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Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker

Asset Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2011

Do you know the situation of board games when you draw a card that asks you to go back to the start. Maybe this metaphor is too pointed, but I would like to invite you to open a new chapter for Maintenance Management as part of the LoB Asset Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

It’s my pleasure to present to you in this blog the fruits of long-term co-innovation with our customers in the area of Maintenance Management.

Watch my video and get a quick overview of our 2011 highlights:

Maintenance Process

New “Best Practices” End-to-End-processes

So far, the scope items

describe the straightforward basic processes based on SAP ERP best practice scenarios with very limited configuration capabilities. These scope items will be set to “not standard relevant” in the future.

With the SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2011 release, we are offering four new scope items as successor:

New customers should use the new scope items only. Reason for this recommendation is that innovations will be provided only with the new scope items 4HH, 4HI, 4VT, and 4WM.
Customers who are still using the “old” scope items BH1, BH2, and BJ2, can continue to use these scope items, but SAP recommends to migrate to the new scope items.

By the way: The license scope item Maintenance Resource Scheduling (43R) will continue to work with both old and new scope items and will be updated in the future as per the roadmap of S/4HANA Asset management for resource scheduling.

What’s new with the new scope items 4HH, 4HI, 4VT, and 4WM:

So far maintenance processes were controlled by the system status of several business objects. The new “Best Practices” end-to-end processes introduce process phases and a new concept for user statuses. The simplified Status Management guides users along the process. Each process phase is correlated with a user role.

 

Phase Model for the Maintenance Process

The new phase model allows you to create maintenance requests and maintenance orders of specific new types. These maintenance requests and orders are then part of an end-to-end process that is structured according to nine phases. The following picture shows for instance the sequence of the nine phases for the best practice process Reactive Maintenance.

Fig.1: Sequence of process phases for the best practice process Reactive Maintenance

SAP Help documentation for Maintenance Process Phases explains in detail the nine phases:

For example, the Initiation and Execution phases are typically performed by a technician, whereas the planner is taking care of the Preparation phase by planning the maintenance backlog and carrying out the cost analysis in the Post-Execution phase. The newly introduced role of the Supervisor acts as a gatekeeper who coordinates between technician and planner. For this reason, the official name of the supervisor business role is Maintenance Gatekeeper.

Fig.2: Business roles for Maintenance Management

 

New Order Types

With the past 2008 release, new configuration steps for Maintenance Activity Types were introduced. My past blog shows these configuration steps in a short video. Based on the old scope items BH1, BH2, and BJ2 only three order types for corrective, preventive, and unplanned maintenance were available up to the 2008 release and the limited configuration steps were only grouped in one sub application area Maintenance Management.

Now with the 2011 release and the introduction of the new scope items 4HH, 4HI, 4VT, and 4WM , we are introducing five new order types and a wealth of new configuration capabilities which are now grouped in six sub application areas.
The following short video shows the new configuration sub application areas for Asset Management, the configuration steps for Order Processing where you will find the configuration steps for Maintenance Activity Types, and the configuration step Default Values for Maintenance Activity Type for Each Order Type with the new order types highlighted with yellow color.

Fig.3: Configure Your Solution – Order Processing with new order types

If you create maintenance orders, you can now select one of the following new order types:

Then the maintenance order runs through several approval, planning, preparation and execution steps until it is finally completed. The individual phases are divided into sub-phases which – similar to an overall status – document the progress in the maintenance process. You can filter, sort and group the maintenance orders according to the phases or sub-phases in several order list views.

New SAP Fiori apps

New SAP Fiori apps are available for the new “Best Practices” end-to-end processes which allow you to perform your daily work both on PCs and mobile devices. Here is an overview of the new SAP Fiori apps:

Starting with the Initiation phase of the Reactive Maintenance process, the Create Maintenance Request app allows a technician in the Initiation phase to easily capture technical objects from mobile devices using QR code and upload a picture directly taken from the mobile device to enhance the failure data. The system will let you know if a maintenance request was already created for this technical object. For saving time you can use a text template to describe the issue.

Watch the following video which shows how a technician creates a new maintenance request by using a smartphone.

Fig.4: Initiation phase – SAP Fiori app Create Maintenance Requests

 

The maintenance requests created by you are available in the My Maintenance Requests app.

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 (OpenAcceptedRejectedAction Required, and Completed).

While reviewing a request, you can also edit information related to malfunction, responsibility, priority, and other details.

You can create priorities in the Define Priorities for Each Priority Type self-service configuration UI (SSCUI). You can also assess priority by selecting a combination of consequence categories, consequences, and likelihood. Prioritization profiles can be defined using the SSCUI Define Prioritization Profiles. For more information, see Configuration for Key Users.

The priority defines the importance of the maintenance request. The priority helps to derive the key dates for a maintenance request such as the required start date, required end date, and the final due date. The following figure shows new Risk-based Event Prioritization-Matrix as basis of the assess priority functionality.

Fig.5: New Risk-based Event Prioritization-Matrix

 

Watch the video which shows how a maintenance supervisor is screening the maintenance request that the technician has submitted before.

Fig.5: Screening phase – SAP Fiori app Screen Maintenance Requests

 

At the end of the above video, the supervisor accepts the maintenance request and the system informs the user that the notification is accepted. The accepted maintenance request is now known as a maintenance notification.

Accepted maintenance requests move to the Planning phase.

As a Maintenance Planner, you can now create and plan orders. When you create an order, the order is in the phase Planning 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. If the workflow is configured for the order type, the order goes through the workflow steps for approval.

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 helps 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.

Watch the next video that shows how the maintenance planner creates an order with the maintenance notification created in the previous video. Afterwards the user creates a new Maintenance Planning Bucket. By pressing the Manage Backlog button the planner navigates to the Manage Maintenance Backlog app which offers the Change Scheduling options.

Fig.6: Preparation phase – SAP Fiori apps to Manage the Maintenance Backlog 

Resource Scheduling

Next on, coming to Resource Scheduling for maintenance planners which is correlated to the Scheduling phase.

Without Resource Scheduling, the maintenance planner or supervisor cannot dispatch operations individually but dispatches maintenance orders with all their operations.

With Resource Scheduling, the maintenance planner or supervisor dispatches the order operations and sub-operations and passes the orders to the Execution phase.

For using Resource Scheduling the license scope item Maintenance Resource Scheduling (43R) is necessary. Here is an overview of new features in Resource Scheduling.

Manage Work Center Utilization

Work Center filter for the utilization chart

The Manage Work Center Utilization app allows you to use additional filters from the header bar, view new columns in the table, and view the utilization filtered by one or more work centers. The chart is updated as per your selected work centers while keeping other settings the same. The chart title is also renamed to indicate the number of selected work centers. Watch the following short video to see how the work center filter acts.

Fig.7: Work Center filter for the utilization chart in Manage Work Center Utilization app 

 

App Extensibility

In addition you can now extend the Manage Work Center Utilization app to display additional custom fields.

Flexible schedule periods

The Manage Work Center Utilization app enables the maintenance planner to maintain flexible schedule periods.

When you create a schedule, you can now choose a date range to specify the schedule period. The schedule period can be a minimum of one day or even exceed one week. This is in contrast to the earlier concept of a target week, where you could create a schedule of only one week.

The following figure shows that the user selects for instance a period of 2 weeks when creating a new schedule.

Fig.8: Select flexible schedule periods in the Manage Work Center Utilization app

Manage Schedules

Drag-and-Drop

In the Manage Schedules app, you can now use the drag-and-drop feature to manually schedule an order operation. Watch the short video to see how the drag-and-drop feature is used in the system.

Fig.9: Drag-and-Drop in Manage Schedules app

Maintenance Scheduling Board

The Maintenance Scheduling Board app allows you now to use additional filters from the header bar, view new columns in the table, and use additional settings for the Gantt chart. Let me highlight here the new condensed mode for the Gantt chart. When you select the option Switch On Condensed Mode, the Gantt chart is displayed in a condensed mode, which optimally uses the limited screen space and you can view more in the same chart. The short video shows the look and feel of using the condensed mode.

Fig.10: Condensed Mode for Maintenance Scheduling Board app

New APIs

Finally, let us have a look on the new APIs.

API for Maintenance Notification

The Maintenance Notification API is used to notify the maintenance department about an abnormal or exceptional situation in technical objects in plant area. This service enables you to create, read, and update data related to maintenance notification.

Fig.11: New ODATA APIs – Maintenance Notification – Overview

You will find detailed information about the Maintenance Notification API in SAP API Business Hub and in SAP Help Documentation.

 

API for Maintenance Order Operation Confirmation

With the API for Maintenance Order Operation Confirmation, you can confirm maintenance operations. You can post time confirmations for one or more operations of an order.

You will find detailed information about the Maintenance Order Operation Confirmation API in SAP API Business Hub and in SAP Help Documentation.

 

Thanks for reading this blog post. Stay tuned!

You will find a collection of my SAP S/4HANA Cloud release blogs here:

You may be also interested in this blog for Service Management.

If you’re interested to learn more about these innovations, join our SAP Learning Hub and participate in our SAP S/4HANA Cloud Early Release Series. Read this blog to find out how you can license for the Enterprise Support Edition as a Customer / Partner and benefit from our regular release series either live or on-demand.

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
  • Article from Oliver Betz on SAP News here
  • Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2011 Release Blog
  • SAP S/4HANA Microlearning (OP/CL) – The ultimate collection blog
  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here
  • SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
  • Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
  • Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
  • SAP S/4HANA Cloud Customer Community:register here
  • SAP Activate Community here
  • Feature Scope Description here
  • What’s New here
  • Help Portal Product Page here
  • Implementation Portal here

Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via @GerhardWelker and LinkedIn

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      33 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Gaurav B
      Gaurav B

      Thankyou for the informative blog . Could you please help us confirm if creation of Work order takes place through the existing webdynpro app or a new Fiori app .

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      “Create Maintenance Order app is still available. In future it will be replaced by the new SAP Fiori App “Manage Maintenance Order”. Release timeframe is not yet confirmed.

      Author's profile photo Seunghun Chi
      Seunghun Chi

      It seems that the current Webdyn Apps are using previous EAM apps. PM consultants are not familiar with EAM Webdyn, so they tend to use IW31, an SAPGUI transaction, connected to Fiori Lauchpad.

      In the long run, all apps will be developed with SAPUI5 based Fiori Apps, but it would be good to inform users of the approximate timeline when the development will be completed.

      And, as an internal employee, how can I give feedback if I find an error in the EAM App?

      Author's profile photo Thomas Nietlisbach
      Thomas Nietlisbach

      Hi Gerhard,

      the four new scope items are only available for Germany and USA, when will it be available for other countries?

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Thomas,

      The new scope items 4HH, 4HI, 4VT, 4WM will be available for other countries with the next release 2102.

      In general, new scope items are first released for the baseline US & DE (here 2011). Then in the following release the localization for the other countries happens. While there can be exceptions, this is the default approach which applies to most scope items.

      Best regards,
      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Tim De Bock
      Tim De Bock

      Hi Gerhard,

       

      Is it possible to skip the screening phase? I was checking if there's a workflow available to also automatically set accept status to the maintenance request, but couldnt find it.

       

      A lot of smaller clients do not gatekeep notifications and want to directly create an order for a notification.

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Tim,

      Unfortunately not yet. But with a future release it is planned to offer so called „Phase Control Codes“ which should enable you to adjust the process flow and skip the screening phase. Currently I cannot say when this new feature will be available.

      Best regards,
      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Rajendra Pandey
      Rajendra Pandey

      Hi Gerhard,

      Permit functionality is very important and used widely in many industries. This is available in on premise solution since very beginning.

      When this will be made available in the Cloud solution for Asset Management?

      I can not find it in the road-map.

      Best Regards,

      Rajendra Pandey

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Rajendra,

      You are right: Permit functionality is not planned on roadmap yet.

      Internally there are discussions around permit functionality but the development resources are currently planned for other important topics. Maybe you can emphasize your request also via customer influence portal to increase the visibility of your request. I have forwarded your request directly to development. The development team is aware of your request.

      Best regards,

      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Rajendra Pandey
      Rajendra Pandey

      Hi Gerhard,

      I could not find any option to print maintenance order in S/4HANA Cloud as avilable in On-Premise version.

      Is it by design?

      Warm Regards,

      Rajendra Pandey

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Rajendra,

      We are currently working on a new Output Management solution which is planned to be initially released with 2111 release.

      Best regards,
      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo John Luong
      John Luong

      Hi Gerhard,

      will these new Best Practices be available in the next S/4HANA 2021 (on-premise) release? If not, when do you plan to make them available also for on-premise customers?

      Best regards,

      John

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi John,

      Currently it is planned to make similar functionalities as described in scope items 4HH and 4HI also available in On Premise with the SAP S/4HANA 2021 release in October 2021. Functionalities similar to those as described in scope items 4VT und 4WM will come later in On Premise.

      Best regards,
      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Neha Mahanty
      Neha Mahanty

      Hi Gerhard ,

      Thanks for this blog, very informative.

      We are implementing these Fiori applications in our system and have some queries on the same.

      1. In create maintenance request Fiori application - The default value for notification type is mapped as Y1 , Can we change this default value to any other value ? and can we have multiple values for notification types ?
      2. In Screen maintenance request : We changed the value from Y1 to M1 in the above application , which created a maintenance request  . Now in the screen maintenance request application , the "Accept" and "Reject" button are disabled.

      I tried to check this in the application documentation but there is no information. Could you guide us with this .

      Many Thanks

      Neha Mahanty

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Neha,

      For your information: I have forwarded your interesting questions to our development experts and I'm waiting for answer.

      Best regards,

      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Neha,

      Here is the answer from the responsible Area Product Owner:

      Create Maintenance Request is configured to work with Y1 through Target mapping. In OP, Customers can change the target mapping to point to a different notification type. Additionally, using key user extensibility they can also expose the notification type selection drop down. On doing so, they can choose a notification type. The possibility to accept or decline a notification from the screen maintenance request will only be available if the “Approval Required” flag is maintained on the notification type in Customising. If that is not the case, the notification will appear without these actions in the Screen maintenance request app.

      Hope this information helps you.

      Best regards,
      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Neha Mahanty
      Neha Mahanty

      Hi Gerhard,

      Thank you very much, I missed to check the reply.

      This is definitely helpful as you suggested we can check the ' key user extensibility'  so that we can have the notification type selection dropdown in the Create Maintenance Request screen.

      Also we can check the 'Approval Required' flag based on which the action button will appear in the screen.

      This information is really helpful. Thank you very much for your guidance

       

      Thanks and Regards

      Neha Mahanty

       

       

      Author's profile photo John Luong
      John Luong

      Hi Gerhard,

      yes many thanks for your guidance and quick response. We have activated the "approval required" flag for our notification Z1 and the accept and decline buttons now appear in the screen maintenance request app. Yet, in the same screen maintenance request app the "action required" button only appears for Y1 notifications. It does not appear for your Y2 or our Z1 notification types. Is there any other configuration we are missing.

      Thanks,

      John

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi John,

      Sorry for the delay in answering your question. The responsible area product owner told me that the development team is aware of this issue. Currently we are checking how we can bring this into the standard solution for customer defined notification types.

      Best regards,
      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Driton Hyseni
      Driton Hyseni

      Hi,

       

      Have this been solved yet so "action required" can be used on other notification types than Y1?

      Thanks!

       

      /Driton

      Author's profile photo Omkar G
      Omkar G

      Hi Gerhard,

      Thanks for such a informative blog. Could you please guide us with one query, we want extend Create Maintenance Request application using the SAPUI5 Visual Editor to add some custom business code in it.

      I tried to check this in the application documentation but I could find the app can be extended via Adapt Ui, nothing mentioned regarding the Adaptation project (SAPUi5 Visual Editor) . Could you guide us with this ?

      Thanks & Regards,

      Omkar.

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Omkar,

      I got in touch with the Architect of this topic and here is the update:

      1. It is possible to use the Adapt UI mode (with key user extensibility) to add custom fields in the existing Maintenance Request app. But it is not possible to implement custom logic into it.
      2. It is possible to use the UI5 Visual Editor (SAP WebIDE Visual Editor) and create a new app variant, but even here custom backend logic cannot be implemented.
      3. In the future, we might deliver a possibility to also extend the behaviour definition (in short customise the backend logic) that will then work seamlessly with app variants (so you can extend the UI as well as the backend for backend logic), but this is still wip and we cannot provide a concrete date by when we will bring in this capability.

      Best regards,
      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Omkar G
      Omkar G

      Hi Gerhard,

      Thank you for your response, made a note of it.

      Regards,

      Omkar G.

       

      Author's profile photo Yogesh Sharma
      Yogesh Sharma

      Hi Gerhard,

      Nice blog. Our client is going for S4HANA ON PREMISE 2021. As new order types and notification types are introduced, can you confirm if we go for new ones then we did not require the previous ones. I have structured them according to the process.

      Maintenance resources scheduling 43R
      Operational & overhead maintenance 4WM General Maintenance
      Improvement Maintenance 4VT Corrective maintenance
      Proactive Process 4HI Preventive maintenance
      Reactive Process 4HH Breakdown maintenance

      According to the terminology used for new ones they can be divided into above processes. Do we still require old Preventive, breakdown ad corrective or it will suffice the requirement.

       

      Regards

      Yogesh Sharma

       

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Yogesh,

      In S4HANA ON PREMISE 2021 only the new best practices for proactive and reactive process are available (see my blog post Highlights for Asset Management in SAP S/4HANA 2021). As part of the migration project you have to check whether the new processes in S4HANA ON PREMISE 2021 covers the current processes of the customer. Unfortunately a general statement is not possible here.

      Best regards,
      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Yogesh Sharma
      Yogesh Sharma

      Hi Gerhard,

       

      Sorry for the miscommunication, best practices is in 2021 on premise but Main implementation is in S/4HANA Cloud 2022. Question was related to Cloud 2022 version only.

      Regards

      Yogesh Sharma

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Yogesh,

      Does this mean you are using the "old" best practice processes BH1, BH2, and BJ2 in SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition and you are asking whether you can replace your processes based on the "old" best practice processes BH1, BH2, and BJ2 completely by using the "new" best practice processes 4HI, 4HH, 4WM, 4VT, and 43R without the need to use the "old" best practice processes in addition to the "new" best practice processes?

      Best regards,
      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Yogesh Sharma
      Yogesh Sharma

      Hi Gerhard,

      Thanks for the reply.

      Our customer is having SAP HANA 1809 on premise version in which they are using old" best practice processes BH1, BH2, and BJ2. Now they are moving to S/4HANA Cloud 2022, my question is whether we can replace the processes based on the "old" best practice processes BH1, BH2, and BJ2 completely by using the "new" best practice processes 4HI, 4HH, 4WM, 4VT, and 43R without the need to use the "old" best practice processes in addition to the "new" best practice processes as suggested by SAP and will it be supporting all new order types YA01 to YA05 according to the "new" best practice processes. Just need to understand so that best approach with new processes can be suggested to customer so that all the processes can be incorporated under new order types.

      Regards

      Yogesh Sharma

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Yogesh,
      Just need a further clarification: Will your customer migrate from SAP S/4HANA 1809 OP system to SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2022, private edition or to SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition? Current release of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition is 2302.
      Best regards,
      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Yogesh Sharma
      Yogesh Sharma

      Hi Gerhard,

       

      Yes Currently using On-Premise SAP S/4HANA 1809 System and now moving to Rise with SAP S4HANA Cloud 2022, private edition. It has latest current release. This is green filed implementation.

       

      Thanks

      Yogesh Sharma

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Yogesh,

      Please consider the explanation from Rajendra Pandey below that he posted on 31st March.

      Due to the fact that your customer moves to SAP S4HANA Cloud 2022, private edition, please keep in mind that for On Prem and Private Edition only the new scope items 4HI, 4HH are available as mentioned above.
      4WM and 4VT are only available in SAP S4HANA Cloud, public edition and there is no plan to make them available in On Prem/Privite Edition because:

      • 4WM “Operational & overhead maintenance" is a simple customizing e.g. with an additional order type. Customers can customize this in On Prem/Privite Edition by themselves. 4WM provides no additional functionality.
      • 4VT „Improvement Maintenance“ provides the project integration in public cloud based on EPPM that is different from On Prem/Privite Edition. As a result 4VT is specific for public edition and cannot made available in On Prem/Privite Edition.

      Best regards,
      Gerhard

      Author's profile photo Rajendra Pandey
      Rajendra Pandey

      Hi Yogesh,

      New Best Practices 4HI, 4HH, 4WM, 4VT uses Phase model for the lifecycle of maintenance notification and maintenance order. At this moment phase model is quite rigid but evolving.

      You may have to work out the transition path  from the old Best Practices (predominantly user statuses based control) to new best practices controlled by phases and sub-phases.

      Best Regards,

      Rajendra Pandey

      Author's profile photo Gerhard Welker
      Gerhard Welker
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Rajendra,
      Thank you very much for your explanation.
      Best regards,
      Gerhard