SAP ME 6.1: Transferring direct labor records to ECC

[former_member182330]

With this article I'd like to start a series of blog posts that will describe changes and new features that have been introduced in SAP ME 6.1. This will let me dig deeper into the topic myself as well as share details of SAP ME functionality with all of you guys. I consider such articles pretty valuable as SAP ME 6.1 has gotten out of ramp up phase and is generally available to all SAP customers and prospects.

I'd like to start with talking about transferring direct labor records that are sent from SAP ME to ECC as Activity Confirmation of Production Order. We had multiple customers that were requesting this feature and eager to use it. Finally it's here and SAP product management hopes they did a good job. One more thing I'd like to point out - this functionality was also ported to ME 6.0.4. Thus if someone is using this version, the article might also be interesting for them. 

First thing that needs to be said is that ME reports only direct labor records.It means that only labor reported is the labor that is done against a product. So if users log time against some LUNCHBREAK labor charge code or some other activity that is not related to working on manufacturing a product, such labor will not be transferred to ECC. Thus to report time user must actually start/complete/nonconform/signoff SFC.

I'd like to mention that before starting setting up confirmations one needs to set up labor tracking in ME(i.e. enable Labor Tracking in System Rules, create shifts, cost centers, assign supervisors etc) and run SAPMEINT CTC wizard.

To start with setting up labor confirmations first thing to do is to configure standard times for operation processing. Standard time is configured in ME as a replica of master data setup in ECC using Standard Value Key and Scheduling Standards Maintenance. Therefore create Standard Value Key that should contain activity labels relevant for specific routing step (or routing step type). The activities are used later on for collecting distributed times on Labor Off. These activities are present in ECC and should be transferred to ME manually. There is no integration for this yet:

Also define standard KPIs for routing/operation/material or their mix in Scheduling Standards Maintenance:

Second step is to setup POD correctly and add Labor On/Labor Off activities to Start/Complete buttons or as separate buttons. If multiple operators work on the same product at the same time there should be separate buttons for additional operator to be able to labor on to work on SFCs that were initially started by another user. After having this set up user will be prompted to input actual time spent on each of the activities at Labor Off:

..and this information will be transferred to ECC after it is rolled up and approved by user's supervisor in Supervisor Time Edit and Approval activity.

Let me know if the post was useful and notify me if you think any corrections or additions are necessary.

Regards,

Konstantin

[alexander_teslyuk]

Very useful input on this new functionality, 5 stars from me!

[former_member209137]

Completely agree with Alexander this is very useful information.. and very useful initiative from Konstantin stated with labor records .. (I always had plenty of doubts how exactly make it functional :smile: ) ..

waiting for your next blogs ..

[Former Member]

Hello Konstantin, we want to use the direct labor functionality with the simple scenario which only collects direct labor time for an order and send the ERP employee number. We used the How-To-Guide to customize scenario 3. in ME and have a couple of questions as follows: - For this scenario we do not want to use clock-in / clock-out and therefore we do not want to customize cost centre, shift plans, factory calendar and so on. Is it possible to do so? - We customized the scenario in ME and it was possible to collect labor times. But it was not possible to send the collected times to SAP ERP with ODSLaborRollup. What needs to be done to send the times successful to ERP? - What is necessary to enable the process to send labor times to ERP? Do we need the approval of shift supervisor? After roll-up we didn't saw any entry in the Supervisor time edit and approval view. - How can we customize a minimum scenario to send labor times to ERP? - Is it possible to send the employee number within these scenario to ERP? - Where are the single labor times of an employee are visible in ERP? Is it only at the order as an aggregated number or is it also possible to list every single time stamp with employee number? Where would this be visible in ERP? Thank you for your help. Best regards, Manja

[former_member182330]

Hello Manja,

Maybe you could skip clock-in by setting Clock-In Control labor rule to Automatic Clock-In at Logon, but everything else IMO is required. Reporting of labor times is done on Labor Off and Labor Off is part of entire labor tracking setup. Thus you will need to create LCCs, shifts, etc. You could use some dummy shift that lasts 24 hours and covers everything, but it still would have to be there. Data appears in Supervisor time edit after LaborRollup script is run.

Regards,

Konstantin

[former_member209133]

Thanks Konstantin for sharing the useful information.

Is there any way to download the defined standards key values from ECC instead of defining in SAP ME for specific route operation?

Reagards,

Kshitiz Shrivastava

[former_member182330]

Hello Kshitiz,

No, unfortunately there is no such integration option yet.

Regards,
Konstantin

[former_member540482]

Hi Konstantin,

We are trying to send direct labor data from SAP ME to SAP ERP and facing issue.

We are using SAP ME 15.1 SP3.

We did the following task
- Created Cost Center
- Maintained labor Charge Code
- Maintained User Shift
- In User Maintenance activity, added Labor Tracking
- Another User is configured as a Supervisor
- Standard key Value is maintained
- Scheduled standard maintenance is used to configure the Standard Key value in routing
- In POD maintenance, Clock in/out, Labor on and labor off is added.
- In Work center POD the SFC is started in an operation where Clock in/out, Labor on and labor off is also performed.
- Using Background Processing the Labor On job is enabled with every 5 minutes interval.

Now we have opened the Supervisor Time Edit and Approval activity to find the data but not able to find any record there.

Can you please help to solve the issue. Next target is to send the approved data to SAP ERP.

Regards,

Naveen

[former_member182330]

Hello Naveen,

Sorry, it's a very late response, but I've just come across your comment. So replying in case you still need advise or maybe it will be helpful for other guys looking for more information on labor tracking.

It's hard to say what you are missing exactly. But I'd recommend to go through labor tracking how-to guide and validate if everything is in place. It might be as simple as system rule not enabled or your rollup job is failing and NW logs need to be checked to tell why.

Regards,
Konstantin