Introducing SAP Maintenance Assistant for SAP S/4HANA Cloud

The SAP Mobile Asset Management team is pleased to announce SAP Maintenance Assistant, our brand new mobile maintenance execution solution designed for SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2105. The fully offline solution will enhance technician tool time, providing on-hand asset and maintenance event-related data, when and where the technician needs it.

The application leverages Fiori for iOS and Fiori for Android design languages for a best-in-class user experience, and supports phone and tablet form factors for iOS and Android.

What is it?

Most simply, we want to bring the benefits of mobile maintenance execution to SAP S/4HANA Cloud customers.

Our SAP Asset Manager customers (using on-premise or single-tenant Cloud backend) report that mobility has been a significant contributor to reducing unplanned downtime and improving overall operational efficiency. Their maintenance teams can stay in the field close to their assets, the mobile solution helps them collect better data, and easily attach pictures with personalized annotations, giving the customer a complete picture of asset health and condition.

While the two solutions have a lot in common, there are some important differences that led our team to develop SAP Maintenance Assistant.

Why a new app?

SAP S/4HANA Cloud introduces the new phase model concept as an alternative to system and user statuses. The two levels of process hierarchy are set by SAP and cannot be changed. SAP Maintenance Assistant is designed specifically for maintenance technicians working in this best practice phase model.

Read New Phase Model for the Maintenance Processes in S/4HANA Cloud for more information

The phase model approach is not yet available to on-premise customers. Additionally, SAP S/4HANA Cloud has limited extensibility compared to our on-premise customers where we see a lot of customization to accommodate process and industry needs. SAP Asset Manager is highly customizable to meet those needs, whereas SAP Maintenance Assistant may not be modified.

After weighing these and other considerations, we decided to share the best ideas across our applications while maintaining the flexibility to innovate each with the capabilities of the backend solution.

What does it do?

SAP Maintenance Assistant brings key functionality to the mobile device for maintenance technicians working in the Execution and Post Execution phases in the nine-phase asset management maintenance process.

Execute operations

Completing operations is a major part of a technician’s day, and SAP Maintenance Assistant brings these front-and-center to the overview page. Right away, the technician sees My Operations with assigned tasks to be executed, able to start, hold, and complete operations.

The technician may view and edit operation details, explore related technical objects, add notes and attach pictures and files. The technician also has access to all order operations assigned to the work center, and may pick up unassigned operations.

Manage maintenance requests

A maintenance technician needs to stay on top of Maintenance Requests that require further action. The application allows the technician to easily add notes and attach images to show the condition of the asset.

Creating new maintenance requests on the mobile client is simple and the technician has the option of marking “minor work” requests which may be completed immediately.

Take measurement readings

Here we bring the a great feature from SAP Asset Manager to enable a technician to record measurement points of technical objects individually or in a single form.

Easily view a list of all measuring points for a technical object and dive into measuring point details, including historical readings with a chart view.

Capture malfunction data

Tracking the cause of malfunctions is important for planning proactive maintenance. The application allows a technician to enter malfunction information for a maintenance request when completing an operation.

The technician may enter damage codes and attach images and files, providing a snapshot of the asset condition.

Manage time confirmations

When completing an operation, the technician is prompted to enter a time confirmation. It is also possible to enter a record separately.

The overview page includes a Labor Time section for easy access to view and edit the technician’s time confirmations, including historical entries. The entries for each day are grouped by operation.

View associated technical objects

Maintenance technicians often need information about equipment and functional locations related to their assigned orders, or those assigned to their work center colleagues. All of the technical objects are available on the mobile device.

The technician may view details of the technical objects and explore related objects and view measuring points. A consolidated hierarchy view is also available to navigate the object relationships.

When is the release available?

SAP Maintenance Assistant is available now. The application is publicly available and includes an offline demo mode for viewing and testing the functionality. The application may be downloaded from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.

We welcome your reviews and feedback.