Enterprise Resource Planning Blogs by Members
Gain new perspectives and knowledge about enterprise resource planning in blog posts from community members. Share your own comments and ERP insights today!
cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 
RajendraP
Participant
45,838

1.Introduction


In S/4HANA Cloud Release 2011, SAP introduced the new concepts of ‘Process Phases’ to track the life cycle of the maintenance processes as an alternative to System and User statuses used previously. The ‘process phases’ have 2 levels of hierarchy viz. ‘Phase’ and ‘Sub-phase’ and are set up by SAP. You cannot change them.

The ‘process phases’ are available for the maintenance objects ‘Notification (Maintenance Request) and Maintenance Order but only for the new scope items as below:


Similar to statuses, phases and sub-phases are used for selection criteria and to permit or prohibit business transactions. They can be manual or automatic.

In S/4HANA Cloud Release 2102, SAP has further improved the phase model by allowing the reversal of many phases.

For maintenance order and operation, SAP has also introduced configurable ‘Phase Control Code’ to allow you to control the transition of phases e.g. blocking a phase / sub-phase. This is very similar to the concept of the user status.

It may be noted that the system statuses continue to exist, but they take backstage.

The blog post explains in detail how the process phases and sub-phases are progressed in a typical reactive maintenance process.

2.Phase Model


a.     Maintenance Request


The phase model for the maintenance request (notification) is structured using following phases and sub-phases:


Maintenance Request Phase Model



b.    Maintenance Order


The phase model for the maintenance order is structured using the following phases and sub-phases:


Maintenance Order Phase Model



c.     End to End Processes


The new end to end best practice processes (scope item 4HH, 4HI, 4VT, and 4WM) using notification / maintenance orders are structured according the 9 phases as described in the diagram below:

 


End to End Phase Model for the New Scope Items


The process phase model not only provide the simplified and granular status management to guide users along the process but also improve tracking and schedule compliance of the maintenance backlogs.

d.    Process Phases Details – Reactive Maintenance


The progression of the 9 phases of the reactive maintenance process across maintenance request and maintenance order are described in detail below:

1.     Initiation Phase


The initiation phase is only applicable to maintenance request. During the Initiation phase, a technician creates a maintenance requests for an equipment or a functional location using the new FIORI app ‘Create Maintenance Request’. The app provides the simple screen to enter malfunction / maintenance request details and provision for attachments / links.


Initiation Phase: Creating a maintenance request


(Fiori App – Create Maintenance Request)


When the maintenance request is submitted, it is available in another new FIORI app ‘My Maintenance Requests’ where the technician can view all his requests that were submitted, rejected, completed or returned due to insufficient information.

On submission, the new request moves to the next phase ‘Screening’ where it is reviewed.

2.     Screening Phase


In screening phase, a Supervisor (Gatekeeper) reviews all the open maintenance requests in the new FIOR app ‘Screen Maintenance Requests’.


Screening Phase: List of open maintenance requests


(Fiori App – Screen Maintenance Requests)


 While reviewing a request, the Supervisor can also assess priority by selecting a combination of consequence categories, consequences, and likelihood. He can also edit information related to malfunction, responsibility and other details.

After the review, either he can accept them, reject them or send them back to the imitator for insufficient information.


Screening Phase: Supervisor Actions


(Fiori App – Screen Maintenance Requests)


 Based on the Supervisor action, the maintenance request moves to following phases and sub-phases:


While the accepted maintenance requests move to the next phase ‘Planning’, the rejected maintenance request gets closed (status ‘Completed’). The requests in sub-phase ‘Action Required’ can be further worked on by the originator and re-submitted for screening. On re-submission, the maintenance request again moves to phase ‘Screening’ but sub-phase ‘Resubmitted (Request)’.

It may be noted that only screened maintenance requests are visible in ‘Find Notification’ app.

3.     Planning Phase


In the Planning phase, a ‘Maintenance Planner’ creates a maintenance order for one or more accepted maintenance requests (now called ‘Notification’) using the new app ‘Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders’.


Planning Phase: Accepted Maintenance Requests (Notifications)


(Fiori App – Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders)


Once an order is created, the notification and the order move to following phases and sub-phases:


The maintenance planner can navigate to the Change Maintenance Order app from the ‘Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders’, and add information related to operation, material, labor, services, and cost to plan the order.


 Planning Phase: Planning labor, material and services in maintenance order


(Fiori App - Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders)


When planning is completed, the maintenance planner submits the order for cost approval.


 Planning Phase: Submitting maintenance order for cost approval


(Fiori App - Manage Maintenance Notifications and Orders)


On submission for approval, the order moves to phase ‘Approval’ and sub-phase ‘Submitted for Approval (Order)’. The order operations continue to remain in phase ‘Planning’ and sub-phase ‘In Planning’.

 

4.     Approval Phase


If the workflow is configured for the order type for automatic approval, then the order is approved immediately. If workflow is set up for manual approval, it will move to the approver's inbox.

Based on the maintenance planner’s action on workflow request in ‘My Inbox’ app, the maintenance order moves to following sub-phases:


On order approval / rejection however, there are no changes to operations phase and sub-phase, and they continue to remain in phase ‘Planning’ and sub-phase ‘In Planning’.

The rejected maintenance order can be edited and re-submitted for approval.

When the approved order is released, the order and operations move to following phases and sub-phases:



5.     Preparation Phase


In the ‘Preparation’ phase, a maintenance planner uses the new FIORI apps ‘Manage Maintenance Planning Buckets’ and ‘Manage Maintenance Backlog’ apps to level out the workload over several weeks and check the availability of all the resources, spare parts and services needed.

The maintenance planning bucket scope includes a specific time period and other important attributes, such as the maintenance planning plant or the main work center. Based on this scope, the system groups maintenance orders and associates them with the corresponding planning buckets.


Preparation Phase: Maintenance Planning Bucket


(Fiori app – Manage Maintenance Planning Buckets)


The ‘Manage Maintenance Backlog’ app provides a list of all the maintenance orders in a specific planning bucket with important order details, such as the order status, the order priority, the final due date and the availability of the required stock / non-stock components the external services.

Once all the required resources are available on the required dates, a maintenance planner can select the order and submit it for scheduling using the Manage Maintenance Backlog app.


Preparation Phase: Submitting order for scheduling


 (Fiori app – Manage Maintenance Backlog)


After the action ‘Submit for Scheduling’ the maintenance order and operations move to the following phases and sub-phases:


The ‘Ready to Schedule’ can be reversed.

6.     Scheduling Phase


During this phase a maintenance planner can dispatch the maintenance order or the individual order operations and sub operations to right work center and at the right time.

If additional license of Resource Scheduling is not available, maintenance planner can use ‘Find Maintenance Order’ to dispatch maintenance orders. The limitation with this approach is that you cannot dispatch operations individually but always dispatch maintenance orders with all their operations.

 


Scheduling Phase: Dispatching maintenance order


(Fiori App – Find Maintenance Order)


With an additional license, of Resource Scheduling (RSH) maintenance planner can dispatch individual order operations and sub operations. The operations and sub-operations can be either dispatched individually using the app ‘Manage Work Center Utilization’ / ‘Maintenance Scheduling Board’ or collectively using the app ‘Manage Schedule’.

On dispatch, the order / operation moves to following phases and sub-phases:


Dispatch of the operation can be cancelled using the app ‘Change Maintenance Order’.

7.     Execution Phase


In the ‘Execution’ phase, a maintenance technician receives all the orders that need to be executed in ‘My Maintenance Job’ app and executes the PRE (preliminary) and MAIN (main) operations for an order and update the same.


 Execution Phase: List of maintenance orders for execution


(Fiori App – My Maintenance Job)


 


 Execution Phase: Maintenance order for execution


(Fiori App – My Maintenance Job)


In this phase, an order and operation progressed through the following phases and sub-phases:


Once the technician has executed the PRE and MAIN operations and Finally Confirmed them, the supervisor can now change the status of the order to ‘Main Work Completed’ using the app ‘Find Maintenance Order.


Execution Phase: Setting ‘Main Work Completed’


(Fiori App – Find Maintenance Order)


The action ‘Main Work Completed’ can be reversed.

After the supervisor sets the ‘Main Work Completed’ the order and operations move to following phases and sub-phases (no change to operation phase / sub-phase):



8.     Post Execution Phase


In the ‘Post Execution, phase’, maintenance technician continues to use ‘My Maintenance Jobs’ app and records the time spent on post execution operations, report malfunction details and failure data, and set final confirmation of post-execution operations.

In this phase, the order and ‘post operation’ progressed through the following phases and sub-phases:


After completion of post execution activities by the maintenance technician, Supervisor reviews the recorded time entries and failure data and technically complete the order (along with associated notifications) using the app ‘Find Maintenance Order’.


Post Execution Phase: Setting maintenance order ‘Complete Technically’


(Fiori App – Find Maintenance Order)


Once all main and post maintenance tasks have been executed and the maintenance order is set to Technically Complete (Order), the notification, order and operations move to the following phases and sub-phases:



9.     Completion Phase


During the ‘Completion’ phase, the maintenance planner or financial controller reviews the actual costs, checks open purchase orders and invoices, settles the orders financially, and changes the order status to Complete (Business). At the end of ‘Completion’ phase, notification, order and operation attains the following phases and sub-phases:


Thereby, the maintenance order is finally set to the Closed (Order) sub-phase.

3.Conclusion


The ‘phase model’ for maintenance operations, introduced in S/4HANA Cloud release 2011 brings the significant improvement to processing of a maintenance task by bringing granularity and standardizing the order life cycle stages. The phases also fulfill the gap of missing ‘user statuses’ in cloud solution.

Along with the phase model, other innovations viz. risk-based priority determination, cost approval of maintenance order and classification of operations (pre / main / post) are also bundled together. They remarkably improve the maintenance processes.

However, it may be noted that the ‘phase model’ only works for new order types of new scope items (4HH, 4HI, 4VT, 4WM, 4WM) using new FIORI apps. There is no migration path available to switch-over from old scope items (BH1, BH2 and BJ2) to the new one but both can be used in parallel using different set of FIORI apps.

Incorporation of ‘Emergency maintenance’ in the new phase-model, ability to skip some phases (e.g. screening), integration of maintenance planning buckets with Resource Scheduling are some of the improvements worth waiting for.

It will be interesting to see when the phase model is introduced in the ‘On-Premise’ release of S/4HANA where most of the customers are aligned to old scope items and deploy user statuses extensively.

I hope, you find the blog-post helpful in explaining the concepts of new phase model for maintenance processes and the scope for improvement.

Please feel free to share your feedback and leave any comments or questions below.

Follow me for more SAP S/4HANA Asset Management content.

 

4.Reference


SAP Help - Maintenance Process Phases

 
28 Comments
former_member741491
Discoverer
0 Kudos

Like the article just one question. If the workflow approval within S/4HANA Cloud is configured and costs are added onto the Work Order post approval such as inventory or direct purchases, will the order required re-approval.

SAP Project Manager
Daniel Mimnagh

RajendraP
Participant
Hi Daniel,

When a maintenance order is approved, the order-costs at approval is stored as order baseline costs. After approval if you add additional work / spares / services, order does not go for re-approval but you can always make out the difference between the originally approved costs (baseline costs) and subsequently modified planned cost.

The baseline costs are new to order. Earlier we were seeing only 'Estimated', 'Planned' and 'Actual' Costs.

This is the behavior I have currently noticed in the system.

 

Best Regards,

Rajendra Pandey
former_member727302
Discoverer
0 Kudos
Thank you for publishing a very well documented process flow and new changes in Asset management
former_member224404
Active Participant
0 Kudos
rpandey3 sir, great to see explaining this concept. I am feeling happy specially that I was part of the team which developed the overall status framework with phase/subhpase and phase control code. I hope you find this features helpful.
RajendraP
Participant
0 Kudos
Many thanks, Maniak - It is really a major change

Regards,

Rajendra
0 Kudos
Well written document Rajendra. Wish we had this in place some years ago. However pleased to see that our ideas are establishing roots.
Kenny_Olde_Rikk
Explorer
0 Kudos

Hi rpandey3

Very nice document.

The 2021 O/P version is released with the new phase model maintenance processes, but the old scope items still exist.

What is recommended for greenfield implementations? Using the new phasing model, or sticking to the conventional order types? and why?

Does it only depend on the requirement to define own user statuses?

Thanks in advance!

Kenny

ChrBra
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hello rpandey3

Very informative post and a good introduction for both IT and business.

Are the predefined phases based on an industry standard ? Could we expect that additional phases will be added ?

Thanks
Christian
Olivier_Bournea
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hello rpandey3

Thanks for this presentation, definitely a game changer for some companies !
Is there any plan to make this functionality available in S/4 OP 2020 as an advanced correction ?

Thanks,

Olivier
RajendraP
Participant
Hi,

In S/4HANA On Prem version 2021, you can switch-on a phase model for an order type. The new FIORI apps for Notification Screening, Planning Buckets, Backlog Overview and Job Confirmation can only be fully utilized with phase model.

SAP has recently covered the Emergency Maintenance scenario In the latest Cloud Release 2202, one of the gap in the phase model.

The new field "Processing Context' in the Maintenance Request with value 'Emergency Work' automatically generates the order and take it to execution phase.

In my opinion,mixing order types with and without phase model in an organization can be quite confusing and should be avoided.

As all new innovations related to notification and order processing are built around phase model, it should be preferred for a green field implementation.

Regards,
RajendraP
Participant
0 Kudos
The SAP phase model is quite close to what I have seen in Oil and Gas Industry in Europe.

Regards,
mvunsharma
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos
Hi Olivier,

Currently, we don't have any plan to make this available for releases prior to 2021 OP release. SAP made a significant amount of investment to make this happen!

Regards,

Nagesh

 
mvunsharma
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos
Hi Christian,

The phase model is applicable for all kind of industries. This is developed in collaboration with a consortium of customers across several industries.

Theoretically, it is possible to introduce more phases though we don't foresee the need for any new phases. The current pre-defined phases should suffice.

Regards,

Nagesh

 
acastano
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hello rpandey3 ,

 

Thanks for the explanation in this post, I need to access the phase/sub-phase from external  applications and so far what I found is Maintenance Order API returns a numeric code for those. Is there a way to obtain the equivalent description.

 

Example

-Maintenance Order API Returns

"MaintOrdProcessPhaseCode": "06",
"MaintOrdProcessSubPhaseCode": "0060",

-How to get description from an API, as shown in the screen?


Phase / Sub-Phase in Fiori App

RajendraP
Participant
Hi Andres,

You can find the relationship between phase & sub-phase codes and their description in the configuration (transaction: spro). The path is as below:

Phase Code & Description:
Plant Maintenance and Customer Service --> Maintenance and Service Processing --> Fiori Apps for Maintenance Processing --> Configure Overall Status Profiles

Sub- Phase Code & Description:

Plant Maintenance and Customer Service --> Maintenance and Service Processing --> Fiori Apps for Maintenance Processing --> Define Subphases and Map to Overall Statuses

regards,

Rajendra Pandey

 
acastano
Explorer
Thanks so much Rajendra, this is the mapping I was looking for!
adiapte
Discoverer
0 Kudos
Thank you Pandeyji.. Good to see your blog after a long time.. !!
pratiyushkumar
Discoverer
0 Kudos
Can we configure Phase model for Order type YBA1/YBA2?
RajendraP
Participant
0 Kudos
On S4/HANA Cloud solution there is no SSCUI currently available to switch the Phase Model for an order type. However, in S/4HANA On-premise solution you can switch Phase Model for an order type using SPRO.

You must remember that SAP best practices 'Corrective Maintenance (order type YBA1)' and 'Preventive Maintenance (order type YBA2)' are without Phase Model and best practices 'Reactive Maintenance (Order type YA01) and 'Proactive Maintenance (Order type YA02)' are with Phase Model.

Best Regards,

Rajendra Pandey
pratiyushkumar
Discoverer
0 Kudos
Thanks Sir. So the customized order type  can be adapted with Phase model in On premise solution.and also  improvement maintenance/Operational maintenance are in phase model in On premise solution?
yogeshsharma1456
Explorer
0 Kudos

Hi Rajendra,

 

Nice blog. Our client is going for S/4HANA Cloud 2022 . 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 scheduling43R 
Operational & overhead maintenance4WMGeneral Maintenance
Improvement Maintenance4VTCorrective maintenance
Proactive Process4HIPreventive maintenance
Reactive Process4HHBreakdown 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 and all these will have the phase model approach.

 

Regards

Yogesh Sharma

sourabh1989
Explorer
0 Kudos

Thanks Rajendra for sharing the valuable information

 

sourabh1989
Explorer
0 Kudos
Hi Rajendra,

 

Is it possible to make existing maintenance order to follow phase based maintenance post system version upgrade, where phase based maintenance is activated and will be followed.

Thanks in Advance.

Warm regards,
Sourabh Pradhan
0 Kudos

Hi,

I dont fully understand th logic of the priority.

Its not a mandatory field in "Create Maintenance Request". But its mandatory while accepting this request within "Screen Maintenance Reqeust". I also dont find any possibility to make default value for priority.
So everytime the Creator of the Request doesnt fill in the priority - the screener has to do this?

Is this the idea?

 

 

prajain_29
Explorer
0 Kudos

Hello Everyone ,

Is there any way that we can integrate the SAM app with our 9 phase model, means once you assign the operation from assign operation FIORI app  and technician confirm the operation from SAM and complete it ,so  by any chance OMWC (order main work completed ) status hit on header level and it  will move to next  phase which is post execution .

any leads on this will be helpful.

Thanks:

Prashant

syam_yalamati
Product and Topic Expert
Product and Topic Expert
0 Kudos

Hi Prashant,

     SAP Service and Asset Manager(SSAM) supports 9-phase model and you can process Work Orders & Maintenance Requests using phase-model approach. Above defined process is supported, once the user is assigned at operation level for phase model specific order, you should be able to download order operations to the SSAM mobile application and finish the execution phase and post-execution steps from mobile. If you are connecting to SAP S/4HANA public cloud then you need to use SAP Maintenance Assistant mobile application which is under the same license as SSAM but different application name. For more details, please refer to produce page under: 

SAP Service and Asset Manager: S/4HANA On-Premise & Private Cloud offering 

https://help.sap.com/docs/service-asset-manager

https://community.sap.com/t5/c-khhcw49343/SAP+Service+and+Asset+Manager/pd-p/73555000100800000639 

SAP Maintenance Assistant: S/4HANA Public Cloud offering

https://me.sap.com/processnavigator/SolS/EARL_SolS-013/2308/SolP/4RV?region=DE

Thanks

Syam

Summitt12
Participant
0 Kudos

Great blog

In the Private cloud system, can customers edit/modify the subphases to meet their requirements 

Cheers

 

momo666
Discoverer

Thanks for the description, unfortunately the pictures are not visible for me. Could you please kindly check it? Thanks!

Labels in this area