Orders: operations, work centers and planning

At 09:00 Rosa reviews the notification and creates a maintenance order from it, order type PM01 (corrective, in Contoso's settings). Because she creates it from the notification, the notification becomes the order's header notification, and the technical object, description and priority come across. She could also bundle several notifications in one order through the object list, which is useful when one shutdown fixes several problems on line 1.

What an order contains

Work centers and control keys

Each operation names a work center: the team that does the job. The work center links to a cost center and an activity type, which give the hourly rate for costing, and to capacity, which tells planners whether the team has time. Contoso's MECH1710 (mechanical, Detroit) charges $95 per hour (an illustrative rate) from cost center 17101102, Detroit maintenance. The control key on the operation sets how it behaves: whether it is internal work that is costed and confirmed, or external work bought from a contractor. In standard sample settings, PM01 is internal, PM02 is external processing and PM03 is an external service; check your project's keys.

The calculation key links work, duration and number of people. With key 1, for example, SAP calculates duration as work divided by the number of people; with key 0 the planner enters both. Rosa plans 4 hours of work with one mechanic, so the duration is also 4 hours.

Planned costs

On save, SAP calculates planned costs from the operations (hours times activity rates) and the components (quantity times price). The costs view shows them next to any estimated costs the planner entered by hand and, later, the actual costs. A big gap between planned and actual is a planning-quality signal, covered in sap-eam-301. If Contoso's ECC system used order budgets or approval by cost, that behavior must be tested again after the conversion; SAP S/4HANA also offers approval through flexible workflow in the phase model.

Dates on the order come from the notification's required dates and from scheduling of the operations. The basic start and basic finish frame the window; operation dates are scheduled inside it using the duration and the work center's working times. If Rosa moves the window, the operation dates move too. Testers should check that a priority 1 breakdown actually produces dates the same day, because a wrongly configured priority type silently produces orders that look planned but are due next week.

Walkthrough: planning order 4001250

1. From notification 10004711, choose to create an order (or use IW31 with the notification as reference). Order type PM01, planning plant 1710.
2. Header: check the technical object (10000451), main work center MECH1710, planner group D01 and the basic dates proposed from the priority.
3. Operations: 0010 bearing replacement, MECH1710, control key PM01, 4 h, 1 person, calculation key 1; 0020 electrical test, ELEC1710, 2 h.
4. Components on 0010: pick bearing CMC-SP-BRG-6205 and the drive belt from the machine's BOM (stock items, storage location 171S); add the tension sensor as a non-stock item.
5. Check the settlement rule (cost center 17101107) and the planned costs ($1,007) before saving. Save: status CRTD; reservation and purchase requisition numbers appear on the components.