C4C Service Expert Corner: Maintenance Plan Overview (Part 2)

You got an overview of Maintenance Plans in the blog http://scn.sap.com/community/cloud-for-customer/blog/2015/09/02/planned-maintenance-comes-to-sap-cloud-for-service

This blog provides more details on some of the new features in Maintenance Plans delivered in the last few releases.

It also provides a simplified view of the possible combinations (of schedule types and schedule conditions) and offers some tips to help you understand the feature better.

Scheduled Types:

• Alternating:

     Alternating schedule type enables creating a Plan Definition with certain exception conditions.

     For example, you want to perform a regular maintenance for a registered product at every 10,000 units except every 30,000.

     This means ticket will be created at 10000, 20000 (but not at 30000), then at 40000, 50000 (but not at 60000) and so on.

     Exclude Condition and Excluding value are used to create the plan definition.

     Note: The excluding value should be a multiple of the condition value.

• Absolute:

     Absolute schedule type enables creating a Plan Definition based on point in time readings. It is helpful to define conditions based on statistical readings,            such as average or total.

     For example, you want to regularly check on the usage limit for a registered product and plan for additional maintenance activities based on it ->

     If the average number of cups for a coffee machine is greater than 5000 in 6 months, perform additional maintenance.

     The statistical reading against which the condition is evaluated has to be maintained directly in the Registered Product (which is the Maintenance Item in          Maintenance Plan). The system does not perform any statistical calculations on the readings.

     Operators (greater than, less than etc.) are supported which are used to create the plan definition.

• One time -No Conditions:

     This scheduled type fulfills the scenario where there is no condition required but automatic tickets need to be generated (for example a Recall situation).            The tickets are generated only once based on the schedule defined in the MDRO run.                        

     Note: This needs to be enabled in Business Configuration under Service -> Entitlement Management -> Maintenance Plan -> Questions

Possible Combinations of Scheduled Types and Scheduled Conditions:

Ticket Template flags

• Prevent Creating Multiple Tickets: 

               Applicable for all Schedule Types and Schedule Conditions.

• Consider Ticket Resolved On Date:

               Applicable for the following:

How measurement logs and readings work with maintenance plan:

Conditions are defined in the Plan Definition by adding Measurement Attribute. The same attribute should be used to create Measurement Logs in the Registered Product which is added as a Maintenance Item in the Maintenance Plan.

Readings captured for these logs are used to evaluate the maintenance plan condition.

NOTE – Only for Time Based plans, readings are not required. However, the measurement log is required.

Points to note on Maintenance Plan Status:

• Plan Definition for a Maintenance Plan can be created or updated only in In Preparation status.
• MDRO run/schedule is relevant only for Active maintenance plans.
• Maintenance Items can be added to a maintenance plan in Active or In Preparation status.
• Ticket Template can be updated for maintenance plan in Active, In Preparation or Blocked status
• Simulate Run and Trigger Manual Run Actions are available for maintenance items only if the maintenance plan is in Active status.
• Creating a copy of a maintenance plan is allowed from any status.
• Complete is the final status and no editing is allowed in this status.

Regards,

Anshika