SAP Corrective Maintenance Process

This tutorial is part of our SAP PM training course and it talks about SAP corrective maintenance process. You will learn how to plan and perform corrective maintenance when equipment is not operating with full efficiency or recommended condition and production is somehow affected. Our explanation will be illustrated with an example from a notification creation to an order creation and subsequent processing.

Maintenance tasks are performed to identify, isolate, and rectify a fault, so that the failed equipment, machine, or system can be restored to the operational condition within the tolerances or limits established for in-service operations. SAP has defined a standard SAP corrective maintenance process. However, it is possible to do changes in the standard process (with customizing) as per business needs. Let’s have a look at the flow of SAP corrective maintenance process.

Let’s review what happens at each step of SAP corrective maintenance process.

Identify Equipment

Choose the equipment for which maintenance needs to be planned. It also can be equipment which got broken but couldn’t be restored to the optimal operating conditions due to miscellaneous reasons, e.g. production pressure or missing spare parts. SAP corrective maintenance process can also be planned for a group of equipment or for a functional location.

Create Notification and Maintenance Order (Type PM01)

It is one of the maintenance processes where creation of an order and a notification linked to each other is recommended as the order will contain costs whereas the notification will contain information related to the defect and analysis of the problem. Here, we plan resources, schedule maintenance tasks.

Order Confirmation

Once maintenance activity is completed and equipment is restored to the optimal condition, the maintenance team needs to define duration, spare part consumption and other details which might be relevant for logging in the SAP system and serve as a reference for similar repairs in the future.

Closure

It is simply related to closure of all maintenance objects, so that outstanding items can be cleared and all costs can be settled.

Now, let’s discuss how to create SAP documents corresponding to the key steps of SAP corrective maintenance process. Corrective maintenance starts with a notification that is later converted to SAP PM order. However, it is also possible to skip the notification step and directly create a maintenance order of type PM01.

Notification

As soon as service/performance degradation is reported by a production technician, a maintenance notification of type M1 should be created in the SAP system. M1 (Maintenance request) is a notification type defined for corrective maintenance in the standard SAP system. Notifications are used for reporting and analysis purposes.

Notification is an indication of possible equipment failure as it is not operational with the standard operative conditions. However, it is different from SAP breakdown maintenance process because a maintenance planner gets more time for planning activities.

A notification contains information related to equipment conditions which are not within limit, e.g. excessive noise, high gearbox temperature, electric motor overheating, etc. Notification type M1 is meant for maintenance requests which should be linked with the order type PM01 (regular maintenance order).

A maintenance planner can use the transaction IW28 to view the list of open notifications based on selection conditions. This output is analyzed by the maintenance planner which has much better knowledge than a production technician, and therefore, it is possible to simply close some notifications if they feel that the reported problem is actually not something which needs repairs and can be tackled through preventive maintenance. However, if any actions are required before scheduled maintenance, then a notification can be put “in process” and converted to a PM01 order.

While creating PM01 order, most of the fields will be copied from the notification. However, you can also provide additional details in operations tab. For example, if repairs are required from an external vendor, then we can create a service purchase requisition from the maintenance order.

Choose an appropriate control key which allows external services and click on External button to define other parameters for service procurement as required.

A pop-up window will be shown after clicking this button to enter parameters related to service procurement, e.g. material group, purchasing group, cost center.

A purchase requisition will be created on release of the maintenance order which can be converted to a purchase order and further processing for external procurement will take place in SAP MM module. It is an example of the integration between MM and PM modules of SAP ERP.

Alternatively, a maintenance order can also be created directly through IW31 transaction if linking with a notification is not required.

Maintenance Order Confirmation

If an external service is linked with the maintenance order, then it can be confirmed through a service entry sheet and remaining operations of the maintenance order will be confirmed in SAP PM module.

Individual time confirmation has been explained in other SAP PM tutorials. It is also possible to do collective confirmation which allows multiple operations confirmation from a single screen. It is possible to do confirmation of many orders at the same time through this transaction.

Run the transaction IW44, enter the order numbers in the upper section of the screen and press Enter button. The system will fetch order numbers in the lower section, input operation numbers and other confirmation related details, e.g. execution start time and end time. After checking and modifying all the details you can save your entries and perform the collective confirmation. It will set the status PCNF or CNF based on the confirmation type and will update costs in maintenance orders.

Technical Completion of Maintenance Order and Notification

Once equipment is repaired, maintenance orders and notifications need to be closed. You can define different code groups and codes from catalog for analysis and reporting. Run the transaction IW32 to complete PM order along with notification as explained in this tutorial.

It is suggested to perform preventive maintenance as per recommendations from a manufacturer because it will fix upcoming problems and help to avoid possible production disruption as well as corrective maintenance actions.

You should always suggest both preventive and corrective maintenance to business, so that they can have spare parts in stock in case of long lead time.

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