Technical objects: functional locations, equipment and BOMs

Before anyone can report a problem or plan work, the system needs to know what is being maintained. SAP calls these records technical objects. SAP's learning material sums them up in one line: functional locations map complex technical systems, equipment maps individual objects, and maintenance bills of material map spare parts.

Functional locations: the places

A functional location is a multi-level, hierarchical structure that represents a technical system, a building or part of one. It describes a place where a function is performed, and it stays put when machines come and go. Contoso structures Detroit by area and line: the plant, then the rotor assembly area, then rotor line 1, then each station on the line. Its labels follow a pattern defined by a structure indicator, which is covered in detail in sap-eam-201.

Equipment: the things

A piece of equipment is an individual physical object maintained as an autonomous unit: a pump, a motor, a vehicle, a winding machine. Equipment can be installed at a functional location and later dismantled and moved somewhere else. The system keeps a usage list of where each piece of equipment was installed and when, so you can see the history of the machine and the history of the place separately. At Contoso, the winding machine at station W03 is equipment 10000451. If it is swapped out for an overhaul, the place 1710-ASM-L1-W03 stays and records that a different machine is now installed there.

Maintenance BOMs: the spare parts

A maintenance bill of material (BOM) lists the parts of a technical object that matter for maintenance: the bearings, belts and brushes a technician replaces. It is not a production BOM; SAP's material makes the point that a maintenance BOM contains only items relevant to maintenance. When Rosa plans an order for the winding machine, she can pick spare parts from its BOM instead of searching the whole material catalog.

Technical objects also carry organizational data that drives later steps: the maintenance planning plant, the planner group, the main work center, and account assignment such as the company code and the cost center. That cost center is usually where repair costs end up. If it is wrong on the master record, every order on that machine settles to the wrong place, which is why master data shows up in every maintenance test plan.

Where should Contoso draw the line between a functional location and a piece of equipment? A practical test: if you would want to know the history of the place even after the machine is replaced, model the place as a functional location. If the object is valuable, repairable, swappable or has its own maintenance history worth keeping, make it equipment. Small consumable parts, such as belts and bearings, belong on the BOM, not in their own master records. Rosa's team uses the same three questions for every new machine Detroit buys, which keeps the structure consistent across lines.

In SAP GUI, functional locations are created with IL01 and equipment with IE01, and the structure can be browsed with the structural display IH01. In the Fiori launchpad, the same objects are found and displayed through the technical object apps and the Asset Viewer. Course sap-eam-201 walks through creating each one.