receives the work order in his job card.

Release Work Order

The maintenance planner, having ensured the successful issue of the work approvals, now releases the maintenance order for carrying out the maintenance work.

Execute the Job

The responsible person of the maintenance team receives the job card, which contains the details of the job to be executed.

The job card is a printable PDF document that contains the data of all the shop papers associated with a job's reference document, for example, operation control ticket, time ticket, and pick list. If the reference document is an order and the order has a safety plan, the job card also includes safety information.

The maintenance worker confirms the job after the completion of the maintenance tasks specified in the job card.

Remove Safety Precautions/Controls - Work Permit Completed

The planner sets the system status as work completed after verifying the confirmation of the maintenance tasks.

The work permit has to be closed.

De-Isolation - Untagging

Items have to be untagged, the work permit is closed, and equipment is normalized from isolation.

Close Work Order - Work Order completed

The system status has to be changed to completed in the work order.

How to Initiate the Creation of a Work Permit Using SAP Work Clearance Management

The maintenance planner creates a work order used for planning work as well as ensuring that safety measures are performed before starting the work.

A requestor places a request for a work permit. The operations start the preparation of the work permit and creates it from the previously created work order.

The system pre-populates some of the details of the work order into the work permit. The reference to the work order is automatically added in the work permit. The video outlines the possibility of creating a lean risk assessment process and also where the requirements for performing the work can be defined. The work permit can contain a definition of the tools and equipment which are used while performing the work. The attached documents of the work permit are stored in the SAP Document Management System (DMS).

When the permit has all the necessary data, the status can be changed to "set prepared" and the approval process can start. Each permit can be set with a several approval stages. In this video, you will see one certain example. When all approvals are in place, the status changes respectively. The work permit is available and approved so that the work order can be released, and the work can be performed.

Steps

  1. The purpose of the video is to show how a work order is being created in the system and which steps have to be performed to create a work permit. Play the video below.

Result

A work permit has been created from a work order in the system.

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