Maintenance Task Lists

Maintenance task lists describe a sequence of individual maintenance activities which must be repeatedly performed within a company.

There are three types of task lists that can be distinguished from one another using indicators:

1. Equipment Task List: Equipment task lists have a specific link to a piece of equipment. Using equipment task lists, you can centrally define and manage maintenance tasks for your pieces of equipment. Equipment task lists can also help you to prepare maintenance plans and orders. Within a task list group, each equipment task list is identified by a group counter. This enables you, for example, to combine several equipment task lists in one group. Within the group, the system allocates a sequential number - the group counter - to each individual equipment task list.
2. Functional Location Task List: A functional location task list is assigned to a specific functional location. Using a functional location task list, you can centrally define and manage maintenance tasks for your functional location. Functional location task lists can also help you to prepare maintenance plans and maintenance orders for functional locations. Within a task list group, each functional location task list is identified by a group counter. This enables you, for example, to combine several functional location task lists in one group. Within the task list group, the system assigns a sequential number - the group counter - to each individual functional location task list.
3. General Maintenance Task List: General maintenance task lists are task lists that are used for general maintenance tasks. They do not refer to a specific technical object. Using general maintenance task lists, you can define and manage sequences of maintenance tasks centrally, and use them for work scheduling. Within a group, you can create several individual general maintenance task lists. The system automatically assigns a sequential number, the group counter, to each general maintenance task list. This clearly identifies each general maintenance task list within the group. General maintenance task lists help you to prepare maintenance plans and orders. Furthermore, you can use these task lists to reduce the time spent creating equipment task lists.

You can use all the three task list types for ongoing and planned maintenance.

Preventive Maintenance

If you want to use the task lists for planned maintenance you must assign the task list to a maintenance plan or to one or more maintenance items. The operations described in the task list are performed for all technical objects that you have assigned to the maintenance item. The operations fall due at the times calculated by the system while scheduling the maintenance plan.

Maintenance packages that can be assigned to the individual operations of the task list in strategy-based maintenance plans, are the basis for the scheduling of strategy-based maintenance plans , for the display of task lists from the maintenance plan, the maintenance plan costing, and the scheduling overview and simulation. For more information, see Change Status of Task Lists and Effect .

Ongoing Maintenance

You can also automatically transfer operations from task lists to an order. For more information, see the Worklist for Notifications and Assigning a Task List to a Notification . You can group together all similar task lists for groups. The Task list group contains a series of task lists that describe similar maintenance tasks, for example, oil changes for cars and trucks.

Task List Group

Maintenance task lists (PM task lists) are grouped into task list groups. A task list group includes all maintenance task lists with similar maintenance flows (for example, oil changes for cars and trucks). Task lists within a task list group are identified by a group counter.

If you create a maintenance task list ( Equipment Task List, Task List for Functional Location or General Maintenance Task List ) for the first time, the system will automatically assign a new group and the counter 01 to your task list.

The task list group has more significance for general task lists, as they are called up using the task list group number. Group numbers for general task lists can be assigned either internally or externally. Group numbers for equipment task lists and task lists for functional locations can only be assigned internally.

The SAP System treats all maintenance task lists within a group as one unit. It is therefore recommended that you assign general maintenance task lists to several small groups. This considerably reduces the volume of data that must be processed when the group is accessed and has a positive effect on the system response time.

You describe the maintenance tasks to be performed in the individual elements of the task list. The most important elements are:

• Operations
• Suboperations
• Material Components
• Maintenance Packages
• Production Resources and Tools
• Relationships

Operations

You use operations to describe the individual maintenance tasks to be performed. The operation includes the time, the work center, and other controlling information for an individual maintenance task. In the operation text you can describe how the work should be done.

In the PM component, the operation has the following tasks:

• Determination of the capacity requirement
• Specifying whether a task is performed by the company’s own staff (internal processing) or by the staff of another company (external processing)
• Maintaining the status
• Definition of deadlines at operation level
• Specification of required spare parts and utilities (such as special tools)
• Determination of the process flow when processing relationships between operations

You can assign service packages to both operations that are to be internally processed and operations that are to be externally processed, if the control key entered allows this. Using service packages also allows you to:

• Plan services in all dimensions
• Plan many services that are provided in different dimensions together
• Define services uniformly (enter the service master in the service package)
• Structure services in an unlimited number of steps
• Meet framework agreements
• Agree conditions
• Use service catalogs
• Describe work contents better

Control Keys

The control key specifies how the operations should be performed. For example, you can set the following:

• Scheduling
• Confirmations
• Settlement
• External Processing
• Printing
• Costing
• Service catalog maintenance

You use the control key to define the type of the operation. The control key defines the following:

• The type of the operation, that is, internal or external processing operation
• The business function that is performed with the operation, such as, the creation of a purchase order for this operation
• The processing of the operation during the performance time, for example, whether it should be posted to cost accounting or whether it should be printed and confirmed

In principle, it is possible to enter the internal processing and the external processing data for each operation. It is only when you assign the control key that you decide whether the operation is processed internally or externally. You can maintain the control key both in the Operation Overview screen and in the detailed data screens of the individual operations.

It can happen that you cannot overwrite individual values that the system proposes in the maintenance task list. These values come from the master record of the work center that you specified in the maintenance task list and are there with reference indicators. This indicator means that this value is binding and cannot be overwritten anywhere referring to this work center (for example, in a task list or in an order).

Sub-Operations

In the PM component, you can create sub-operations for all the operations in a maintenance task list. Sub-operations represent an additional level of detail for an operation and are situated hierarchically below an operation. You can assign several sub-operations to one operation. This can be an advantage in the following scenarios:

• Several work centers are required in one operation.
• Employees with varying qualifications and skills are working simultaneously on the same operation.

Sub-operations may contain some of the same information as operations, for example,

• Work center assignment
• Control key
• Start and end dates

There are two types of operations for maintenance task lists in the PM component:

• Internal processing
• External processing

You can also add a sub-operation to your operation if part of the task is to be processed externally. For example, the sub-operation "motor inspection" could be performed by a third party. In this case, the sub-operation will contain a purchase requisition for the external labor.

You can create different types of sub-operation for one operation. For example, you can create externally processed sub-operations for an internally processed operation and vice versa.

Internally Processed Operations

Internally processed operations are operations that are performed in your own company by internal personnel.The detailed data you can enter in internally processed operations can be divided into two basic groups:

• Internally processed data: for example, work, activity type, duration.
• Wage data: for example, wage group, wage type, qualifications.

External Processing Operations

You send out a machine construction order to a company. The construction of the machine is, therefore, an external processing operation. The system automatically creates a purchase requisition from the operation data entered. This purchase requisition contains the quantity and dates. The purchasing department creates a purchase order based on this purchase requisition.
The detailed data you can enter in external processing operations can be divided into two basic groups:

• External processing data
• Procurement option data

External processing data contains information from the supplier on net price and planned delivery time. The procurement option data contains vendor account and purchasing information, such as the purchasing info record, purchasing group and organization.

Material Components

Materials required for maintenance tasks. You assign the corresponding operations. You can assign the following material components to the operations in maintenance task lists.

• Material components from the bill of material for the maintenance object (piece of equipment, functional location or header assembly) assigned to the maintenance task list.

For more information on bills of material and BOM items see Maintenance Bills of Material .

• Stock materials that are not in the BOM for the maintenance object

You can assign several materials to one operation and one material to several operations.

The system copies the material components assigned to the task list to the maintenance order once the task list is exploded in the order. For more information on maintenance orders see Work Scheduling with Maintenance Task Lists .

Maintenance Cycle and Maintenance Package

The maintenance cycles and packages contain the time or performance condition when maintenance must be performed.
A distinction is made between maintenance plan types which are created without a maintenance strategy and those created with one.

• Maintenance Plans Without a Maintenance Strategy

You create maintenance cycles directly in the maintenance plan for maintenance plans that were created without a maintenance strategy (for example, single cycle plan or multiple counter plan).
To create multiple counter plans, you can use a copy model for maintenance cycles, known as cycle sets .

• Maintenance Plans with Maintenance Strategy

Maintenance plans which are created with a maintenance strategy (for example, time- or performance-based strategy plans) use the task list specified in the maintenance plan as a reference to the so-called maintenance packages. The maintenance packages themselves are defined in the maintenance strategy.