Introducing Maintenance Resource Scheduling (43R)

As a maintenance planner, it is important to monitor and manage work center utilization effectively. Resource scheduling provides you with insights into the maintenance workload and available capacity for current and upcoming maintenance activities. You can use the resource scheduling apps to check current and forecasted work center utilization, build schedules, and determine required capacities before dispatching the scheduled work. Resource scheduling provides you with insights into your maintenance workload and available capacities for current and upcoming maintenance activities. Use the apps for resource scheduling to check current and forecast work center utilization, build schedules, and determine required capacities before dispatching the scheduled work.

With the resource scheduling apps you can:

• Optimize planning and scheduling with integrated views of priorities, assets, and capacities:

• Plan and schedule maintenance activities with real-time views of work center load, capacity, work situation, and existing documentation.​

• Schedule proactive, preventive, or condition-based maintenance tasks with synchronization of labor, material, equipment, and schedules to reduce maintenance costs.​

• Provide role-based access to maintenance planners and enable them to monitor important and time-sensitive work for better efficiency​.

• Analyze maintenance efficiency with easy access to cost, breakdown, location analysis, and other embedded analytics.​

• Execute resource scheduling with real-time visibility into maintenance resources and assets.​

The Key business benefits are:

• Gain insights into current and forecast workloads

• Identify due and overdue maintenance orders quickly and build an optimal schedule before dispatching maintenance order operations for execution

• Optimize the use of maintenance resources

• Control weekly maintenance workloads by adjusting the scope of your schedule and distribute the work evenly across your work centers.

• Reduce asset downtime and increase productivity

• Group and schedule maintenance orders by asset, consider work that requires planned downtime, and identify relationships between order operations

The key process flows of Introduction to Maintenance Resource Scheduling (43R) are:

• Analyze maintenance workload and capacities

• Simulate and schedule maintenance work order operations

• Track if maintenance is executed as scheduled

The following table lists the SAP Fiori apps that are used business roles in the Maintenance Resource Scheduling (43R) process steps.

Resource scheduling consists of several apps that allow you, as a maintenance planner, to monitor and manage the utilization of your work centers, schedule maintenance order operations, and assign order operations to a person responsible.

• Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners (F2227)

• Manage Work Center Utilization (F2222)

• Maintenance Scheduling Board (F2603)

• Manage Schedules (F3326)

• Manage Schedules – For Review

• Assign Maintenance Order Operations (F3423)

• View Maintenance Schedule for Assets (F4577)

The Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners app allows you to monitor important KPIs for your work centers.

Key Features:

• Monitor key figures for your work centers, including:

  • Utilization of your work centers in the current week and the next one

    Utilization is calculated based on the maintenance order operations and scheduled maintenance plans that are assigned to your work centers.

  • Priority of due maintenance orders in the next four weeks.

  • Unconfirmed maintenance orders that have at least one order operation with a planned end date in the past six months.

  • Work in your work centers that has not yet been assigned to a person responsible.

  • Upcoming, current, and recent schedules.

• Use filters to show the information that you are interested in.

• Specify for which work centers you want to see data in the apps.

Note

An order's work center (=main work center) can be different from the work center of its operations. The app takes into account all maintenance orders that have at least one relevant operation in one of your work centers, irrespective of whether or not the order's work center is assigned to you.

The Manage Work Center Utilization app allows you to analyze and manage the utilization of your work centers.

Key Features:

• View a list of maintenance order operations and suboperations in your work centers, including key data, such as maintenance order, priority, planned start and end date, and required work.

• View a list of maintenance orders that have at least one operation in your work centers.

• Use filters to narrow down the list of operations.

• Specify for which work centers you want to see data in the apps.

  Note

  An order's work center (=main work center) can be different from the work center of its operations. The app takes into account all maintenance orders that have at least one relevant operation in one of your work centers, irrespective of whether or not the order's work center is assigned to you.

• Visualize utilization based on various attributes, such as work center, processing status, priority, or order type.

• Dispatch one or multiple order operations or suboperations at once, or cancel the dispatch.

• Move order operations to another date or work center to level work center utilization.

• Select order operations for scheduling Navigate to orders and technical objects (functional location, equipment).

• Change the available work center capacity per day for a selected target week.

• Navigate to the maintenance schedule for an asset (functional location).

The Maintenance Scheduling Board app allows you to visualize on a timeline the maintenance orders, order operations, and suboperations in your work centers.

Key Features:

• View the maintenance orders, order operations, and suboperations in your work centers in their hierarchical structure.

  Note

  A maintenance order and its operations can have different work centers. The app only shows order operations that are in one of your work centers.

• View the maintenance orders, order operations, and suboperations on a timeline.

• Check whether relationships exist between operations and if these relationships are currently violated.

• Filter the orders and order operations as needed.

• Show more detailed information for maintenance orders and maintenance order operations.

• Dispatch order operations and suboperations.

• Cancel the dispatch of order operations and suboperations.

• Move order operations to another date or work center to level work center utilization.

• Specify for which work centers you want to see data.

• Navigate to maintenance orders and to the pieces of equipment and functional locations associated with an order.

• Navigate to the maintenance schedule for an asset (functional location).

Optimize and streamline the display of information shown in the chart of the Maintenance Scheduling Board app and enable maintenance planners to make better decisions and take more-appropriate actions through the ability to view additional data.

The following capabilities help to improve the planning accuracy:

• New quick-toggle buttons available to hide or un-hide details on the planning board
• Change the coloring of the utilization indicator via settings dialogue
• Add labels to the order header bar or operation bar via settings dialogue
• Add an offset to the relationship via right-click menu for relationships
• A change of a complete order via drag and drop is now possible

The Manage Schedules app allows you to set up and monitor schedules for the maintenance order operations that you want to dispatch for a specific target week.

Key Features:

• Set up schedules for specific target weeks.

• Check the forecasted work center utilization at week level and at day level.

• Keep adjusting the scope of a schedule until you are ready to freeze it.

• Use automatic or manual scheduling for the order operations in a schedule.

• Level work center utilization by moving order operations to another work center or by rescheduling operations.

• Use a graphical view to identify scheduling conflicts and relationships between order operations.

• Dispatch all scheduled operations in one go.

• Track schedule execution.

• Review schedule attainment.

• In the activity log, keep track of scheduling-relevant changes.

• In the activity log, post comments on a schedule and reply to existing comments.

The Manage Schedules - For Review app is a variant of the Manage Schedules app. It allows you to access the schedules to which you have been added as a reviewer.

Key Features:

• Provide feedback for schedules to which you have been added as a reviewer.

• Use a graphical view to identify scheduling conflicts and relationships between order operations.

• Once the target week has started, track schedule execution.

• Once the target week has started, review schedule attainment.

• In the activity log, keep track of scheduling-relevant changes.

• In the activity log, post comments on a schedule and reply to existing comments.

With this app, you can assign maintenance order operations to a person responsible. You can also change or delete assignments.

Key Features:

• Assign maintenance order operations to a person responsible.

• Change the person responsible for a maintenance order operation.

• Unassign the person responsible from a maintenance order operation.

This app allows you to view assets in their hierarchical structure. A Gantt chart shows you when an asset is under maintenance and whether asset downtime is required.

Note

An asset is a technical object in the SAP system. An asset can be a functional location or a piece of equipment.

Key Features:

• View assets in their hierarchical structure. The app shows all subassets that are currently installed at the superior asset.

• View maintenance orders and maintenance items that are associated with an asset in the next 4 weeks.

  Note

  The app shows maintenance items if their call objects are maintenance orders or service orders. If a maintenance plan is deactivated or marked for deletion, the app does not show any call objects.

• In the Gantt chart, at asset level, graphically view information rolled up from associated maintenance orders to quickly identify when the asset is under maintenance.

• In the Gantt chart, at maintenance order level, graphically view information about the processing status of an order (Due, Dispatched, In Process).

• In the Gantt chart, at maintenance item level, graphically view information about the generated maintenance orders and upcoming maintenance calls.

• In the Gantt chart, see if asset downtime is required . This information is retrieved from the system condition set for an order.

You can access this app via the Maintenance Scheduling Board app and the Manage Work Center Utilization app.

Note

Since Asset Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2202 the view Maintenance Schedule for Assets app is renamed to Manage Maintenance Schedule for Assets to better reflect its enhanced functional scope and features.

The enhanced features can be summarized as follows:

• Graphically change order dates using drag-and-drop functionality
• Align planning to available maintenance windows for an asset
• Quickly open the respective maintenance events directly from the app (without the need to leave the application)
• Enhance and optimize scheduling in an asset-centric scenario
• A planning bucket can now be opened directly from the maintenance schedule for assets

The following additional features are available for Resource Scheduling:

• New criticality information (ABC Indicator & ABC Indicator Description) was added as filter criterion and/or additional column available in the respective apps.

• Configuration for utilization thresholds is now available for the Maintenance Scheduling Board.

• Change available work center capacity can be triggered from the Maintenance Scheduling Board.

• Maintenance Events can now be shown in the chart of the Maintenance Schedule for Assets app. The maintenance events shown in the chart are based on nonrecurrent event-based planning buckets created in the Manage Maintenance Planning Buckets app

• When managing schedules changes in the material availability are now recorded in the activity log.