Asset Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108

This blog provides an overview of innovations in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 for Maintenance Management and Resource Scheduling as part of the line of business (LoB) Asset Management. Check out also the blog post Environment, Health, and Safety (EH&S) in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 as EH&S is also part of LoB Asset Management.

First, this blog post starts with the table of contents for ease of reference and allows you to navigate directly to the topic you are interested in by clicking on a specific entry:

Maintenance Planning

Lean and Limit Value Services in Maintenance Order

Maintenance Backlog Overview App – Enhancements

Tracking Status of External Procurement Items

Resource Scheduling

Graphical Management of Relationships between Order Operations

Dynamic Date Range in Time Period Filter

Maintenance Execution

Copy Maintenance Request

Collective Time Confirmations

Perform Maintenance Jobs

SAP Maintenance Assistant

Mobile application and user monitoring

Mobile Admin Overview

Material Movement – Issue and Return Parts

Interface Revisions

Extensibility

ODATA APIs

Check out my video highlighting the following release highlights for Maintenance Management:

• Graphical management of relationships between order operations in Resource Scheduling
• Batch-managed and serialized materials in Perform Maintenance Jobs app
• Entry of measurement readings in Perform Maintenance Jobs app
• Extensibility – New ODATA APIs

Video 1: Highlights for Maintenance Management and Resource Scheduling in the 2108 release

Maintenance Planning

Lean and Limit Value Services in Maintenance Order

Maintenance planners now can add services in the Change Maintenance Order app on the Operation Data tab with the following two options:

• Lean services: With this option planner can specify exact quantity of services that needs to be delivered by vendor. Planner can indicate start date and time of service relative to operation of the work order. Planner can indicate time duration needed to perform the service. Planner must use “Item category” N for these items. Item category N is defaulted by system for each service.
• Enhanced Limit value services, Maintenance planner can use these type of services, when exact quantity and price of the services is not available. For such item, quantity of 1 Activity unit would be defaulted by system. Planner can specify duration and relative start time from operation. It is mandatory for planner to specify expected price and limit value price for such services.  Planner must use “Item category” E for such items.

Fig. 1: ‘Change Maintenance Order’ app – Lean and Limit Value Services

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Maintenance Backlog Overview app – Enhancements

The Maintenance Backlog Overview app provides the maintenance planner persona a single screen view to see the details of the maintenance backlogs (orders/notifications). The planner can view the backlog based on the planning buckets that are selected in the filter section. The next figure shows a few enhancements of the app like the External Procurement Card and the Quick Links Card, as well as the 4 options to group the chart on the Maintenance Backlog Card.

Fig. 2: SAP Fiori app ‘Maintenance Backlog Overview’ – Enhancements

Watch the next video in which my colleague Markus Oertelt shows the enhancements of the Maintenance Backlog Overview app in the system:

Video 2: Maintenance Backlog Overview app – Enhancements

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Tracking Status of External Procurement Items

With the 2108 release, you can monitor the external procurement of non-stock components and services in the SAP Fiori apps Manage Maintenance Backlog and Maintenance Backlog Overview.

To allow you to monitor the external procurement of non-stock components, external operations and lean services, the system tracks the completion of several milestones, which correspond to key points in the procurement process:

• Purchase Requisition Created
• Purchase Requisition Released
• Purchase Order Sent to Vendor
• Order Confirmed by Vendor
• Order Shipped
• Order Received in Full

With these milestones planner gets reminded to complete any activities that needs to be finished before due date of the milestone and ensure that follow up for parts and services are done proactively.

Fig. 3: Overview of Due Date Calculation for Each Milestone

In the Manage Maintenance Backlog app, you can see for each non-stock component or service in a maintenance planning bucket which procurement activity is currently pending completion to reach the next milestone. A colored status indicator shows when each activity is due or if the due date has already passed.

Fig. 4: SAP Fiori app ‘Manage Maintenance Backlog’ – Next Procurement Activity 

In the Maintenance Backlog Overview app, an analytical card shows which procurement activity is currently pending for how many non-stock components and services in each maintenance planning bucket. From this card, you can navigate directly to the Purchase Requisitions app and the Purchase Orders app.

Fig. 5: SAP Fiori app ‘Maintenance Backlog Overview’ – Analytical card shows which procurement activity is currently pending

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Resource Scheduling

Graphical Management of Relationships between Order Operations

In the Maintenance Scheduling Board app, maintenance planners can now create and delete relationships between order operations directly in the chart.

In the next video, Markus will show you in the system how easy it is to

• create relationships between order operations by linking them in the chart and
• delete relationships between order operations in the chart. For this purpose, right-click the relationship that the user want to delete and select ’Delete Relationship‘ in the context menu that opens.

Video 3: SAP Fiori app ‘Maintenance Scheduling Board’ – Graphical relationship management 

The next figure shows the graphical relationship management capability on the Maintenance Scheduling Board app and the new button to Trigger Order Scheduling:

Fig. 6: SAP Fiori app ‘Maintenance Scheduling Board’ – Graphical relationship management and new button to Trigger Order Scheduling

In addition, the newly available context menu enables triggering of actions for operations or existing relationships (deletion).

Fig. 7: SAP Fiori app ‘Maintenance Scheduling Board’ – Right-click context menu to trigger actions

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Dynamic Date Range in Time Period Filter

Using the time period filter you can now set a dynamic date range relative to the current date. To set the range, specify how many days in the past and how many days in the future you want to include in it.

The dynamic date range filter with +/- days selection is now available in the apps

• Manage Work Center Utilization
• Maintenance Scheduling Board
• Assign Maintenance Order Operations.

Fig. 8: ‘Manage Work Center Utilization’ app – Dynamic Date Range in Time Period Filter

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Maintenance Execution

Copy Maintenance Request

Maintenance Supervisors, Planners, and Technicians can now copy existing maintenance requests that are in the status Submitted, Accepted, or Completed using the Copy option. The new maintenance requests are saved as drafts and you can view them in the Draft
tab. Till you submit the maintenance request, the request remains as draft. When you copy a maintenance request, the information from the existing request is copied into the new request. Long text is not copied from the existing maintenance request so you can use the template to add long text. You can choose one or more drafts and delete them.

Fig. 9: SAP Fiori app ‘My Maintenance Request’ –  New Copy button

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Collective Time Confirmations

The Find Maintenance Order and Operation app, which lists the orders and their operations in your system, is enhanced to help maintenance supervisor effectively record collective time confirmations.  You will see that additional columns order and operation getting downloaded while downloading the template. The additional discerptions will help you to understand the context of the order and operation while filling the confirmation data. This will help in improving the quality of data by avoiding the errors since the reference data will be available in the same sheet.

Fig. 10: SAP Fiori app ‘Find Maintenance Order and Operation’ – additional columns order and operation getting downloaded while downloading the template

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Perform Maintenance Jobs

Support batch-managed and serialized materials, as well as for materials with split valuations

In the previous release we have launched the SAP Fiori app Perform Maintenance Jobs’ as the one-stop solution for maintenance technicians which allows them to access the outstanding maintenance jobs and to document the executed maintenance work. Now, the Perform Maintenance Jobs app offers additional support for batch-managed and serialized materials, as well as for materials with split valuations. This improvement is important when the maintenance technician issues or returns components.

Fig. 11: SAP Fiori app ‘Perform Maintenance Jobs’ – Support for batch-managed and serialized materials, as well as for materials with split valuations

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Mass Capturing of Measurement Documents across Technical Objects

The Perform Maintenance Jobs app allows the maintenance technician to choose/select the technical object (at various levels) for recording measurements. The maintenance technician will now have more flexibility to select/choose the technical object(s) whose measurement has to be recorded and will be able to access the technical object(s) at the following levels:

• Maintenance Order Operation
• Maintenance Order Object List
• Maintenance Order Header

Fig. 12: SAP Fiori app ‘Perform Maintenance Jobs’ – entry of measurement readings for multiple technical objects

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Unplanned Components

The maintenance technician will now have 3 options to search and issue materials from:

• All Material: This is a list of all materials that belong to the same plant as the maintenance order.
• Bill of Material: This is a list of all materials that belong to the BOMs of the technical objects/assembly linked to the order header, operation or object list level.
• History: This is a list of all the materials which have been issued in the past for a similar order type and/or technical object.

Fig. 13: SAP Fiori app ‘Perform Maintenance Jobs’ – 3 options to search and issue materials

Also watch the system demos about the Perform Maintenance Jobs app enhancements which are embedded in my release highlights video at the top of this blog.

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SAP Maintenance Assistant

SAP Maintenance Assistant is a mobile solution that enables a maintenance technician to perform daily tasks related to asset management launched first with the previous release (see my 2105 blog). Now, SAP Maintenance Assistant offers few new features:

Mobile application and user monitoring

Administration for SAP Maintenance Assistant

The next figure shows the Collection of SAP Fiori applications for Mobile Administrator to perform the administration of the Mobile Application Integration Framework (MAIF) with their help the admin can get details to assist mobile users resolve issues during data sync, e.g., trigger a re-download of data after resolving client state issue. In addition, the apps provide logs and KPIs to help identify performance optimizations through the configuration of filters and mobile application parameters.

Fig. 14: Administration for SAP Maintenance Assistant

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Mobile Admin Overview

The Mobile Admin Overview app provides a Dashboard view of administration application which allows an administrator to monitor

• Active Mobile Users
• Mobile Dependent Object​
• Client State

In addition, the app offers search and filter capabilities to explore logins and objects for specific mobile users, as well as chart views of client state and dependent objects to aid troubleshooting.

Fig. 15: ‘Mobile Admin Overview (MAIF)’ app

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Material Movement – Issue and Return Parts

Now, a maintenance technician can issue the parts used to perform an operation, and return any unused parts by using the SAP Maintenance Assistant. Serialized parts may be added (or returned) by entering or scanning the serial number.

Fig. 16: SAP Maintenance Assistant – Issue and Return Parts

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Interface Revisions

For confirmation entry fields the technician can see Planned Effort time and input Remaining Work value when confirming operations.

The side-swipe for contextual actions allows the user easily to access common action(s) with a side swipe on object cells, e.g., start an operation, set time confirmation.

Fig. 17: SAP Maintenance Assistant – Interface Revisions

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Extensibility

ODATA APIs

The next figure provides an overview of enhanced and new ODATA APIs in Maintenance Management:

Fig. 18: Overview of enhanced and new ODATA APIs

For further information read the What’s New Document (chapter 3.2.4. to 3.2.10) and check out the SAP API Business Hub.

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Thanks for reading this blog post. Stay tuned!

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

• The Link Collection for Asset Management
• The Link Collection for Manufacturing & Supply Chain

Recently, my colleague Markus Oertelt has started an interesting blog series about
Discrete Industries in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.

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

• SAP S/4HANA Cloud release info here
• Jan Gilg SAP News Center article here
• Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2108 Release Blog
• Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here and previous release highlights here
• Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
• SAP S/4HANA PSCC Digital Enablement Wheel here
• Early Release Webinar Series here
• Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
• openSAP Microlearning for SAP S/4HANA here
• Best practices for SAP S/4HANA Cloud here
• SAP S/4HANA Cloud 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