Planning and Approving Maintenance

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 sub-phase 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 sub-phase of the order are Approval and Submitted for Approval (Order) respectively. If the order is approved, then the sub-phase of the order is Approved (Order). If the order is rejected, then the sub-phase 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 Maintenance Notifications and Orders (F4604)

With this app, you can manage maintenance notifications and maintenance orders. You can create orders for maintenance notifications and assign existing orders to notifications. Each order has a header notification. The notification from which an order is created becomes its header notification and inherits its data.

This app is available with the role SAP_BR_MAINTENANCE_PLANNER. You can:

• Get a combined view of Maintenance Notifications and Maintenance Orders

• Create maintenance order for maintenance notifications

• Assign maintenance notifications to existing maintenance order

• Mass change capabilities for maintenance notifications and orders

• Submit work orders for approval

• Release work orders for preparation

• Unassign maintenance notifications from work orders

Note

By default only Maintenance Notifications of type Y1 (Reactive Work) are displayed. In this app, you can only view notifications of new scope items (4HH, 4HI, 4VT, 4WM). This app does not display notifications of old scope item (BH1, BH2 and BJ2)

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 Workflows for Maintenance Orders (F4989)

• Manage Teams and Responsibilities (F2412)

• My Inbox - Maintenance Management (F2953)

With this app, you can manage the approval workflow for maintenance orders. As a configuration expert, you can configure workflows to optimize the approval process for maintenance orders. If a workflow with one or more steps is activated and the configured start conditions are fulfilled, the approval process is initiated.

With this app, you can manage teams or team members associated with certain functions. You can identify which function can be performed by which member. The teams and team members can be mapped as responsible for an activity type, for example, in a process step of a workflow scenario.

In Asset Management, teams and responsibilities are used in workflow scenarios. There are five fixed functions to model cost approval authority in a company. The five functions are:

• Cost Approval Level 1

• Cost Approval Level 2

• Cost Approval Level 3

• Cost Approval Level 4

• Cost Approval Level 5

You can use either teams or functions in agent determination of the workflow.

Using Functions in Workflow

You can see the pre-delivered functions when you select role in agent determination of a workflow. When a maintenance order is submitted for approval, the system determines approvers based on the functions configured in the workflow rule. For example, when you set up a team with several team members each having different cost approval functions. System will determine the team members who are eligible to approve based on the function configured in the workflow rule.

Using Teams in Workflow

You can see the teams you configured when you choose team in agent determination of a workflow. When a maintenance order is submitted for approval, the system determines approvers based on the team configured in the workflow rule. For example, when you set up a team with several team members each having different cost approval functions. System will determine the team and send the order for approval to all team members in the team irrespective of their functions.

With this app, you can approve or reject maintenance orders.

When defining the approval workflows for maintenance management the following points are very important.

A Business Process Configuration Expert determines the level of Automation:

• Dynamic Start Conditions.
• Setup Approval Rules without programming skills.
• N-step Approval.

A Business Process Configuration Expert defines Responsible Team:

• Separated Approval Workflows for different planning plants / planning groups.
• Dynamic Approver Determination.

Here you can see the various steps that are required to setup the Cost Approval of maintenance orders. This is available only with new scope items (4HH, 4HI, 4VT and 4WM).

Manage Teams and Responsibilities Asset Management

1. In Responsibility Management, a team category represents a business process (Procurement, Sales and Distribution, Maintenance and so on). SAP provides the current list of team categories. Team Category Maintenance Planning and Execution (MAINT_P_E) represents Asset Management business process.
2. A business process could comprise subprocesses which are represented as team types. SAP provides the current list of team types. Team type Maintenance Team (MAINT_P_E) represents Maintenance teams.

To define a team and its responsibilities:

1. Open the Manage Teams and Responsibilities app with the role SAP_BR_BPC_EXPERT.
2. Create a new team for the Cost Approval through which you can group responsible members with appropriate definitions for responsibilities.
3. Assign the team members functions which uniquely describe the cost approval limits. You can use functions and responsibility definitions as a selection criteria for agent determination in workflow.

Team attributes are represented as Responsibility Definitions. A responsibility definition is a name-value pair that can be used to query teams. For example, you can define a team which is responsible for Plant = 1010, Planner Group = CK1 and Main Work Center = RSH_MECH.

SAP provides the following attributes of a Maintenance Order for defining the responsibilities of a team:

• Company Code
• Main Work Center
• Activity Type
• Planner Group
• Maintenance Planning Plant
• Maintenance Plant
• Order Type
• Responsible Work Center

1. Team Members perform various tasks. A team member is a business user (i.e., a business partner associated with a SAP user) with a role Employee (BUP003), Service Provider (BBP005) or Freelancer (BBP010)
2. You cannot assign a business user, whose Status is:
   1. Blocked
   2. Marked for Archiving
   3. Business Purpose Completed
3. Tasks are represented as member functions. Member functions and responsibility definitions are mapped to SAP delivered team categories and inherited by team types. For Asset Management, following functions are delivered:
   1. Cost Approval Level 1
   2. Cost Approval Level 2
   3. Cost Approval Level 3
   4. Cost Approval Level 4
   5. Cost Approval Level 5

   You can use the above functions to model $ limit approval levels of various team members.

   You cannot define your own member functions for team category MAINT_P_E.

4. Team owners :
   • define and maintain the team header
   • define responsibility definitions
   • add / replace team members and
   • assign functions to a set of members at a time

• You need not define the exact $ approval thresholds (or limit) of members. A function represents an approval hierarchy level in the organization.
• You can configure either function or the team as an agent in the workflow.

The following steps show you how to manage the workflows for Maintenance Orders.

1. Open the Manage Workflows app with the role SAP_BR_BPC_EXPERT.
2. Use this app, to create an Approval Workflow and define:
   • Specify the validity dates.
   • Start conditions. For example, a workflow rule is valid only for a specific planning plant and planning group. The workflow will be processed only if all the preconditions are met.
   • Define the number of approval steps (each step determines the possible approvers (agents or recipients)).
   • Specify additional pre-condition for each step. For example, approval step 3 is only required if the value of the order is greater than $100,000.

Only active workflows are considered by the workflow process.