Lately it had become quiet around Plant Maintenance as part of Asset Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud. I had published the last release update in my blog Intelligent ERP Update: SAP S/4HANA Cloud 1905 for Asset Management.

Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners

Today I have exiting news for you: Resource scheduling is now available in SAP S/4HANA Cloud with the 2002 release. Resource scheduling provides you with insights into your maintenance workload and available capacities for current and upcoming maintenance activities. Use the apps for resource scheduling to check current and forecasted work center utilization, build a schedule, and determine required capacities before dispatching the scheduled work.

Good news also for SAP S/4HANA On-Premise customers: Resource scheduling is available with the SAP S/4HANA 1909 release.

Before proceeding into the details of Resource Scheduling, watch the video:

Apps for Resource Scheduling

Resource scheduling includes the following apps:

● Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners
● Manage Work Center Utilization
● Maintenance Scheduling Board
● Schedule Maintenance Order Operations
● Assign Maintenance Order Operations

The Manage Work Center Utilization app can be accessed via the Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners app.

Fig.1: SAP Fiori group ‘Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners’

Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners

The SAP Fiori app Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners is the dashboard for maintenance planners.

With this overview page you can monitor key figures such as

• the number and priority of maintenance orders that you need to work on,
• the utilization of your work centers,
• unconfirmed maintenance orders that have at least one order operation with a planned end date in the past six months
• unassigned work,
• and upcoming, current, and recent schedules.

Fig.2: SAP Fiori app ‘Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners’

Manage Work Center Utilization

The Manage Work Center Utilization app enables you to level the work center utilization. The app can be accessed via the Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners app as the overview of the current situation is the starting point of resource scheduling.

With the Manage Work Center Utilization app you can

• view maintenance order operations and sub-operations in your work centers, including key data, such as maintenance order, priority, planned start and end date, and required work
• visualize utilization based on various attributes, such as work center, processing status, priority, or order type
• dispatch one or multiple order operations or sub-operations at once, or cancel the dispatch
• move order operations to another date or work
• select order operations for scheduling
• navigate to orders, technical objects, and functional location data
• change the available work center capacity per day for a selected target week.

Fig.3: SAP Fiori app ‘Manage Work Center Utilization’ app which can be accessed via the ‘Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners’ app.

The following video shows you a short system demo: Starting point is the dashboard, the Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners app, from where the maintenance planner navigates to the Manage Work Center Utilization app and last but not least opens the Schedule Maintenance Order Operations app:

Schedule Maintenance Order Operations

The Schedule Maintenance Order Operations app allows you to set up schedules for the maintenance order operations that you want to dispatch for specific target weeks and to monitor and review schedule execution. Build a schedule for the target week by simulating the workload on your work centers before freezing your schedule and dispatching the order operations for execution. Once the target week has started, you can track schedule attainment and the completion of order operations.

With the Schedule Maintenance Order Operations app you can

• set up schedules for specific target weeks
• check the forecasted work center utilization at week level and at day level
• keep adjusting the scope of a schedule until you are ready to freeze it
• share schedules to collaborate with other maintenance planners
• use automatic or manual scheduling for the order operations in your schedule
• level work center utilization by moving order operations to another work center or rescheduling operations
• use a graphical view to identify scheduling conflicts and relationships between order operations
• dispatch all scheduled operations in one go and freeze the schedule to create a snapshot of it
• track schedule execution
• review schedule attainment

Fig.4: SAP Fiori app ‘Schedule Maintenance Order Operations’ app

Maintenance Scheduling Board

The Maintenance Scheduling Board app allows you to visualize on a timeline the maintenance orders, order operations, and sub-operations in your work centers via Gantt chart.
Different charts showing your current and forecasted maintenance workload allow you to visualize and optimize work center utilization. Graphical views of the maintenance orders and operations in your work centers and in your schedule help you to quickly identify scheduling conflicts and relationships between order operations.

With the Maintenance Scheduling Board app you can

• view maintenance orders, order operations, and suboperations in your work centers in their hierarchical structure
• view maintenance orders, order operations, and suboperations on a timeline
• view relationships between order operations and relationship violations
• dispatch order operations and suboperations
• cancel the dispatch of order operations and suboperations
• move order operations to another date or work center to level work center utilization
• specify for which work centers you want to see data
• navigate to orders, equipment, and functional location

Fig.5: SAP Fiori app ‘Maintenance Scheduling Board’ app: The quick link shows the details of a maintenance order.

Assign Maintenance Order Operations

Last but not least, with the Assign Maintenance Order Operations app, you can assign maintenance order operations to a person responsible. You can also change or delete assignments.

The logic of this app is quiet simple: Assign maintenance order operations to a person responsible without any skill database support.

Fig.6: SAP Fiori app ‘Assign Maintenance Order Operations’ app: The quick link shows the details of a maintenance order operation.

SAP Best Practice for Resource Scheduling

The new SAP scope item Maintenance Resource Scheduling (43R) requires an additional SAP S/4HANA Cloud license.

SAP provides the new business role Maintenance Planner – Resource Scheduling with the business role ID SAP_BR_MAINTENANCE_PLNR_RSH which you can use as template for your own roles.

In the scope item, you will find the process flow and the test script.

Fig.7: Process flow described in SAP scope item Maintenance Resource Scheduling (43R)

Webcast with system demo

Please register to the webcast ‘SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2002 – Asset Management’ via opening the ‘Early Release Webinar Series’ here. After an introduction from me the product owner has been demonstrated live in our internal SAP S/4HANA Cloud test system the Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners. If you want to skip my introduction and watch the system demo directly, start the webcast at 13 minutes.

For more information on SAP S/4HANA Cloud, check out the following links:

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info: http://www.sap.com/s4-cloudrelease
• Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2002 Release Blog
• The Link Collection for Asset Management here
• Quarterly release product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud playlist
• Early Release Webinar Series here
• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community: here
• Feature Scope Description here
• What’s New here
• Help Portal Product Page here
• Implementation Portal here