Introducing the Phase Model

The end-to-end maintenance process is divided into nine distinct steps called as Phases. Each phase can have one or more substeps called as subphases.

The phases are pre-defined. Each maintenance process (reactive, proactive,…) has its own phases. Maintenance notifications and orders use the phases. From the phase, a user clearly can determine the current step a particular notification or order is in the end–to–end process.

When you create maintenance requests and maintenance orders with a specific type (Reactive Maintenance, Proactive Maintenance, Improvement Maintenance as well as Operational Maintenance and Overhead Maintenance), these maintenance requests and orders are processed according to the following phases:

• Initiation

• Screening

• Planning

• Approval

• Preparation

• Scheduling

• Execution

• Post Execution

• Completion

Each phase has sub-steps called Sub-Phases to have a granular view of the order or notification. These sub-phases are pre-defined. System automatically determines the phases and sub-phases of a notification, order and operations, as it progresses in the end–to–end process.

Review the above image to understand the sequence of phases and sub-phases that are applicable to the objects in the Maintenance Management Process.

Review the above image to understand the main flows between the different phases and sub-phases applicable to the objects in the Maintenance Management Process.

The SAP Fiori apps applicable for this phase are:

• Create Maintenance Request
• My Maintenance Request

During the Initiation phase, you can create maintenance requests for a technical object such as an equipment or a functional location using the Create Maintenance Request app. You can enter all necessary details to help in screening, processing, planning, and execution of the request. You can also include attachments and links. The app allows you to view open requests of a technical object. Until a maintenance request is submitted, the latest draft is available.

Each maintenance request can be prioritized using one of the two options. You can select a priority from the list or assess priority. The priority assessment is done based on a combination of consequence categories, consequences, and likelihoods. Priorities can be assessed only if prioritization profiles are maintained for a combination of maintenance plant and notification type.

When you submit a maintenance request, the new request is available in My Maintenance Requests app. Only your requests are displayed. The requests are grouped and displayed based on their processing statuses. You can view the requests that you submitted, the requests that have been sent to you by the Maintenance Gatekeeper because information was insufficient, the requests that were rejected, and the requests that have been completed.

If you have a request that requires additional information, edit the request and resubmit it for screening. From this app, you can also navigate to Create Maintenance Request app to create a new request.

The new request moves to the Screening phase where it is reviewed.

The SAP Fiori app applicable for this phase is:

Screen Maintenance Requests

The submitted maintenance request moves to the Screening phase. Here, maintenance requests are screened and accepted.

As a Maintenance Gatekeeper, you can review all the open maintenance requests in the Screen Maintenance Requests app. If information is insufficient, you can send the request back to the initiator. When the initiator provides information and resubmits the request, you can review the request again.

In the Home screen of the app, the maintenance requests are grouped according to their statuses (Open, Accepted, Rejected, Action Required, and Completed). By default, open requests are displayed.

While reviewing a request, you can also edit information related to malfunction, responsibility, priority, and other details. Accepted maintenance requests move to the Planning phase.

The SAP Fiori apps applicable for this phase are:

• Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders
• Actual Cost Analysis
• Process Maintenance Order
• Phase Control Code

The Planning phase begins when a maintenance request is accepted. The accepted maintenance request is now known as a maintenance notification. As a Maintenance Planner, you can now create and plan orders.

In the Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders app, maintenance orders can be created for one or more maintenance notifications. Alternatively, you can assign an existing maintenance order to a maintenance notification. Information from the leading maintenance notification is copied into the maintenance order. The quick view for maintenance order allows you to navigate to related apps. Orders can also be created in the Create Maintenance Order app.

In the Change Maintenance Order app, you can add information related to operation, material, labor, services, and cost to plan the order. Only as a Maintenance Gatekeeper, you can change the final due date and priority for the maintenance order.

When you create an order, the order is in the Planning phase and subphase In Planning (Order). Depending upon the configuration of the order type in the SSCUI Activate Workflow for Order Type, an order needs a cost approval. An order can be released without an approval if the order type is not configured for workflow. If the workflow is configured for the order type, the order goes through the workflow steps for approval. If the workflow is configured for automatic approval, then the order is approved immediately. If workflow is set up for manual approval, it will move to the approver's inbox.

You can submit an order for approval from Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders app and Change Maintenance Order app.

As a maintenance planner, you need to ensure that a maintenance order has all the operations, required components, resources, and documents to perform the maintenance. The system will calculate the planned costs for the maintenance.

If the maintenance order type is configured for cost approval, then the planner will submit the order for cost approval.

The submitted order moves to My Inbox app. When an order is submitted for approval, the phase and subphase of the order are Approval and Submitted for Approval (Order) respectively. If the order is approved, then the subphase of the order is Approved (Order). If the order is rejected, then the subphase is Rejected (Order).

You can release the accepted maintenance orders for preparation. You can edit a rejected maintenance order and submit it for approval. It then moves to the Approval phase.

The SAP Fiori apps applicable for this phase are:

• Manage Workflows for Maintenance Orders
• Manage Teams and Responsibilities
• My Inbox

Maintenance orders are approved through a flexible workflow process in the Manage Workflows for Maintenance Orders app. It is recommended that you configure a generic step condition and specific step sequences. Each step sequence can have step conditions and an approver. Only one workflow is used but each step condition in the workflow is evaluated. If multiple step conditions are true, they are created as approval steps and approval from approver of each step is required.

Orders that are ready for approval are available in My Inbox app. To approve a maintenance order, select the workflow request, review details of the order, enter comments, and approve. You can resubmit rejected orders for approval.

When you approve an order, baseline cost is set to equal to the planned cost. Approved orders can be released. After you release an order, the order moves to Preparation phase.

The SAP Fiori apps applicable for this phase are:

• Manage Maintenance Planning Buckets
• Manage Maintenance Backlog

Once an order is approved for execution and released, it is set to In Preparation and passed to the Preparation phase. In this phase, the maintenance planner divides the maintenance effort into manageable groups, levels out the workload over several weeks, determines the concrete time period for the requested maintenance work and checks the availability of all the resources, spare parts and services needed.

The Manage Maintenance Planning Buckets app aids the maintenance planner in effectively managing the maintenance backlog. Once-off or recurrent planning buckets allow you to organize major maintenance events such as a planned shutdown as well as define weekly maintenance windows for recurrent maintenance work.

The maintenance planner creates maintenance planning buckets and defines the planning bucket scope. This scope includes a specific time period, such as a concrete calendar week, and other important attributes, such as the maintenance planning plant or the main work center. Based on this scope, the system groups maintenance orders and assigns them to the corresponding planning buckets. If the scheduled start and end dates of an order fulfill the selection criteria of an individual bucket, this order is associated with this particular bucket.

When the maintenance planning buckets have been created and maintenance orders have been associated with particular planning buckets, the Manage Maintenance Backlog app provides a list of all the maintenance orders in a specific planning bucket. Here, the maintenance planner can view important order details, such as the order status, the order priority and the final due date. Furthermore, he can check the availability and consumption of the required stock components and non-stock components and consider all the maintenance work that has to be executed and all the external services that have to be procured.

With the help of colored icons indicating the overall readiness of the order, the maintenance planner can identify easily whether the maintenance order is time-critical, whether the required materials and services are available and whether the order has already been submitted for scheduling. They can then take action and manage the availability of certain resources or reschedule the maintenance order by changing the scheduled start and end dates.

Once the maintenance planner is confident that all the required resources will be available on the required dates, they can select individual orders, choose Submit for Scheduling and thereby pass them on to the Scheduling phase.

Once the maintenance planner has selected one or more maintenance orders in the Manage Maintenance Backlog app and chosen Submit for Scheduling, the selected orders with all of their operations are set to Ready to Schedule and passed to the Scheduling phase. During this phase, the maintenance planner or supervisor dispatches the maintenance order, or the individual order operations and suboperations, and thereby confirms that they have been scheduled at the right work center and at the right time.

When individual operations and suboperations are dispatched and as a result set to Ready for Execution, it depends on the execution stage of the operations and suboperations whether the maintenance order itself is passed to the Execution phase:

If only preliminary tasks (operations with execution stage PRE) have been dispatched, the order stays in the Scheduling phase.

As soon as the first main repair task (operation with execution stage MAIN) has been dispatched, the order itself moves to the Execution phase. This phase then is also displayed in the order header.

The SAP Fiori app applicable for this phase is:

Perform Maintenance Jobs

In this phase you perform maintenance of orders.

This is the execution phase. In this phase, a maintenance technician receives all the orders that need to be executed. The technician performs the required maintenance tasks according to the recommendations provided in the order operation. Generally, the technician executes the PRE (preliminary) and MAIN (main) operations for an order in this phase.

After the technician has performed the maintenance task, all the main operations are set to Work Finished. Once the technician completes the assigned PRE and MAIN operation for an order, the supervisor reviews the work and agrees to the completion of the main work. The supervisor changes the subphase of the order to Main Work Completed in the Find Maintenance Order application.

Phase to complete maintenance tasks for an order.

The supervisor changes the subphase of the order to Main Work Completed in the Find Maintenance Order application and the order appears in the post-execution phase. The technician proceeds with the post execution tasks for the order. These tasks include the recording of time spent on post execution operations, preparing malfunction details and failure data, and checking final confirmation of post-execution operations. This activity is performed in the Perform Maintenance Jobs application. The order is set to Work Done.

The supervisor reviews the failure data, maintains cost, and approves the order as technically complete. He can also review the notification status and approves it as completed, if the order has associated notification. All the pending purchase requisitions, capacity outstanding, open reservations are released. The order moves to the Completion phase.

The SAP Fiori apps applicable for this phase are:

• Find Maintenance Order
• Process Maintenance Order

Once all main and post maintenance tasks have been executed, the maintenance order is set to Technically Complete (Order) and thereby passed on to the Completion phase. During this phase, the maintenance planner or financial controller reviews maintenance orders in subphase Technically Complete (Order), settles the orders financially, performs all the necessary tasks and finally changes the corresponding order status to Complete (Business). Thereby, the maintenance order is finally set to the Closed (Order) subphase.

In the Find Maintenance Order app, the maintenance planner can display a list of maintenance orders, filter the list to only monitor orders in the subphase Technically Complete (Order) and perform the following tasks:

Compare the actual costs posted for the maintenance orders with the planned costs or baseline costs.

If you navigate to an individual maintenance order, the Detailed Cost Analysis view in the Costs tab page provides you with a hierarchical overview of all the costs entered and incurred for the individual order operations and suboperations. The system displays the estimated costs entered for the maintenance order for each spend category, as well as planned costs, baseline costs and actual costs that were posted to individual operations and suboperations. For more information, see Analyzing Costs.

If you want to monitor and evaluate estimated costs, baseline costs, planned costs and actual costs resulting from several maintenance orders, you can use the Maintenance Order Costs app.

Check the status of purchase orders for parts and services that have been created for specific maintenance orders.

Check the status of invoices associated with the maintenance orders and ensure that all the invoices are received, checked and paid.

Settle the maintenance orders financially.

After the maintenance planner or financial controller has analyzed the costs, checked open purchase orders and invoices and settled the maintenance orders financially, he sets the maintenance order to Completed (Business). This status prevents further costs from being allocated to the corresponding maintenance order. The system checks whether the completed maintenance order has any open header maintenance notification and sets the corresponding maintenance request to Completed (Request).

You can block the transition of an order or an operation from one phase to another phase using phase control codes.

If you process maintenance orders according to phases, you can use phase control codes to control the movement of orders from one subphase to another subphase. You can activate a phase control code for an order header or order operation and thereby prevent the maintenance order or operation from being transitioned to the specified subphase.

For example, John is the maintenance planner of an oil production facility and is responsible for the maintenance of the certain equipment. In this role John creates orders for maintaining the equipments. Some maintenance activities require work permit. John releases the work order but holds the work order from execution till he obtains the work permit. The work order can be scheduled but cannot be executed till John gets the work permit. Once he gets the work permit, he removes the hold on the work order so that it can be executed.

If the phase control codes are configured accordingly, you can monitor, activate and deactivate them in the Create Maintenance Order and Change Maintenance Orderapp. You find the phase control codes that have been configured for the order header on thePhase Controltab page. If phase control codes have been configured for the order operation entity, you find the configured phase control codes in the details of the individual operations on the Phase Control tab page

1. Login as Maintenance Planner and navigate to the Maintenance Order detail page using the Find Maintenance Order app. Navigate to Phase Control tab. Phase control codes are automatically set for an order if Set Auto flag was Yes for the phase control code in the configuration.

2. Click on Add to set a phase control code.

3. Select the phase control code and click on Activate to apply the Phase Control code to the maintenance order.

You can use this function to classify operations in task lists and maintenance orders according to their importance over time during the maintenance or repair work. By assigning execution stages, you can group the preliminary work steps, the main work steps and the finishing work steps of the maintenance order and thus closely monitor work progress. A grouping into execution stages made in the task list is copied to the order operations that have been created. In the process, a checkbox in the order header shows whether the maintenance order still contains open main repair work.

In both the task list and the maintenance order, you can assign one of the three execution stages PRE, MAIN and POST to individual operations, thereby determining whether the operation describes preliminary work, main work or finishing work. Preliminary work could be, for example, scaffolding work or the checking and provision of spare parts in the staging area. Finishing work could be, for example, cleaning work or the removal of defective parts into the decontamination area. The system classifies all operations that you create and do not assign to an execution stage as main repair work.

The system deselects the Has Open Main Work checkbox in the order header data when all operations classified as main work have been finally confirmed. According to the value of this checkbox, you can filter the results list in the Find Maintenance Order app to display, for example, all orders for which at least one item of main repair work has not yet been finally confirmed. In addition, the table column Execution Stage in the operation tables and lists allows you to group and evaluate order operations according to the assigned execution stages.

Effects on Existing Data

The new table column, Execution Stage, is available in the Operation Data of the task list and the maintenance order. In addition, the new field Execution Stage in the Operation Details, shows to which execution stage the selected operation has been assigned. You can change this assignment both in the table column and in the selection field.

In the maintenance order header data, the new Has Open Main Work checkbox is available. You can select this as a filter in the Find Maintenance Order app. A new selection field, Execution Stage is available as a filter in the Find Maintenance Task List and Operation and Find Maintenance Order and Operation apps. In the operation list of both apps, you can group the operations in the corresponding table columns according to execution stages and their description. The operation details also show to which execution stage the respective operation has been assigned.

Pre, Main, Post Operations

Challenge in the past:

• A maintenance order includes several operations and those operations could not be classified:

  • Some of those operations should be executed before the main work can be performed.

  • Likewise, it is not clear which operations define the main work compare to finishing tasks such as cleaning the work area and removing the defected parts.

• Some planners have created separate maintenance orders so that one order might cover the preparation related work only. Another maintenance order was created covering all tasks related to the main work. Finally, a third order has been created to cover the finishing work.

With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition 2011 release for Asset Management, the new scope items (4HH, 4HI, 4VT and 4WM) enhancements introduce a new field Execution Stage to classify maintenance operations:

• This field provides a fix schema:

  • PRE: Preliminary work could be scaffolding work.
  • MAIN: The actual work to resolve the documented problem or the installation of a new asset.
  • POST: Finishing tasks could be cleaning work.

• The Execution Stage field has also been introduced into the operations of maintenance task lists so that those operations can be classified as well.

• When assigning a task list to a maintenance order, the execution stage is also copied so that this information is persisted into the maintenance order operation.

• Finally, the execution state can be directly updated in the maintenance order operation.

The information of the Execution Stage is relevant in the following context:

The maintenance order header provides an additional field Has Open Main Work.

• In the case that a final time confirmation has been posted for all main operations of a maintenance order, this flag Has Open Main Work is deselected.
• In the case that a main operation does not require a final time confirmation, but the actual work has been performed, the checkbox Has Open Main Work remains unchanged so that it looks like that there is still outstanding main work. As an example, a main operation just includes a lean service for which a service entry sheet is posted, but this confirmation will not be taken into account.

Looking at the reactive maintenance process as defined in the scope item 4HH, the maintenance order header will only be transitioned from the scheduling into the execution phase when the first MAIN operation is dispatched. Hence, only when the first MAIN operation is ready for execution, this transition will be reflected on the order header.

In the case that the work for all MAIN operations have been completed, the maintenance planner can set the new system status Main Work Completed against the maintenance order header so that the order enters the post execution phase.