Implementing Asset Maintenance Strategy

One of the key benefits of performing asset strategy development assessments within SAP Asset Performance Management is the ability to generate recommendations within them. Recommendations can provide detail that given a particular set of circumstances relating to the failure of an asset, there is an advised response as to how to resolve the issue or how to prevent the issue from occurring in the first place. While recommendations are mostly created within assessments, they can be created independent of an assessment too.

Once a recommendation is created, SAP Asset Performance Management allows for an approval process to determine whether the recommendation should be implemented or not. If not implemented, the recommendation can go back for review or even be struck down in its entirety. During that process, the recommendation does allow for users to modify it with new or updated data. There are various types of recommendations as well and depending on the recommendation type, there are certain fields and attributes that can and cannot be entered.

As mentioned previously, recommendations can be created by themselves via the Recommendation Workbench or more commonly are created via one of the strategy assessments. Regardless, the initial process of creating a recommendation is identical between the two. When creating a recommendation, enter in an ID, name, description, and type. Recommendations have three types, with one proactive, having three additional subtypes. The other two recommendation types do not have subtypes for them. Here are the recommendation types that can be assigned.

• Proactive
  • Calendar
  • Performance
  • Condition
• Reactive
• Improvement

One of the differences in creating a recommendation from an assessment as opposed to the Recommendation Workbench is the ability to assign failure data to it. This allows the user to map out under what failure conditions the recommendation should be implemented. It is not required, however, to add failure data mapping to the recommendation. For each failure data type, multiple failure data can be assigned to it. As an example, a recommendation can have two failure modes assigned to it while only having one cause and no effects.

When a recommendation is finally created, it opens to the Manage Recommendation Page, where further optional details can be added. Some fields include financial risk, validity, and additional notes. Various other objects can also be assigned to the recommendation as well. What objects can or cannot be assigned are dependent upon which type of recommendation is assigned and for proactive recommendations, which subtype is assigned. None of these additional details are required, however. A recommendation can eventually be moved out of the Recommendation Workbench into the Implementation Workbench after further evaluation. They can also be rejected entirely with no further option to edit or delete them.

Inside the Implementation Workbench, recommendations go through further evaluation. Users can determine whether it is ready for implementation or if it requires being sent back for more changes. Once a recommendation is implemented, it is not editable anymore. If the recommendation has not been implemented however, it can be sent back to the Recommendation Workbench if desired. Note that for a recommendation to be implemented, all necessary assignments must be configured for it, otherwise SAP Asset Performance Management will not allow for its release.