SAP Maintenance Order Management

This document aims at explaining the corrective maintenance process in SAP. 

In most organizations, the maintenance department’s main functions are the following: 

• Maximizing the availability of the physical assets

• Keeping physical assets in a workable and safe state

• Reduce the operating costs caused by equipment downtime and damage

In SAP, there are 5 types of maintenance processes: 

1. Corrective maintenance: triggered by the detection of a defect

2. Preventive maintenance: work planned in advance

3. Breakdown maintenance: work that has to be executed in emergency

4. Calibration maintenance: ensures that precision instruments keep accurate measurements

5. Refurbishment maintenance: repair work done on materials subject to split valuation

This document will focus on the corrective maintenance process.

The maintenance order process follows five big steps.

The maintenance order process also has 3 types of roles involved: maintenance planner, maintenance supervisor, and maintenance technician.

We will now take a closer look at the five steps of the process:

1. Maintenance Notification

This document can be created by any of the 3 maintenance roles. The maintenance notification is triggered by the identification of a defect on a specific technical object. There are 3 types of standard maintenance notification: maintenance request, malfunction report and activity report. 

The commonly used notification type is the maintenance request:

The creator of the maintenance notification can enter the technical object, the description of the issue and the main work center responsible for the work. After creation, the maintenance notification will be verified by the maintenance planner and the work will be dispatched among the maintenance technicians.

It is also possible to directly create the maintenance order from the maintenance notification header thanks to the creation symbol next to the field “order”:

2. Maintenance Order

The maintenance order can be created in 2 ways: 

• From the maintenance notification: 

The maintenance notification will have the system status ORAS – which means “Order Assigned”.

• Directly through the transaction IW31

The maintenance order gets created with a certain order type, priority, technical object and a planning plant. 

The typical structure of the order is as follows:

 I provide you below with a high-level overview of what is the role of each tab in the maintenance order management process. 

The maintenance order header data answers at a high level to the following questions:

• Who: by displaying the “person responsible” sub-tab

• When: by displaying the “dates” sub-tab

• What: by displaying the “reference object” sub-tab

• How: by displaying the “first operation” sub-tab (details are provided in the “operations” tab)

The operations tab provide details about which operations are done, by whom , in which sequence and for which duration. 

The components tab is used whenever some materials are required for a specific operation

The costs tab is used to display the planned and actual costs

The partner tab is used to display the partners involved in the maintenance order. 

The “objects” tab is useful whenever several objects are involved in the maintenance work. It also specifies, when applicable, which maintenance notification is linked to the order. 

The “additional data” tab displays static finance-related organizational data. It has no impact on the process as such. 

The “location” tab displays the “location” of the data from both a logistics and financial viewpoint: it displays the maintenance plant as well as the account assignment data for the order costs.

The planning data tab is not relevant for the corrective maintenance process. It is used in the preventive maintenance process. It displays the maintenance plan and the task list from which the preventive maintenance order is generated. 

The “control” data contains the administrative data as well as the CO-parameters related to the order.

In case components are required for the order, the “reservation/purchase requisitions” sub-tab displays whether or not the documents are created immediately, after the release of the order or never.

3. Order Confirmation

The confirmation on the maintenance order is done through the transaction IW41. 

The confirmation is done at the operation level.

The confirmation document contains: the actual time spent on the tasks and, when applicable, the materials goods movements and measurement documents for technical objects. The “actual work” field has to be filled in to complete the confirmation. There is a flag for “final confirmation”. When it is flagged on, it means that there is no work remaining on the operation. When all the operations of an order are “final” confirmed, the order has the system status CNF.

After the confirmation is done, it is possible to display the variances between the planned and actual durations.

Several confirmations can also be done simultaneously through the transaction code IW42

4. Technical completion

When all the maintenance order operations are finally confirmed, the order can be technically completed. The technical completion of a maintenance is a handover of the work from the maintenance department to finance.

The technical completion is a standard system status only valid at the order header level. This status can also be cancelled in any maintenance order.

5. Order settlement

Settling a maintenance order means that all the actual costs incurred during order confirmation are sent to a “settlement receiver”. This settlement receiver is generally the cost center of the reference object (displayed in the header data). It can also be a specifically designated general ledger account. The settlement is done through the transaction KO88. The user needs to enter the order number, as well as fiscal year, posting and settlement periods. After that, the user decides whether or not he runs the settlement in test mode (with the test flag). The button “Execute” will run the settlement.

6. Key transaction codes

Most of the transactions used during the maintenance order management process are located within the following folders in the menu path:

Handling of Warehouse Materials With Special Storage Requirements

This tip is directed at those needing to control the movement and storage of materials having special warehousing requirements.  These materials fall primarily into 2 categories:

1. The materials are truly hazardous in nature as defined by globally accepted hazardous categories (flammable, explosive, corrosive, etc.).

2. The materials have some other storage requirement due to the nature of the material and/or regulatory requirements. Examples include materials requiring some level of temperature control and controlled materials such as narcotics. In these cases, it is imperative that the material be maintained in the appropriate refrigerator or freezer storage, or in the case of narcotic materials, be kept in a locked area.

The methods discussed in this tip apply to the standard SAP Warehouse Management offering contained within the SAP ERP Logistics Execution area.  While the information will already be known to experienced SAP consultants, it will hopefully be of some value to those who may be new to warehouse management in SAP.  The intention is not to revisit technical information that is well known, but to review this information with some level of detail in order to make a correct business decision.

Option 1 – Hazardous Material Management

This discussion applies to the hazardous material management options contained within SAP warehouse management.  It is intended to control placement and storage of material within a single warehouse, and should not be confused with the SAP Environment, Health, and Safety product (EHS) which, among other things, manages the shipment of dangerous materials.

In the SAP Implementation Guide, hazardous material management configuration is contained within the warehouse management area of logistics execution.  The primary configuration objects are the region code and the storage class.  The region code is simply the country in which the warehouse is located, but is important because warehouses are assigned to regions.

The storage class defines the nature of the material, i.e. the nature of the hazard or special storage requirement.  SAP’s intention is for storage classes to only represent hazardous conditions, and provides the following default list of storage classes based upon regional and global standards.  This list may vary slightly in your SAP system depending upon the enhancement pack level of your ECC6 system, but what you see should be pretty close to this.  Additional values can be added as they are defined by regulatory bodies.

As is the case in most areas of configuration, SAP allows you to create your own storage classes, and this provides the option to include materials requiring storage within a particular temperature range, narcotics, high value parts, or any other condition which may be required by a business.  This provides a high degree of flexibility but also requires some cautions which will be discussed shortly.

Without going too deeply into configuration, the setup of hazardous material management can be summarized at a high level in the following steps:

1. Decide upon the storage classes to be controlled, creating your own if necessary.

2. Decide upon the warehouse storage types for which placement of these classes of materials is to be allowed or disallowed. Hazardous material checking will need to be activated in these areas.

3. Assign the allowed storage classes for each storage type where checking has been activated.

4. Create the relevant hazardous material number for each storage class.

5. Assign the relevant hazardous material number to each material that needs to be controlled.

In deciding which storage types need to check for hazardous materials, the following rules should be followed:

1. Do not activate hazardous material checking for interim storage types. These are the virtual storage types 901-999 used by SAP for activities such as goods receipt, goods issue, posting changes, and other warehouse processes. All materials will need to pass through these storage types at one point or another, so checking for hazardous materials in these areas is pointless.

2. As a general rule of thumb, do not activate hazardous material checking in any area where all types of materials are eventually required. An example of this is some production supply areas where both standard and hazardous materials must be staged for production.

Once the relevant storage types have been agreed upon, the required configuration is straightforward and carried out in the area of configuration shown below.

Within this area of configuration, the first 3 buttons contain the main activities.

The first step is to activate hazardous material checking for each relevant storage type, which is accomplished by selecting 1 in the 5th column.  Note that the section checking referenced in option 2 does not actually prevent incorrect placement of hazardous materials in a storage section and should not be used.

The second step is to assign a region code to your warehouse.

The final step is to assign the storage classes allowed in each relevant storage type, keeping in mind that a blank entry has meaning.  If a storage type is checked for hazardous materials, and there is no entry with a blank storage class, then no non-hazardous material will be allowed in that storage type.

Once the configuration is complete, the next step is to create a hazardous material number using SAP transaction code VM01.  The actual number and description may be anything that makes sense to your business, and the region will be that assigned to your warehouse.  Within the hazardous material number, the relevant storage class is assigned as shown below.

Once the hazardous material number is created, the final step is to assign it in the relevant material master.  The hazardous material number field can be found on the plant data / storage 1 view of the material master, or on the warehouse management 1 view as shown below.

Once hazardous material numbers have been assigned to relevant materials, any attempt to place hazardous materials where they are not allowed will result in a hard error in the format “storage class XXX not allowed in storage type XXX”.

This is exactly the behavior that is desired, but I mentioned a caution earlier that needs to be discussed.  The caution is that the hazardous material number is a global field in the material master, which means that it applies across every plant in the system.  It would seem that a material that is flammable in one place would be flammable everywhere, or that material that needs to be stored in a certain way in one warehouse should be stored the same way in all warehouses.  In practice, storage requirements can vary from country to country based upon varying legal requirements, and this becomes an issue for companies having multiple warehouses.  This strategy is therefore completely effective only in the following circumstances:

1. A company has a single warehouse, and there is therefore no possible conflict between warehouses.

2. A company has multiple warehouses, and all warehouses agree upon the storage requirements for all materials.

So what if these conditions are not met?

Option 2 – Storage Section Search

Storage sections are a standard subdivision of storage types in SAP warehouse management, and can be used flexibly for many purposes.  A storage section search is commonly used to group materials based upon common characteristics, with fast moving versus slow moving parts being a common example.  One of the benefits of using storage sections in this manner is that the space set aside in the warehouse for a storage section may expand or contract as necessary just by changing the storage section on a range of bins.

Setting up a storage section search in SAP is a very straightforward activity that is well known by anybody familiar with the warehouse management application.  The decision point in this area that is relevant to materials with special storage requirement is whether the storage section search will be a “soft” check which may be overridden by warehouse staff, or if it will be a “hard” check which may not be overridden.  This option is selected when activating the storage section check for a storage type in configuration as shown below.

For the purpose of determining the placement of material in a manner that cannot be overridden by warehouse staff, the “X” option should be selected.

Again, without going too deeply into configuration, the setup of storage section searches can be summarized at a high level in the following steps:

1. Decide upon the category of materials to be controlled (i.e., flammable, corrosive, etc.). These will be represented as storage section indicators.

2. Decide upon the warehouse storage types for which placement of these categories of materials is to be allowed or disallowed. Storage section checking will need to be activated in each of these storage types.

3. Define a section search strategy for each relevant storage type based upon whether a category of material (represented by a storage section indicator) should or should not be allowed.

4. Assign the relevant section indicator to each material that needs to be controlled.

In deciding which storage types should be activated for a storage section search, the rules are similar to those for hazardous material management checking:

1. Do not activate storage section checking for interim storage types. These are the virtual storage types 901-999 used by SAP for activities such as goods receipt, goods issue, posting changes, and other warehouse processes. All materials will need to pass through these storage types at one point or another, so storage section checks in these areas are pointless.

2. As a general rule of thumb, do not activate storage section checking in any area where all types of materials are eventually required. An example of this is some production supply areas where both standard and hazardous materials must be staged for production.

As with hazardous material management, the required configuration is straightforward and carried out in the area of configuration shown below.

The 3 buttons below contain the main activities.

The first step is to define the indicators to be used based upon the categories of material to be controlled.  SAP provides the fast moving and slow moving defaults shown below, but additional indicators can be created.  For example, indicator ACD may be created to describe acids that need to be controlled.

The next step is to create a storage section search for each storage type that should be checked for a given storage section indicator.  So for a given warehouse, storage type, and storage section indicator, material will be placed in the given storage sections in the order listed in the table.

The final configuration step is the activation of the storage section search that was already discussed.  Again, the key to fully controlling placement and storage using this method is to select the “X” option for the type of check.

Once this configuration has been completed, the last step is to assign the storage section indicator in the relevant material masters.  This is done on the Warehouse Management 1 view of the material master as shown below.

Because the “X” option was selected when activating the storage section search, any attempt to place the relevant material in a storage section that is not included in the storage section search will result in an error in the general format “error occurred during storage section search”.  While not as descriptive as the hazardous material management error, it nonetheless accomplishes the intended purpose.

Conclusion

Hazardous material management is a well-established function in SAP warehouse management, and is the recommended approach for controlling placement and storage of hazardous materials in a warehouse.  Because the hazardous material management field in the material master is global information, conflicts can occur between multiple warehouses.  The judicious use of storage section searches can provide an equally robust level of control over certain classes of materials while avoiding conflict between warehouses.  In summary, the following guidelines are suggested:

1. Use hazardous material management in a single warehouse system, or in a multiple warehouse system where the classification of hazardous materials has been uniformly agreed in advance between all warehouses. As discussed, this caveat applies equally to additional uses of this functionality that may be envisioned, such as materials requiring cold storage.

2. Use storage section checks in the manner shown where known conflicts exist between warehouses in the classification of hazardous or other materials.

Using Program PT_BPC10 and Fixing Grouping Issues for Quotas

Time Management

How to use transaction RPTKOK00 and PT_BPC10

This document explains how to run RPTKOK00. This can be used to check for and fix database inconsistencies. An example of a database inconsistency error: an employee has accrued 2 days Compulsory Leave at the beginning of March, he books 2 days leave and then captures a number of unpaid leave days, Time evaluation is run which reduces his entitlement (because of the unpaids) from 2 days to 1.73 days for example. This causes a database inconsistency, the employee only has an entitlement of 1,73 days but has an absence record of 2 days. This can cause Payroll to not run successfully.

Program RPTKOK00 is able to pick up these issues and it will be useful to run this program before a live Payroll run.

Step 1

1. Go to transaction ZRPTKOK00

2. Click on “Further Selections”

3. Select Payroll Area and move it across.

4. Click on the green tick

Step 2

1. Enter your Payroll Area

2. Untick Check Attendance Quota (Not compulsory)

3. Click Execute

Step 3

1. This gives you a list of Employees with database inconsistency errors.

2. Select new deduction which will be able to automatically fix some of the inconsistencies. The others will need additional steps to fix (see the bottom of this document).

Step 4

1. Click Execute

Additional steps when program RPTKOK00 does not fix inconsistency.

In the example above where the employee had 2 days leave booked but an entitlement of 1.73 days, if the employee were to accrue another 2 days the following month then this program will be able to fix (recapture) the absence as there is sufficient entitlement to recapture the absence. If the entitlement is lower than the absence captured, the following steps can be followed.  

A + 0.27 quota correction can be captured for March and - 0.27 can be captured for April (Time Evaluation must be run for quota corrections to take affect). 

If your Organization permits it, Run Time evaluation to next accrual.  

Reduce the leave captured to for example 1 day and book the other 1 day as unpaid leave.

For step 1 and 2 above, you will need to run the program after the step.

Additional Example

Table T556c is set to deduct first of Family Responsibility then of Family Resp. (Unpaid).

But you have a scenario as below where quota type 31 is deducted before 30 because at the time the 3 days were captured there was not enough balance in quota type 30 (for example 4 days of sick leave was incorrectly booked as Family at the time and has now been changed to the correct absence type thereby making the balance available now).

There are two ways to fix this:

1. Lock and unlock the absence and it will deduct from the correct quota once unlocked.

2. Run program RPTBPC10 (Transaction code PT_BPC10) as below.

1. Go to transaction PT_BPC10

2. Enter the personnel no

3. Enter the period

4. Tick Correct absence quota, log output and Save New deduction (Correct attendance quota is not necessary in this scenario)

5. Click Execute

Corrections made are reflected

The absence has deducted of the correct quota now.  

Fixing Time Evaluation errors when an employee moves from a grouping that does not have the new quota type

Summary of Guide

When an Employee moves from one grouping to another and the new grouping has a quota that the previous grouping did not have, depending on the dates, Time Evaluation can throw an error because in the employees previous grouping the quota being created does not exist. This can be fixed in config by adding the quota type in table V_T559l, under quotas and setting the quota to “no generation”), alternatively the following steps can be followed to fix this manually:

1. Run Time Evaluation with the log (PT60)

2. Double Click on the quota\s that are causing the error

3. PT60 is trying to create a quota with a Validity Start Date of 01.01.2016, a period in which the employee was in a grouping that did not have Quota type 24

4. Manually Create the quota with a Validity Period that is the same as the transfer to new grouping  date (in this case 01.09.2016)

5. Enter the deduction period as per what was in the Time Evaluation log (You might need to move the start date to the same date as move to new Employee group).

6. Run Time Evaluation

FI–COPA Reconciliation

COPA is an important financial tool which can help you with the slice & dice of data based on different characteristics. Since it can give you all the details of your costs and revenue, it is therefore important to reconcile COPA with your GL’s. Controlling Profitability Analysis (COPA) has two forms supported:

• Account Based: Based on accounts and uses account-based valuation approach

• Costing Based: Groups costs and revenue into Value Fields.

So how does COPA reconcile with my GL’s?

Let’s see how to reconcile COPA-FI with SD

Sales & Cost of Sales

Sales & Distribution is tightly integrated with Financial Accounting and thus with Controlling Profitability Analysis (COPA). Numbers flow in COPA via SD pricing conditions which are linked to value fields in COPA. This can be easily viewed via transaction (KE24) and selecting the appropriate Value Fields available in the layout. 

In COPA, Sales and Cost of Sales are updated in value fields when the billing document is posted where as in Financial Accounting, Cost of Sales is posted during the Post Goods Issue (PGI). A possible issue can be if PGI is posted in a month different from the billing month. This will result in a time-lag between FI and COPA and needs to be incorporated either through Assessment Cycle or manually through KE21N.  

Cost of Sales Value in KE24, can be tallied from transaction CKM3N (Material Price Analysis) 

KE24:

Also, there is a transaction (KEAT) that performs the same function of reconciliation. This transaction displays the differences between FI, Sales Distribution and CO-PA for sales conditions such as Sales, COGS, commissions, etc. Below is the output of transaction KEAT:

The differences, if any, are highlighted in red and can be clicked to get to the delta values. These differences are mostly due to the rounding effects but these can be further drilled down to find the exact issues.

Another good way of carrying out a reconciliation is to drilldown into a line item of a CO-PA report (KE24) and compare it to the items in the corresponding general ledger account. GL’s can easily be found by clicking Integration button, selecting Display Billing Document, Environment and then Revenue Accounts. 

Assessment for GL/Periodic Cost

As we have three major areas for reconciliation beside sales and COGS we have periodic cost which transfers from FI to COPA using Assessment cycle.  (Keu5)

This shows that which value field is used for Staff Cost, in this case we have VV900. 

Then we check from which cost elements / GL account values are flowing to COPA for Staff Cost. In this case we have values from cost center group 2020 and cost element group 1301. After that we will check cost element group.

Let’s check cost element group 1301 in (KAH3).

Now check amount in FBL3N for all GL in group 1301. Subtotal on Account, Business Area, Value Date, Plant and Amount.

Let’s check amount in KE24 for Staff cost.

Oops! there is a difference in amount of around 15000 USD. It’s very easy to identify where the difference is. Let’s go back to KEU5 and there we will find the date when was my assessment executed.

Here we found that this cycle has been executed at 04.02.2016.

In FBL3N we found that an entry of 15000 USD has been entered after assessment had been executed.

So now we have to Reverse the current assessment cycle and Re-run it so this 15000 amount will also be incorporated in COPA.

PA Transfer Structure/FI-MM

This is one more important aspect for values coming to COPA from FI. We have transaction KEI2 where we can check from where values are flowing to COPA in which Value Field.

Values coming from Revenue cost element group.

Values flowing to Other Income Value field in COPA from Cost element Group “Revenue”

Similar as above, we will check amounts in COPA and FBL3N for this value field and GL Accounts.

 FI-COPA Reconciliation is one of the painful area for the business users for which we have provided few tips on how to perform reconciliation. 

Exceptional EPM Systems Are An Exception

What makes for exceptionally good enterprise performance management (EPM) is that its multiple managerial methods are not only individually effective but also are seamlessly integrated and imbedded with analytics of all flavors.

Quite naturally, many organizations over-rate the quality of their enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM / CPM) practices and systems...

In reality they lack in being comprehensive and how integrated they are. For example, when you ask executives how well they measure and report either costs or non-financial performance measures, most proudly boast that they are very good. Again, this is inconsistent and conflicts with surveys where anonymous replies from mid-level managers candidly score them as “needs much improvement.”

Every organization cannot be above average!

What makes exceptionally good EPM systems exceptional?

Let’s not attempt to be a sociologist or psychologist and explain the incongruities between executives boasting superiority while anonymously answered surveys reveal inferiority.  Rather let’s simply describe the full vision of an effective EPM system that organizations should aspire to.

First, we need to clarify some terminology and related confusion. EPM is not solely a system or a process. It is instead the integration of multiple managerial methods – and most of them have been around for decades arguably even before there were computers. EPM is also not just a CFO initiative with a bunch of scorecard and dashboard dials. It is much broader. Its purpose is not about monitoring the dials but rather moving the dials.

What makes for exceptionally good EPM is that its multiple managerial methods are not only individually effective but also are seamlessly integrated and imbedded with analytics of all flavors. Examples of analytics are segmentation, clustering, regression, and correlation analysis.      

EPM is like musical instruments in an orchestra

I like to think of the various EPM methods as an analogy of musical instruments in an orchestra. An orchestra’s conductor does not raise their baton to the strings, woodwinds, percussion, and brass and say, “Now everyone play loud.” They seek balance and guide the symphony composer’s fluctuations in harmony, rhythm and tone. 

Here are my six main groupings of the EPM methods – its musical instrument sections:

1. Strategic planning and execution

This is where a strategy map and its associated balanced scorecard fits in. Together they serve to translate the executive team’s strategy into navigation aids necessary for the organization to fulfill its vision and mission g. The executives’ role is to set the strategic direction to answer the question “Where do we want to go?” Through use of correctly defined key performance indicators (KPIs) with targets, then the employees’ priorities, actions, projects, and processes are aligned with the executives’ formulated strategy.

2. Cost visibility and driver behavior

For commercial companies this is where profitability analysis fits in for products, standard services, channels, and customers. For public sector government organizations this is where understanding how processes consume resource expense in the delivery of services and report the costs, including the per unit cost, of their services. Activity-based costing (ABC) principles model cause-and-effect relationships based on business and cost drivers. This involves progressive, not traditional, managerial accounting such as ABC rather than broadly averaged cost factors without causal relationships.

3. Customer Management Performance

This is where powerful marketing and sales methods are applied to retain, grow, win-back, and acquire profitable, not unprofitable, customers. The tools are often referenced as customer relationship management (CRM) software applications. But the CRM data is merely a foundation. Analytical tools, supported by software, that leverage CRM data can further identify actions that will create more profit lift from customers. These actions simultaneously shift customers from not only being satisfied to being loyal supporters. 

4. Forecasting, planning, and predictive analytics

Data mining typically examines historical data “through the rear-view mirror.” This EPM group directs attention forward to look at the road through the windshield. The benefit of more accurate forecasts is to reduce uncertainty. Forecasts for the future volume and mix quantities of customer purchased products and service are core independent variables.  Based on those forecasts that so many dependent variables have relationships with, therefore process costs from the resource expenses can be calculated and managed. Examples of dependent variables are the future headcount workforce and spending levels. CFOs increasingly look to driver-based budgeting and rolling financial forecasts grounded in ABC principles using this group. 

5. Enterprise risk management (ERM)

This cannot be omitted from the main group of EPM. ERM serves as a brake to the potentially unbridled gas pedal that EPM methods are designed to step hard on. Risk mitigation projects and insurance requires spending which reduces profits and also steers expenses from resources the executive team would prefer to provide earn larger compensation bonuses.  So it takes discipline to ensure adequate attention is placed on appropriate risk management practices.

6. Process improvement

This is where lean management and Six Sigma quality initiatives fit in. Their purpose is to remove waste and streamline processes to accelerate and reduce cycle-times. They create productivity and efficiency improvements.

EPM as integrated suite of improvement methods

CFOs often view financial planning and analysis (FP&A) as synonymous with EPM. It is better to view FP&A as a subset. And although better cost management and process improvements are noble goals, an organization cannot reduce its costs forever to achieve long term prosperity.

The important message here is that EPM is not just about the CFO’s organization; but it is also the integration of all the often silo-ed functions like marketing, operations, sales, and strategy. Look again at the six main EPM groups I listed above. Imagine if the information produced and analyzed in each of them were to be seamlessly integrated. Imagine if they are each embedded with analytics – especially predictive analytics. Then powerful decision support is provided for insight, foresight, and actions. That is the full vision of EPM to which we should aim to aspire in order to achieve the best possible performance.    

Today exceptional EPM systems are an exception despite what many executives proclaim. If we all work hard and smart enough, in the future they will be standard practices. Then what would be next? Automated decision management systems relying on business rules and algorithms. But that is an article I will write about some other day.

Gary Cokins, CPIM

http://www.garycokins.com  

Gary Cokins (Cornell University BS IE/OR, 1971; Northwestern University Kellogg MBA 1974) is an internationally recognized expert, speaker, and author in enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM) systems. He is the founder of Analytics-Based Performance Management LLC www.garycokins.com .  He began his career in industry with a Fortune 100 company in CFO and operations roles. Then 15 years in consulting with Deloitte, KPMG, and EDS (now part of HP). From 1997 until 2013 Gary was a Principal Consultant with SAS, a business analytics software vendor. His most recent books are Performance Management: Integrating Strategy Execution, Methodologies, Risk, and Analytics and Predictive Business Analytics.

3 Essentials for the BASIS Administrator

If you’re new to BASIS administration then you’ll know that this specialist role is a key one in the running of SAP systems...

You personally, may have come from the software developer side of IT or you may have been a database administrator or a systems administrator of UNIX or Windows operating systems. Whatever your background, there are many functions that you will need to be familiar with in your new role but here are three particularly important ones that you should master and remember the purpose of.

SE16N – The Data Browser

This is your fastest way to inspect a database table through the SAP application layer. You can use SE16N to browse legacy formats as well such as transparent, pool and cluster tables. Of course you probably don’t have access to SE16 (older version) or SE16N in your productive SAP system but under exceptional circumstance you can be granted approval to use this transaction. Data is displayed in a grid format and you have the option to use variants also with SE16N. Since the introduction of HANA as a database alternative to Oracle and SQLServer you can now also use the SE16H alternative. SE16S and SE16SL are also new TCodes for use with HANA databases and allow you to find any values in any tables. You can learn more about these new capabilities by checking out SAP KBA article 2002588 - CO-OM Tools: Documentation for SE16S, SE16SL, and SE16S_CUST

SE37 – The Function Builder

This is principally targeted at the developer or functional consultant who wishes to examine the functionality of a BAPI or function module. An added benefit of using SE37 is that you can use test data and save it for use with a given BAPI or function module. Even if you are not an ABAP developer, often, as a BASIS administrator you will be tasked with trying to work out why things are not quite going according to plan – using SE37 to set things like breakpoints and debug functions in the system will become an indispensable aspect of your role. This is also a transaction that you typically won’t have access to in production 

ST03N – The Workload Monitor

This is a transaction used to examine system workload and performance statistics and is principally use to verify system performance at the SAP instance level. You can also access the data associated with ST03N from the SAP collector logs using function module SWNC_GET_WORKLOAD_STATISTIC (execute this with SE37) – although the collector logs are not a 100% guarantee of all SAP events being logged, it does give you, as a BASIS administrator,  insight into users. You can determine their activity and the transactions that they are using along with the frequency of use. ST03N should also be seen together with UPL – a new piece of functionality available in any ABAP based system and which is based on the core functionality of the SAP Coverage Analyzer.  UPL stands for Usage and Procedure Logging and has full reporting capabilities with enriched information sets in the Business Warehouse of Solution Manager 7.1 SP5 and higher. UPL complements ST03N ABAP workload statistics.

PP-REM and Cost Control

Repetitive production is a special type of production that can be used in integrated production scenarios or for a specific situation. This article explains some uses and configurations regarding PP-REM.

For a long time, industries have been using PP-REM to obtain a continuous flow of production. PP-REM is highly recommended for production because it provides product stability and low complexity. This type of production is well used in automobile industries, but it can also be employed in other industry types, such as for wires and nails manufacturing.

The main goal is to reduce the cost control and simplify the completion confirmation via back-flushing process.

SAP provides a PP-REM area by means of OPP3 transaction – please check information on PP-REM configuration here. 

There are only four requirements for PP-REM implementation:

• REM Profile (OSPT / OSP2)

• Material Master Configuration ( MM01 / MM02)

• Production Version (C223 / MM02)

• Product Cost Collector ( KKF6N / KKF6M - Collective)

The main question regarding CO is the Cost Collector (KKF6N), which will allow the material to be continuously settled without a specific production order. However, before initiating the cost collector, we need to follow preceding steps:  

1. Create a BOM and a Routing (rate routing)

2. Define the standard cost estimate for current date and period (CK11N)

3. Release this standard cost estimate (CK24)

Here, there is a crucial point of discussion: WIP. Normally, it is possible to avoid WIP when using PP-REM, but this is linked to the routing configuration. If this is configured with Report Point and with a different point of confirmation (report pointing) until the final confirmation, WIP will be possible [KKAT / KKAQ – WIP Display & KKAS / KKAO – WIP Calculation]. The reason lays between one point and another, since the process will generate more work – of course, these points must be aligned with the production and there is no impact in the Cost Collector configuration (but the production manager must ensure the correct production confirmation).

Another important factor is regarding COGI. We have noticed the same problems with no row material available when confirming the Production Order, rather than with PP-DIS. It is possible to avoid COGI via SAP configuration. COGI is a big problem and we know that it must be “zero” by end of the day.

There are many reports to use in PP-REM, for instance to track the confirmation point by point using the report MF26. There are other reports as well, such as product costs [MCRK], product cost collection [KKBC_PKO], preliminary costing for cost collector [MF30] and so on.

The production confirmation occurs through the specific PP transaction (MFBF), where there are some additional functionalities, such as reversal, scrap, change of row materials used, etc.

PP-REM uses the movement type 131 to confirm production order, which differs from PP-DIS SAP that uses the movement type 101. Like this, the material movement presents different account information.

After confirming, is possible to analyze variances [KKS5 Collective / KKS6 Individual – the variances calculated with the version 0 will be evaluated to COPA.

At end of the month, it is critical to execute the order settlement [CO88 / KK87]. In this stage, the order balance can be balanced transferring the differences to FI and to the Profit Center Accounting. Additionally, it is possible to verify the contribution margin in COPA.

Below we can see some important tables behind PP-REM:

• Cost collector [AUFK]

• Reporting point quantities [CPZP]

• Reporting point documents [CEZP]

• Document log [BLPP]

PP-REM offers an easy way to integrate CO and Production and should be considered whenever possible mainly to scenarios with low complexity but keeping the information and responsibilities that you can see in other scenarios.