Using Maintenance Plans

Maintenance plans help the service organization execute on preventative maintenance scenarios that may be stipulated in the Service Contract between a company and their customer. They do this by automatically creating work tickets based on the maintenance schedule.

A Maintenance Plan consists of a Condition and a Schedule Type. Both of these fields are required to define a maintenance plan. The Condition defines when a ticket should be scheduled, for example: on a time interval (time based); when a counter reaches a certain value (counter based); or when a machine has run for a certain amount of time or is reading a certain value (time and counter based). The Schedule Type can be cyclical, fixed, one time, one time-no condition, or absolute (a specific measure or reading).

The type of maintenance plan that you can have depends on the particular combination of schedule type and condition that you decide. Here are examples of the types of maintenance plan based on the combination of schedule type and condition:

1. A condition of Counter Based with a schedule type of Cyclical could be used if you wish to perform vehicle maintenance every 8,000 km for a.
2. A condition of Time Based and a schedule type of Fixed could be used if you wish to perform service at fixed but irregular intervals, such as first service at 12 months, second service at 24 months, and third service at 60 months.
3. A condition of Time and Counter Based and a schedule type of Cyclical could be used to perform service every 12 months or every 8,000 km, whichever comes first.
4. The Absolute schedule type is based, not on usage or time, but on a reading - Counter Base. For example, if a motor sensor on a machine reads a temperature of over 50 degrees Celsius for three days meaning it's running too hot and should be serviced.
5. Finally, a schedule type of One Time - No Condition is a special type of maintenance plan that can be used for one-time special services such as a product recall.

To use a maintenance plan in SAP Service Cloud, you must first create it, then schedule it.

Creating a maintenance plan for a customer in your SAP Service Cloud system involves:

1.Activating maintenance plans in scoping

2.Setting a schedule and condition for the plan

3.Including a template for generating the service tickets the technicians will need to carry out the maintenance according to the plan

4.Assigning the specific customer items for maintenance

5.Activating the plan

Once you've created your Maintenance Plan, you'll set up a schedule on which the work tickets are generated. This is done using a Mass Data Run Object, also called a MDRO. This feature allows the scheduling and automation of complex business processes in SAP Cloud for Customer. You create the MDRO, then associate it with the maintenance plan.

A recall campaign is the process of fixing, or retrieving, a defective and/or potentially unsafe product.

The steps to create a maintenance plan to use for a recall campaign are illustrated here and are covered in the following demonstration and exercise.

Note

To allow a service agent to create a recall campaign, they must have access to the Maintenance Plans work center, which is not activated by default. This can be done by an administrator.