Configuring Orders and Work Packs

Maintenance Orders

The Maintenance order is used to plan, execute, and control maintenance on technical assets (such as functional locations and equipments). The maintenance order is created either as a result of a malfunction on a technical asset or to carry out preventive maintenance (planned maintenance).

Use

Orders form an important part of the detailed planning of tasks and their accompanying documentation in Maintenance Management. The technician on site must execute tasks at a technical object. For this, materials, utilities and staff must be planned and costs estimated. The order supports you with these tasks, since it primarily contains data for planning and executing tasks that must be performed at the technical object in question.

Maintenance Order Type

Maintenance orders are classified by their order type. The order type represents a specific business process because it determines the realization and subsequent processing options of individual orders. This is also why you cannot change the order type of the maintenance order retrospectively.

A key differentiators between the available maintenance processes is the phase model, which structures the end-to-end maintenance process into individual phases and sub-phases. Only some order types support processing according to phases. In the other business processes, the system status of the maintenance order describes its current process step.

Following Maintenance Order Types are available

• Reactive Maintenance
• Proactive Maintenance
• Improvement Maintenance
• Operational/Overhead Maintenance

Work Pack

During the execution of scheduled maintenance work, the maintenance supervisor needs to plan and print job relevant output forms for one or more maintenance orders that need to be executed. These forms need to be handed over to the maintenance technicians for execution of the job. A work pack is created by the Maintenance Planner or Maintenance Supervisor to club these orders into one package based on grouping criterion.

For work pack to be successfully created for maintenance order operations with an active phase model, the system status must be DSPT (Dispatched), for maintenance order operations without the phase model, the system status must be REL (Released)

Using this configuration activity, you can define maintenance activity types to classify maintenance order. In this step, you determine the allowed maintenance activity types. Check the maintenance activities of the standard system and define new ones, if necessary.

In collaboration with your maintenance controlling, define the level of detail of your maintenance tasks from the point of view of task processing and from the point of view of cost follow-up for the maintenance history. The maintenance activity types are stored in the header of each maintenance order. The maintenance activity types are used in the PM Information System as a grouping element for maintenance orders. For example, cost evaluations in the PM Information System can be performed using maintenance activity types. The maintenance activity types must not be confused with activities in the CO system.

Using this configuration activity, you can assign a default maintenance activity type to an order type. The activity is then proposed during order processing.

Using this configuration activity, you assign a maintenance activity type to a maintenance order type. You can allocate the corresponding maintenance activities to the PM and CS order types.

For example, if you have created an order type for modification tasks, in this step you can now define that only the maintenance activity type MODIFICATION are allowed for modification tasks. All other activity types must not be allowed for this special order type.

In this step, you define value categories. Value categories are intervals for cost elements and are required to update the Plant Maintenance Information System and the Customer Service Information System.

For performance reasons, it is advisable to group together cost elements into value categories. This reduces the volume of data. If you still want to create value categories according to the cost elements, then you can generate the value categories automatically.

Quantities are only updated in the order if you have assigned a unit of measure to the value category.

Activities

1. Define a key and description for the value category.
2. If you want to evaluate quantities in the order, assign a unit of measure to the value category.

In this section, you define a cost element group as a value category.

If you subsequently change value categories, you have to restructure the files PMCO and PMCOQT. For restructuring, you use the program RIPMCO00. It is also possible to change the value categories if records have already been placed in the files.

In addition, you must restructure the info structures in the Plant Maintenance Information System if you are updating cost and quantity key figures based on value categories.

You can restructure the information structures using report RIPMS001.

Activities

1. Choose a value category and call up the detail screen.
2. Define a cost element group as a value category.

Allows you to define default values for the value categories for the entry of costs.

In this step, you can define default values for the value categories for the entry of costs.

This setting applies to the creation of cost estimates in orders.

Recommendation

To ensure the comparability of the cost structures, you should use the same cost structures (value categories) as for orders performed in the SAP System.

In this activity, you can define:

• Whether just one purchase requisition (collective purchase requisition) should be generated for external material and operations for each order.
• Whether reservations or purchase requisitions relevant to materials planning should be generated when an order is created or only when the order is released.

• If you do not flag the CollctveRequstn (collective purchase requisition) field, an internal purchase requisition with an item is generated for each external operation and external material.
• You do not select the field Reservation/Purchase Requisition. As a result, purchase requisitions are only generated when the order is released, and reservations only become relevant to materials planning once the order has been released.

The Order History time frame can be configured in the activity for rework analysis. You can maintain this time frame less than or equal to 30 days. In this configuration step you can additionally maintain the Order types and Maintenance Activity types as a criteria to determine rework orders.

The rework analysis further considers the following criteria:

• Matching technical object between orders

• Matching scope items specified in the planning bucket

• Previous matching orders are technically complete

Using this activity you can define a profile for external service and material procurement. Use default values such as purchasing organization, purchasing group, cost element, and material group.

In this step, you define the profiles for external procurement of services and materials. In the external processing profile, you can store default values to generate purchase requisitions from maintenance or service orders. In each profile, you can store a default value for the following values:

• Cost element account

• Purchasing organization

• Purchasing group

• Material group

During external processing, a distinction is made between the external procurement of materials and the allocation of complete order operations to vendors. Both of these procurement processes generally require different data for purchasing: for example, different purchasing groups or different cost element accounts. Therefore, you must also define different profiles for them. For example:

• External processing or external assignment of complete order operations.

• Procurement of materials (material profile) In a further step, you can assign two profiles to each user.

When setting up the system for the overall business process with regards to the approval of a service entry sheet, a BPC expert can configure the following settings:

• Configure the type of the message which will be raised in the case that the responsible person has not been entered into the maintenance order
• Introduce a workflow for the approval of the service entry sheet which has been initiated from the planned work of the maintenance order, i.e. a lean service has been entered into a maintenance order operation.

A user assigned to the role SAP_BR_BPC_EXPERT is authorized to launch application Manager Your Solution.

In order to determine the appropriated message type, please launch the following configuration item:

• Application Area: Asset Management
• Sub Application: Maintenance Management
• Message Control

By default, a warning message would be raised if an operation including a lean service is going to be dispatched, but the responsible person has not been entered into the maintenance order header.

You might consider changing this message type to E so that an error would be raised in the case that the responsible person in the maintenance order has not been entered yet.

Finally, when the service entry sheet has been submitted for approval, the responsible person should be determined in the maintenance order. To prevent the missing information in the maintenance order, the blue print of your business process could define raising an error message.

The following configurations are required so that the responsible person in the maintenance order will receive the approval request:

• Assign Account Assignment Category e.g. Maintenance Order
• Assign Role e.g. Person Responsible for Maintenance Order

Introducing both configuration options are the main enhancements to enable the maintenance management process flow into the approval process of a submitted service entry sheet.

Using this activity you can activate the flexible workflow for maintenance orders.

The flexible workflow allows you to use either the automatic one-step or even, multi-step approval. You can use the app Manage Workflows for Maintenance Orders to define start conditions such as the planning plant, planner group, activity type, or the order type of the maintenance order. This app also provides several options for determining the approver, such as the approval by the manager, or approval by the responsible cost center. Alternatively, you can enter a specific user as the approver.

If you have defined several workflows, the start conditions are checked in the order you have defined in the app Manage Workflows for Maintenance Orders. As soon as the start conditions for a workflow are met, this workflow is used. This ensures that only one workflow in the list of your defined workflows is started, even if several workflows have matching start conditions.

To configure the flexible workflow, follow these steps:

1. Using this activity you can activate flexible workflow for a combination of maintenance order type and planning plant. If the flexible workflow is not activated for a combination of order type and planning plant, you can release the work order without triggering any workflow.
2. Set up the flexible workflow rules using the app Manage Workflows for Maintenance Orders.

Allows you to define phase control codes for maintenance orders. You always configure phase control codes for a combination of order type and entity. This means that you can define phase control codes differently for the order header and order operation of the same order type.

Use

Phase control code allows you to control the transition of phases. If you activate a phase control code to block a phase for a maintenance order, the system will not allow you to transition to this phase until you have deactivated the phase control code. Phase control codes can be activated for order headers and operations.

Activities

Configure Phase Control Codes

To configure phase control codes, follow these steps:

• Select the entity (order header or order operation) for which you plan to define the phase control code
• Select the order type and define the phase control code. For each phase control code, you can indicate whether the phase control code has to be activated automatically when an order is created. You can also set the authentication key. Only the users with the authentication key can activate or deactivate a phase control code.

You can indicate whether the phase control code is still valid (Valid), Will no longer be used in future (Deprecated) or is an invalid entry No longer valid

• A valid phase control code can be used without any restrictions
• A deprecated phase control code is still displayed in the value help and still can be activated and deactivated. If the user selects this phase control code and wants to activate it, the system issues a warning message
• A phase control code that is no longer valid cannot be activated. This means that the user cannot select invalid phase control codes from the value help in any apps that allow the activation of phase control codes (for example, in the Change Maintenance Order app). However, an invalid phase control code can still be deactivated. Note that invalid phase control codes can be selected from the value help and displayed in apps that provide a list view. This allows you to use invalid phase control codes as a search and filter criterion

• For a phase control code, you can define the phase and sub-phase that needs to be blocked. This will block the maintenance order or operation from moving to the phase and sub-phase when the phase control code is activated. If the phase control code is not activated automatically at the order creation, you can also define the phase where the phase control code should be automatically activated.
• Depending on the phase control key, phase, and sub-phase that you selected for a phase control code, all the system statuses derived by the system are shown as references. If the check-box is selected, it indicates that the system status was automatically created. Additionally, you can also add or remove a system status. This helps you to adjust the system status for a phase control code

Authorization Keys can be configured to define users are allowed/authorized to change and adjust the phase control codes.

Authorization Keys need to be defined before they can be added to a Phase Control Code in the definition of the Phase Control Codes.

1. Select the node Assign Entities to Order Types.

2. Click on New Entries.

3. Select the Order Type for which you want to define phase control code.

4. Select the Entity – ORI (Order Header) or OVG (Order Operation).

System Statuses can be configured to control the changes of System Statuses. The System Status can be configured so that no transaction can be executed which would result in a change of System Status.

The processing of an order header or operation can be influenced by activating a phase control code so that the transition into the next subphase is blocked. From a technical perspective, a business transaction such as technical completion is triggered against the order header. An active phase control code would block the execution of the appropriated business transaction that would lead to the technical completion. Since the technical completion system status could not be set, the order header remains in the current subphase and will not enter the subphase for technical completion.

Not all phase control codes have been configured to block a business transaction so that those phase control codes will not control the processing of an order header or operation at all. Instead, those phase control codes are just used as a flag to highlight a custom specific information.

A new authorization object has been introduced to control the processing of phase control codes. When configuring a new role, an administrator can issue the appropriated permissions.

Note

For BAdI implementation in the context of releasing a reactive maintenance order consider the following topics:

• Starting with CE 2202, two different flavors of a reactive maintenance order can be distinguished:
  • The standard reactive maintenance order has been introduced with CE 2011 and this order covers the regular reactive maintenance work. Following the standard process, each reactive maintenance order has to be submitted for approval and the approval has to be issued before releasing this order.
  • In the case of an emergency, an order of type reactive maintenance order is generated automatically, but this order will skip certain phases such as the approval phase and the release of this order is triggered automatically.
• Phase control codes that should block the release of a reactive maintenance order should be only introduced for the standard reactive maintenance order, but not for the emergency use case.
  • In the case that an emergency order cannot be released at all, the entire business process of the emergency case will not be initiated. Hence, the corresponding reactive notification and order will be generated due to a failure message that is shown to the user who would like to initiate this process.
  • The custom BAdI implementation should be used to activate a phase control code for the standard reactive maintenance order that will block the order release.

Here are some examples of customers use cases that can be fulfilled by a BAdI implementation:

• For certain technical objects, a permit to work needs to be introduced to prevent the uncontrolled execution of work
• An approval needs to be issued for emergency orders to enable maintenance planner to trigger technical completion of those orders
• Once a maintenance order has been released, the business completion of an order could be triggered before this order has been technically completed.

Consider the following issues regarding OData APIs:

• Starting with CE 2111, an OData API was provided to create an update a maintenance order
• Starting with CE 2202, an OData API is provided to read, activate or deactivate phase control codes on order header or operation.

Allows you to define a combination of maintenance order type and planning plant for approval of maintenance orders.

Use

In this configuration step, you can define if approval is required for a combination of maintenance order type and planning plant. This allows you to release a maintenance order after approval or without approval depending on your requirement.

The flexible workflow allows you to use either the automatic one-step or even, multi-step approval. You can use the App Manage Workflows for Maintenance Ordersto define start conditions such as the planning plant, planner group, activity type, or the order type of the maintenance order. This app also provides several options for determining the Approver, such as the approval by the manager, or approval by the responsible cost center. Alternatively, you can enter a specific user as the Approver.

If you have defined several workflows, the start conditions are checked in the order you have defined in the App Manage Workflows for Maintenance Orders. As soon as the start conditions for a workflow are met, this workflow is used. This ensures that only one workflow in the list of your defined workflows is started, even if several workflows have matching start conditions.

Define custom rules for monitoring procurement milestones and change the default warning period for the milestone due date.

Use

In this activity, you can change the default settings that determine how the system monitors procurement milestones in the relevant SAP Fiori apps for Maintenance Management:

• You can define custom rules to determine which procurement milestones are monitored for a combination of maintenance order type, procurement demand category, maintenance plant, maintenance planning plant, and material group
• You can change the default warning period for the milestone due date. The warning period specifies the time period between the date on which a milestone becomes due and the date on which the system starts to display the procurement status as a warning. By default, the warning period is two days before the milestone due date

Standard Settings

By default, the table in this activity is empty and the system is pre-configured to monitor the following procurement milestones for all maintenance order types, maintenance planning plants, maintenance plants, and material groups:

Create grouping criteria for work packs and work pack items for the purposes of work pack output management.

Use

To create new grouping criteria:

• Choose New Entries
• Enter the ID (four alphanumeric symbols) and the name of the new grouping criteria
• In the tab Work Pack Grouping Attributes, choose the attribute of the new criteria from the list available in the value help.
• After you create a grouping criteria in this step, you can assign this grouping criteria to the work pack type in the relevant configuration step Assign Grouping Criteria to Work Pack Type.

In this step, you can choose and assign grouping criteria for work pack types.

Use

You can assign more than one grouping criteria per work pack type. You can select from the predefined list or create  new grouping criteria in the relevant configuration step Define Grouping Criteria for Work Packs.

• output Immediately: Select this option to configure only a single combination of work pack type and grouping criteria.
• Default Grouping Criteria: Select this option to make one of the available grouping criteria as a default.
• Include Operation: Select this option to include work pack operations that are part of other work packs in the new work pack.