Composite Application for Maintenance Order Processing

(1)

SAP DEVELOPER NETWORK | sdn.sap.com BUSINESS PROCESS EXPERT COMMUNITY | bpx.sap.com

Composite Application for Maintenance Order Processing

Summary

Find out how the composite application Maintenance Order Processing enables companies in various industries to efficiently and cost-effectively handle malfunctions reported via a document or an external monitoring system. It supports a single guided procedure for creating, approving, assigning, and confirming maintenance work orders.

Author: Steffen Scholz Company: SAP AG

Created on: 12 November 2007

(2)

Table of Content

Introduction – Business Context ...3

Benefits ...3

Scenario I: Form-Based Defect Capture ...5

Report Malfunction via SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe...5

Approve or Reject Maintenance Request ...5

Complete Maintenance Order and Assign Technician ...5

Confirm Order ...5

Scenario II: Defect Reporting by Monitoring System...7

Report Malfunction and Create Maintenance Order ...7

Complete Maintenance Order and Assign Technician ...7

Confirm Order ...7

Copyright...8

(3)

Introduction – Business Context

In the area of processing maintenance orders, companies often work with multiple, nonintegrated applications. Many of these applications are proprietary developments with very basic functionality. Ineffective paper-based processes with a high error rate are very common.

A guided procedure that is supported by interactive forms and covers the complete life cycle from

creation to final completion of a maintenance order could increase efficiency and cost control through one integrated process.

The composite application Maintenance Order Processing enables companies of various industries to efficiently and cost-effectively handle malfunctions reported via a document or an external monitoring system. It supports a single guided procedure for creating, approving, assigning, and confirming maintenance work orders.

Verify Notification Supervisor

Complete Order Confirm Work Technician Capture Defect

Inspector Planner

SAP® ERP (Logistics, HR)

SAP NetWeaver®

ESR ESR

Create notification

Maintenance Order Processing

Create order Read notification

Change notification

Change order Read order

Read technician

Change order Read order

Create confirmation Describe a

malfunction in an interactive form (offline or online)

Verify and approve notification to create a maintenance order

Specify tasks and assign a technician

Confirm work in an interactive form (offline or online)

Benefits

By using the composite application for maintenance order processing, companies can achieve the following business benefits:

• Increased process efficiency and quality by: o Reducing manual error prone process steps o Speeding up business processes

o Offering high usability for occasional users

• Increased process transparency

• Increased flexibility since the composite application:

o Is model driven and uses standardized enterprise services o Is easy to adapt by simply adding further process steps

(4)

o Extends the reach to new user groups Furthermore, the use of SAP® Interactive Forms by Adobe:

o Changes paper-based processes into electronic processes o Enhances usability through familiar look-and-feel

o Supports offline scenarios o Avoids manual data re-entry

(5)

Scenario I: Form-Based Defect Capture

Report Malfunction via SAP Interactive Forms by Adobe

A maintenance inspector detects damage at a machine being inspected. Using a laptop, the inspector describes the malfunction in an interactive form by entering text about the malfunction, the number of the damaged equipment, codes about type and cause of the damage, date and time of the damage, priority, and a breakdown indicator. When the inspector submits the form, an e-mail is created with the interactive form attached and is sent to a maintenance supervisor.

If the inspector is currently offline, the e-mail remains in the outbox of the e-mail client. As soon as the inspector is online, the e-mail is sent automatically, and a guided procedure is started on the recipient’s side.

On the technical side: at runtime the guided procedure periodically retrieves all incoming e-mails in a predefined inbox of Microsoft Exchange Server and processes any attached interactive forms. Approve or Reject Maintenance Request

The maintenance supervisor accesses the universal worklist (UWL) of her portal work center and finds two new work items. Each item contains an interactive form with a malfunction description reported by different maintenance inspectors.

On the technical side: The UWL is a portal user-interface pattern for processing incoming tasks and can be applied for each role in process flow.

The supervisor checks the first request for maintenance. After reading the malfunction information, the supervisor decides that a technician is not needed to repair the malfunction. Therefore, no work order has to be created. The supervisor adds a comment to the maintenance request and rejects it. The request gets the status “closed.”

The supervisor checks the second request. This malfunction has to be repaired by a technician. When the supervisor approves this maintenance request, a maintenance order is created automatically and forwarded to a maintenance planner.

Complete Maintenance Order and Assign Technician

As the next processor role in the process flow, the maintenance planner accesses the UWL of his portal work center and finds a new work item. The planner completes the maintenance order by describing the tasks needed to repair the malfunction, including an estimated time for its fulfillment, and defines the required materials.

The planner assigns a technician to the maintenance order. Based on availability, skills (optional), and work-center allocation, the guided procedure displays all technicians that are able to do the work. The planner selects the technician with the lowest number of assigned open orders and saves the order. The maintenance order is forwarded to the technician.

Confirm Order

Accessing her inbox, the technician finds a new item containing an Adobe interactive work-order form. The work-order form contains the damage description and detailed information about the repair work to be done. After finishing the work, the technician enters the following confirmation data into the interactive form:

• Actual start and end time of the work

• Additional confirmation text

• Needed materials

• Number of any damaged equipment removed

• Number of the new equipment installed

(6)

When the technician submits the form, a confirmation is created; the maintenance request and maintenance order are closed.

Instead of sending a guided-procedure work item to the technician, an e-mail with the Adobe interactive work order form attached can be sent to any internal or external e-mail address. Similar to the guided- procedure work item, the e-mail with the confirmed work order form can be sent to the guided procedure. In general, it is possible to process Adobe interactive forms online or offline.

(7)

Scenario II: Defect Reporting by Monitoring System

Report Malfunction and Create Maintenance Order

As an alternative to manually capturing the malfunction via an Adobe interactive form, the reporting process can be automated by linking an external monitoring system to the guided procedure. When the monitoring system reports a malfunction, the composite application creates a maintenance order automatically based on the alarm ticket and forwards the order to the maintenance planner. Complete Maintenance Order and Assign Technician

Similar to scenario I. Confirm Order Similar to scenario I.

(8)

Copyright

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or for any purpose without the express permission of SAP AG. The information contained herein may be changed without prior notice.

Some software products marketed by SAP AG and its distributors contain proprietary software components of other software vendors.

Microsoft, Windows, Outlook, and PowerPoint are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

IBM, DB2, DB2 Universal Database, OS/2, Parallel Sysplex, MVS/ESA, AIX, S/390, AS/400, OS/390, OS/400, iSeries, pSeries, xSeries, zSeries, System i, System i5, System p, System p5, System x, System z, System z9, z/OS, AFP, Intelligent Miner, WebSphere, Netfinity, Tivoli, Informix, i5/OS, POWER, POWER5, POWER5+, OpenPower and PowerPC are trademarks or registered trademarks of IBM Corporation.

Adobe, the Adobe logo, Acrobat, PostScript, and Reader are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries.

Oracle is a registered trademark of Oracle Corporation.

UNIX, X/Open, OSF/1, and Motif are registered trademarks of the Open Group.

Citrix, ICA, Program Neighborhood, MetaFrame, WinFrame, VideoFrame, and MultiWin are trademarks or registered trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc.

HTML, XML, XHTML and W3C are trademarks or registered trademarks of W3C®, World Wide Web Consortium, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Java is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

JavaScript is a registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc., used under license for technology invented and implemented by Netscape.

MaxDB is a trademark of MySQL AB, Sweden.

SAP, R/3, mySAP, mySAP.com, xApps, xApp, SAP NetWeaver, and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries all over the world. All other product and service names mentioned are the trademarks of their respective companies. Data contained in this document serves informational purposes only. National product specifications may vary.

These materials are subject to change without notice. These materials are provided by SAP AG and its affiliated companies ("SAP Group") for informational purposes only, without representation or warranty of any kind, and SAP Group shall not be liable for errors or omissions with respect to the materials. The only warranties for SAP Group products and services are those that are set forth in the express warranty statements accompanying such products and services, if any. Nothing herein should be construed as constituting an additional warranty.

These materials are provided “as is” without a warranty of any kind, either express or implied, including but not limited to, the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement.

SAP shall not be liable for damages of any kind including without limitation direct, special, indirect, or consequential damages that may result from the use of these materials.

SAP does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information, text, graphics, links or other items contained within these materials. SAP has no control over the information that you may access through the use of hot links contained in these materials and does not endorse your use of third party web pages nor provide any warranty whatsoever relating to third party web pages. Any software coding and/or code lines/strings (“Code”) included in this documentation are only examples and are not intended to be used in a productive system environment. The Code is only intended better explain and visualize the syntax and phrasing rules of certain coding. SAP does not warrant the correctness and completeness of the Code given herein, and SAP shall not be liable for errors or damages caused by the usage of the Code, except if such damages were caused by SAP intentionally or grossly negligent.