This blog provides an overview of innovations for maintenance management and resource scheduling capabilities in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111.
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:
Check out my video highlighting the following release highlights for maintenance management and resource scheduling:
Video 1: Highlights for maintenance management and resource scheduling in the 2111 release
With the 2111 release, maintenance orders are integrated with project systems for better visibility of overall spend for a project's budget including the costs of maintenance orders. Important here is, that this integration is currently supported only for investment projects. This means that this integration is not currently supported for revenue projects, for example.
In the next video, my colleague Markus Oertelt demonstrates the integration of maintenance orders with an investment project. As a Project Manager or Project Financial Controller he opens the Project Cost Report app, selects the investment project, and expands the project hierarchy. Then he sets the filter parameter Include Orders equal to Yes. The term Orders stands here for maintenance orders because in the combined cost report hierarchy, only the costs related to maintenance orders are shown. The other orders are not shown. The commitments generated out of the PRs and POs are shown against the WBS element directly. Then he presses the Go button to select the data including maintenance orders. After expanding the selected project hierarchy you see the numbers of the related maintenance orders.
Video 2: 'Project Cost Report' app - Integration of maintenance orders with an investment project
In addition, I would like to point out here the enhancement of the ‘Project Planning’ application which enables now the navigation to project-related orders like maintenance orders as described in the Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 blog of my colleague Corina Kinzel.
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With 2111, we offer mass change capabilities for Maintenance Orders, Maintenance Items and Technical Objects. The mass change will be executed through a background job to prevent any performance or timeout issues. You can simulate the application job to check the correctness of entered changes.
Maintenance Planners can now select multiple maintenance notifications in the Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders app and modify the maintenance orders by pressing the Mass Edit Order button.
Fig. 1: SAP Fiori app 'Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders' - Mass Edit Orders
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The Find Maintenance Items app allows you now to perform the mass editing of items. Select multiple maintenance items and press the Mass Edit Items button.
Fig. 2: SAP Fiori app 'Find Maintenance Items' - Mass Edit Items
Watch the next video where I demonstrate the mass editing of maintenance items in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.
Video 3: 'Find Maintenance Items' app - perform the mass editing of maintenance items
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The SAP Fiori app Find Technical Object has been enhanced to perform mass changes of equipments and functional locations. You can change the status of the selected technical objects as well as perform the mass editing of general data and organizational data for multiple technical objects.
Fig. 3: SAP Fiori app 'Find Technical Object' - Mass editing of equipments
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With the 2105 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 (see my 2105 blog). With 2111, this app offers many useful new features:
The new Follow-On Notification feature in the Perform Maintenance Jobs application allows the Maintenance Technician to create a follow-on notification request for issues that come across during maintenance job.
On submitting the maintenance request, it will create a new follow-on request. The new maintenance request does not have any interdependencies with the current job. In addition, a document flow link between the order and the newly created maintenance request will be created for further analysis purposes.
Fig. 4: SAP Fiori app 'Perform Maintenance Jobs' - Creation of a follow-on notification request
Documents associated to the maintenance order can be viewed with ‘Display Document Flow’ menu option in the Display Maintenance Order app. The Follow-On Notifications action allows user to view Follow-On Notifications associated with the maintenance order.
Fig. 5: 'Display Maintenance Order' app - Display Document Flow to view the Follow On Notifications associated with the maintenance order
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New filters for Equipment and Functional Location at both Order and Operation level are now available in the Perform Maintenance Jobs app.
Fig. 6: SAP Fiori app 'Perform Maintenance Jobs' - Additional filter for order and operation
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Maintenance technician can now provide in the Perform Maintenance Jobs app
○ the posting date while posting time confirmation and
○ the details of reason for varying from planned efforts.
Fig. 7: SAP Fiori app 'Perform Maintenance Jobs' - Additional fields on 'Record Time' popup
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Since the previous release, the Perform Maintenance Jobs app offers additional support for batch-managed and serialized materials, as well as for materials with split valuations when the maintenance technician issues or returns components (see my 2108 blog).
With 2111, the Bill of Materials (BOM) value help on the Post Goods Issue popup offers the following features:
Fig. 8: SAP Fiori app 'Perform Maintenance Jobs' - Unplanned Components: BOM Value Help
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Regulatory, health, and safety requirements mandate the need to perform and complete the required
maintenance activities for mission-critical assets within a fixed date. Defining a final due date based on the priority of a maintenance activity enables a maintenance planner to adhere to the guidelines and be able to prepare and analyze reports for such maintenance orders or maintenance notifications that have not been completed by the final due date. There can be various reasons for not being able to complete a maintenance activity by the final due date, such as a shortage of manpower, material availability issues, an unplanned emergency, and so on. Using the final due date value, a maintenance planner can get a report of preventive maintenance orders that have not been completed by the final due date. This can help the planner investigate, identify, and fix the issues so that they do not occur again.
The final due date is determined as follows:
In the next three figures, let me explain the logic using the example highlighted in red.
Fig. 9: Self-service configuration UI - Define Priorities for Each Priority Type
For instance have a look at the configuration of priority type Y2 - Proactive with priority 2 - High which is outlined with a red line in the figure above. The Duration for Final Due Date is 2 days.
The next figure shows the maintenance plan:
Fig. 10: 'Change Maintenance Plan' app - Priority, Start Date for Scheduling, and Cycle
Fig. 11: 'Schedule Maintenance Plan' app - first call is released, planned date is 01st Dec 2021
The Final Due Date of the maintenance order is determined for 3rd December 2021 (01st Dec 2021 + 2 days):
Fig. 12: Final Due Date in the maintenance order is 3rd December 2021 (01st Dec 2021 + 2 days)
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Procurement milestones allow you to monitor the external procurement of non-stock components and services in the SAP Fiori apps Manage Maintenance Backlog and Maintenance Backlog Overview.
Enhanced status symbols and an improved calculation logic make it easier to monitor the procurement status of externally-procured materials and services. These status symbols clearly indicate possible delays in the procurement process and show which milestones have been completed, which ones are in progress, and which ones are still open. At the same time, the system now also considers the procurement status when determining the overall readiness of a maintenance order.
Fig. 13: 'Manage Maintenance Backlog' app – Enhanced status symbols for Procurement Milestones
The new configuration activity Define Assignment Rules for Procurement Milestones allows you to define custom rules for the procurement milestones that you want to monitor.
Fig. 14: Self-service configuration UI - Define Assignment Rules for Procurement Milestones
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Now you can print shop papers for single maintenance order / maintenance notification. You can find the Print button as highlighted on the following screenshot. After pressing the Print button you will get the shown pop-up for managing the output with several capabilities described in red comments on the screenshot.
Fig. 15: Print shop papers for single maintenance order / maintenance notification
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With 2111, we offer a few new APIs:
In addition, several APIs have been enhanced:
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You can now check the criticality of assets (technical objects) by showing the ABC indicator that was set for an asset. The ABC indicator is also shown for the maintenance orders associated with an asset and the maintenance order operations included in the order. We've added the ABC Indicator filter as well as the new columns ABC Indicator and ABC Indicator Description to several apps:
As an example, the next figure shows the new ABC Indicator filter on the Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners app.
Fig. 16: SAP Fiori app 'Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners' - ABC indicator filter
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We've provided several new features in the Maintenance Scheduling Board app.
You can now configure the display of work center utilization in the chart.
Fig. 17: 'Maintenance Scheduling Board' app - Configuration for utilization indicator thresholds
In addition, you can now change the available work center capacity directly in the app.
Fig. 18: 'Maintenance Scheduling Board' app - Change Work Center Capacity
In the next video, my colleague Markus Oertelt demonstrates both enhancements:
Video 4: Enhancements of the 'Maintenance Scheduling Board' app
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In the Manage Work Center Utilization app, you can now freely define the percentage for showing the target utilization of your work centers in the utilization chart.
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You can now show maintenance events in the chart of the View Maintenance Schedules for Assets app. This allows you to quickly find time windows during which an asset is available for maintenance. The next figure shows a maintenance event with planned shutdown (red colored) and a maintenance event without planned shutdown (grey colored).
Fig. 20: 'View Maintenance Schedule for Asset' app - Maintenance events
Watch the next video where my colleague Markus Oertelt first creates maintenance events with the Manage Maintenance Planning Buckets app that he then views in the app View Maintenance Schedule for Asset.
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In the Manage Schedules app, changes in the material availability status are now recorded in the activity log.
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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:
Recently, my colleague Markus Oertelt has started an interesting blog series about
Discrete Industries in SAP S/4HANA Cloud.
Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via @GerhardWelker and LinkedIn
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 Management
Integration of maintenance orders with Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management
Mass Editing of Maintenance Orders, Items and Technical Objects
Perform Maintenance Jobs - Follow On Notification and further enhancements
Final Due Date in Maintenance Orders Based on Priority of Maintenance Items
Manage Maintenance Backlog App - Enhancements for Procurement Milestones
Output Management for Maintenance Notifications and Maintenance Orders
Extensibility - ODATA APIs
Resource Scheduling
Check Criticality of Orders and Assets
Maintenance Scheduling Board - Utilization Indicator Threshold
Manage Work Center Utilization - Target Utilization Line
View Maintenance Schedule for Asset - Maintenance Events
Manage Schedules - Material Availability Status in Activity Log
Check out my video highlighting the following release highlights for maintenance management and resource scheduling:
- Integration of maintenance orders with Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management
- Mass change capabilities for maintenance orders and items, and technical objects
- Maintenance events in the chart of the View Maintenance Schedules for Assets app
- New features in the Maintenance Scheduling Board app
Video 1: Highlights for maintenance management and resource scheduling in the 2111 release
Maintenance Management
Integration of maintenance orders with Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management
With the 2111 release, maintenance orders are integrated with project systems for better visibility of overall spend for a project's budget including the costs of maintenance orders. Important here is, that this integration is currently supported only for investment projects. This means that this integration is not currently supported for revenue projects, for example.
In the next video, my colleague Markus Oertelt demonstrates the integration of maintenance orders with an investment project. As a Project Manager or Project Financial Controller he opens the Project Cost Report app, selects the investment project, and expands the project hierarchy. Then he sets the filter parameter Include Orders equal to Yes. The term Orders stands here for maintenance orders because in the combined cost report hierarchy, only the costs related to maintenance orders are shown. The other orders are not shown. The commitments generated out of the PRs and POs are shown against the WBS element directly. Then he presses the Go button to select the data including maintenance orders. After expanding the selected project hierarchy you see the numbers of the related maintenance orders.
Video 2: 'Project Cost Report' app - Integration of maintenance orders with an investment project
In addition, I would like to point out here the enhancement of the ‘Project Planning’ application which enables now the navigation to project-related orders like maintenance orders as described in the Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management in SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 blog of my colleague Corina Kinzel.
(back to top)
Mass Editing of Maintenance Orders, Items and Technical Objects
With 2111, we offer mass change capabilities for Maintenance Orders, Maintenance Items and Technical Objects. The mass change will be executed through a background job to prevent any performance or timeout issues. You can simulate the application job to check the correctness of entered changes.
Mass Editing of Maintenance Orders
Maintenance Planners can now select multiple maintenance notifications in the Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders app and modify the maintenance orders by pressing the Mass Edit Order button.
Fig. 1: SAP Fiori app 'Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders' - Mass Edit Orders
(back to top)
Mass Editing of Maintenance Items
The Find Maintenance Items app allows you now to perform the mass editing of items. Select multiple maintenance items and press the Mass Edit Items button.
Fig. 2: SAP Fiori app 'Find Maintenance Items' - Mass Edit Items
Watch the next video where I demonstrate the mass editing of maintenance items in the SAP S/4HANA Cloud system.
Video 3: 'Find Maintenance Items' app - perform the mass editing of maintenance items
(back to top)
Mass Editing of Technical Objects
The SAP Fiori app Find Technical Object has been enhanced to perform mass changes of equipments and functional locations. You can change the status of the selected technical objects as well as perform the mass editing of general data and organizational data for multiple technical objects.
Fig. 3: SAP Fiori app 'Find Technical Object' - Mass editing of equipments
(back to top)
Perform Maintenance Jobs – Follow On Notification and further enhancements
With the 2105 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 (see my 2105 blog). With 2111, this app offers many useful new features:
Follow On Notification
The new Follow-On Notification feature in the Perform Maintenance Jobs application allows the Maintenance Technician to create a follow-on notification request for issues that come across during maintenance job.
On submitting the maintenance request, it will create a new follow-on request. The new maintenance request does not have any interdependencies with the current job. In addition, a document flow link between the order and the newly created maintenance request will be created for further analysis purposes.
Fig. 4: SAP Fiori app 'Perform Maintenance Jobs' - Creation of a follow-on notification request
Documents associated to the maintenance order can be viewed with ‘Display Document Flow’ menu option in the Display Maintenance Order app. The Follow-On Notifications action allows user to view Follow-On Notifications associated with the maintenance order.
Fig. 5: 'Display Maintenance Order' app - Display Document Flow to view the Follow On Notifications associated with the maintenance order
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Additional Filters on List page for Equipment and Functional Location
New filters for Equipment and Functional Location at both Order and Operation level are now available in the Perform Maintenance Jobs app.
Fig. 6: SAP Fiori app 'Perform Maintenance Jobs' - Additional filter for order and operation
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Additional fields on Record Time popup
Maintenance technician can now provide in the Perform Maintenance Jobs app
○ the posting date while posting time confirmation and
○ the details of reason for varying from planned efforts.
Fig. 7: SAP Fiori app 'Perform Maintenance Jobs' - Additional fields on 'Record Time' popup
(back to top)
Unplanned Components: BOM Value Help Enhancement
Since the previous release, the Perform Maintenance Jobs app offers additional support for batch-managed and serialized materials, as well as for materials with split valuations when the maintenance technician issues or returns components (see my 2108 blog).
With 2111, the Bill of Materials (BOM) value help on the Post Goods Issue popup offers the following features:
- The Technical Objects linked at all the 3 levels i.e. Order, Operation and Object List are now available
- For Functional Location BOM, construction type selection is enabled
- Assembly BOM is also added as an available selection option
- The item quantity can now be viewed as a result column
Fig. 8: SAP Fiori app 'Perform Maintenance Jobs' - Unplanned Components: BOM Value Help
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Final Due Date in Maintenance Orders Based on Priority of Maintenance Items
Regulatory, health, and safety requirements mandate the need to perform and complete the required
maintenance activities for mission-critical assets within a fixed date. Defining a final due date based on the priority of a maintenance activity enables a maintenance planner to adhere to the guidelines and be able to prepare and analyze reports for such maintenance orders or maintenance notifications that have not been completed by the final due date. There can be various reasons for not being able to complete a maintenance activity by the final due date, such as a shortage of manpower, material availability issues, an unplanned emergency, and so on. Using the final due date value, a maintenance planner can get a report of preventive maintenance orders that have not been completed by the final due date. This can help the planner investigate, identify, and fix the issues so that they do not occur again.
The final due date is determined as follows:
- As a prerequisite, the duration for the final due date and the unit of measure for the final due date must be maintained in the configuration activity Define Priorities for Each Priority Type.
- Assign the maintenance item within the maintenance plan to one of the priorities.
- The final due date is the sum of the following:
○ The planned date of the call of a scheduled plan's cycle
○ The duration of the final due date.
In the next three figures, let me explain the logic using the example highlighted in red.
Fig. 9: Self-service configuration UI - Define Priorities for Each Priority Type
For instance have a look at the configuration of priority type Y2 - Proactive with priority 2 - High which is outlined with a red line in the figure above. The Duration for Final Due Date is 2 days.
The next figure shows the maintenance plan:
- If a single cycle maintenance plan with a cycle length of 1 month with one item is created, and the item is assigned with the priority as high,
- and if the start date for scheduling of the plan is 01st Nov 2021
Fig. 10: 'Change Maintenance Plan' app - Priority, Start Date for Scheduling, and Cycle
- and the first call is released, planned date of the call is 01st Dec 2021 as you can see in the following figure:
Fig. 11: 'Schedule Maintenance Plan' app - first call is released, planned date is 01st Dec 2021
The Final Due Date of the maintenance order is determined for 3rd December 2021 (01st Dec 2021 + 2 days):
Fig. 12: Final Due Date in the maintenance order is 3rd December 2021 (01st Dec 2021 + 2 days)
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Manage Maintenance Backlog App – Enhancements for Procurement Milestones
Procurement milestones allow you to monitor the external procurement of non-stock components and services in the SAP Fiori apps Manage Maintenance Backlog and Maintenance Backlog Overview.
Enhanced status symbols and an improved calculation logic make it easier to monitor the procurement status of externally-procured materials and services. These status symbols clearly indicate possible delays in the procurement process and show which milestones have been completed, which ones are in progress, and which ones are still open. At the same time, the system now also considers the procurement status when determining the overall readiness of a maintenance order.
Fig. 13: 'Manage Maintenance Backlog' app – Enhanced status symbols for Procurement Milestones
The new configuration activity Define Assignment Rules for Procurement Milestones allows you to define custom rules for the procurement milestones that you want to monitor.
Fig. 14: Self-service configuration UI - Define Assignment Rules for Procurement Milestones
(back to top)
Output Management for Maintenance Notifications and Maintenance Orders
Now you can print shop papers for single maintenance order / maintenance notification. You can find the Print button as highlighted on the following screenshot. After pressing the Print button you will get the shown pop-up for managing the output with several capabilities described in red comments on the screenshot.
Fig. 15: Print shop papers for single maintenance order / maintenance notification
(back to top)
Extensibility – ODATA APIs
With 2111, we offer a few new APIs:
- Read API for Catalog type cause
- Read API for Catalog Profile
- Read API for Catalog type cause
- Read API for Detection Method
In addition, several APIs have been enhanced:
- The Maintenance Plan API enables external systems and other consumers to schedule maintenance plans and to update the status of maintenance plans.
- The Maintenance Order API enables external systems and other consumers to create, update and read maintenance order data. With 2108, this API was launched as a read only service first (see my 2108 blog).
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Resource Scheduling
Check Criticality of Orders and Assets
You can now check the criticality of assets (technical objects) by showing the ABC indicator that was set for an asset. The ABC indicator is also shown for the maintenance orders associated with an asset and the maintenance order operations included in the order. We've added the ABC Indicator filter as well as the new columns ABC Indicator and ABC Indicator Description to several apps:
- Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners (added filter)
- Manage Work Center Utilization (added filter + columns)
- Maintenance Scheduling Board (added filter + columns)
- View Maintenance Schedule for Assets (added columns)
- Assign Maintenance Order Operations (added filter + columns)
- Manage Schedules (added columns)
As an example, the next figure shows the new ABC Indicator filter on the Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners app.
Fig. 16: SAP Fiori app 'Resource Scheduling for Maintenance Planners' - ABC indicator filter
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Maintenance Scheduling Board – Enhancements
We've provided several new features in the Maintenance Scheduling Board app.
Configuration for utilization indicator thresholds
You can now configure the display of work center utilization in the chart.
Fig. 17: 'Maintenance Scheduling Board' app - Configuration for utilization indicator thresholds
Changing the available work center capacity
In addition, you can now change the available work center capacity directly in the app.
Fig. 18: 'Maintenance Scheduling Board' app - Change Work Center Capacity
In the next video, my colleague Markus Oertelt demonstrates both enhancements:
Video 4: Enhancements of the 'Maintenance Scheduling Board' app
(back to top)
Manage Work Center Utilization – Target Utilization Line
In the Manage Work Center Utilization app, you can now freely define the percentage for showing the target utilization of your work centers in the utilization chart.
(back to top)
View Maintenance Schedule for Asset – Maintenance Events
You can now show maintenance events in the chart of the View Maintenance Schedules for Assets app. This allows you to quickly find time windows during which an asset is available for maintenance. The next figure shows a maintenance event with planned shutdown (red colored) and a maintenance event without planned shutdown (grey colored).
Fig. 20: 'View Maintenance Schedule for Asset' app - Maintenance events
Watch the next video where my colleague Markus Oertelt first creates maintenance events with the Manage Maintenance Planning Buckets app that he then views in the app View Maintenance Schedule for Asset.
(back to top)
Manage Schedules – Material Availability Status in Activity Log
In the Manage Schedules app, changes in the material availability status are now recorded in the activity log.
(back to top)
Thanks for reading this blog post. Stay tuned!
You will find a collection of my SAP S/4HANA Cloud release blogs here:
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
- Sven Denecken’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud 2111 Release Blog
- Latest SAP S/4HANA Cloud Release Blogs here
- Product videos on our SAP S/4HANA Cloud and SAP S/4HANA YouTube playlist
- Check out our brand-new Early Release Series Brochure!
- Inside SAP S/4HANA Podcast here
- openSAP Microlearning for Manufacturing in 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
Follow us via @SAP and #S4HANA, or myself via @GerhardWelker and LinkedIn
- SAP Managed Tags:
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