We are the service management experts.
I know this can be considered cheating for a blog post, but not everyone knows that I also post on SDN. This post is actually a good one about the SM repair procedure that I think is helpful, especially if there are any newbies to service out there looking for good info 🙂
http://scn.sap.com/people/michael.piehl/blog/2013/01/04/service-management–configuring-the-repair-procedure
Thanks for reading,
Mike
Ok, while normally I spend my time giving you tidbits of useful business or SAP information, today I’m going to offer a big chunk of cash, in exchange for a little help. In case you haven’t figured it out, I’m trying to launch a software business so I can slide out of the consulting world. I have several products available right now, and with the new year, I’m trying to drum up some new sales.
So, here’ the deal. If you provide me with a lead that turns into a sale, I send you $12,500. That’s it. You don’t need to do any selling, you don’t need to be an expert about my products. You just need to provide me a contact (name, email, phone #, etc.), and if you want to increase your chances, it wouldn’t hurt to pass along the websites below.
Today, I’m going to do a brief commercial in hopes that you may know someone that can use this.
Broadsword: Service Management Dashboard – exactly what it sounds like. This is a full featured, out of the box SM dashboard that gives you metrics on notifications, in-house repairs, repair sales orders, service orders, and even return orders.
Rapier: SM Customer Self-Service: This is an out of the box BSP web application that allows your customer to register their products, submit an RMA or repair request, and allow them to track their open notifications. It uses all standard SAP functionality and takes the burden off your call center.
WMigo: Warehouse Management + Inventory Management: This application behaves like the standard MIGO transaction, but will automatically convert TR’s to TO’s and confirm those TO’s. this is especially useful when you are moving materials from quality to unrestricted, or bin to bin movements when the same person is conducting all of the SAP transactions.
Proximity: Production Operations: This product tool includes a super transaction for Production Supervisors, Production Execution, MRP Controllers & Production Schedulers. In addition, it includes a transaction to easily reprint a production order, it includes 2 smartforms for the shop floor papers and the programs that allow you to use a smartform in production orders and many other things.
We also have a couple other smaller items, and I would love to have you check out everything we have at
http://javellinsolutions.com/sm-products/
For the past 5 months or so, I start blogging, and I have managed to put out 5 posts a week since I started. Now when I started doing this, the first thing I thought was “how can I come up with enough to talk about?”. I have to confess, I’ve surprised myself. I discovered a few things, and I wanted to share those with you.
1. You know more than you think – If you consider yourself an expert at anything, then there’s an audience out there that wants to hear what you have to say. Now, you may not consider yourself an “expert”, but a famous quote I heard is that “In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king”. What does that mean? it means that in your subject you know a lot more than someone just learning. So you might not have every answer, but you have a lot of answers the average person has no clue about. This was a tough one for me. I’ve been doing a lot of these things for so long that I assume it’s common knowledge. Well, I’ve learned that what I think is common knowledge, is actually only common among other experts, but not to the average person.
2. Writing is too much work – this one plagued me for a while until I learned a simple concept. Write like you’re talking to someone over coffee or drinks. Don’t try to write a masterpiece, rather just write like you would talk. While this won’t win you a Pulitzer, it strikes the average person as a “real”. If you write like you’re having a conversation with someone you don’t come across as an arrogant expert, rather it brings a feeling of familiarity, comfort. Strangely enough, I’ve discovered that a lot of people are actually reading what I consider ramblings. Sometime I feel like I’m just babbling on, but then I’ll get a comment from an old friend, or someone that I’ve never met before, and it gives me a renewed effort to keep blogging.
3. Be consistent – this one has been tough for me. To do this right, you really need to post consistently every week. I decided I’d do every weekday. The problem with this is that I don’t feel like writing every night. So for that, I discovered an awesome trick. I write when I’m in the mood. This means I might be writing 2 or 3 posts a night, then I schedule them to run in the future. I’ve done my best to keep a 2 week buffer of posts. Now this might not work for everyone, but my stuff isn’t tied to current events, so for me I can write down somehting I do today, and post it next week and no one cares. This allows me to write when I’m in the zone, and not panic when suddenly I haven’t blogged in 3 days.
I hope this helps. Just remember, stick with it. You probably won’t see any results for weeks or even months, but if you stick with it, you’ll surprise yourself at the readers you’re accumulated.
Thanks for reading,
Mike
Well, in this new year I thought I’d just put a little piece of helpful sales information, coming from a sales person in training =)
The simple information is to never miss an opportunity. For example, my main business is still consulting (not for long, I hope, but still for now), so that means interviews. As it turns out, a job interview is actually a great place to pitch your stuff. It’s simple, during an interview you need to prove that you know your stuff. What better way to prove your knowledge than by showing off an application you have developed. This ends up being a double win. It shows your skill and knowledge, and could lead to a sale.
Now you still need to remember during an interview you need to focus on selling yourself, and not your products. Like everything I’ve been learning lately, it’s fine line between in the sales process between pushing your stuff and presenting an opportunity. I took an approach in my last interview that I hope will work for me. I did my interview and subtly mentioned that I designed applications for SM. I left it at that. Then, after the interview I sent a Thank-You email, and included a pitch for my products. It remains to be seen if I was successful, but I’m hoping it at least sparks some interest.
Anyway, it’s just another step in my development to learn sales.
I hope your new year will be as great as mine…
Thanks for reading,
Mike
Hey Everybody, I’m trying my hardest to simply change the instance number on my ERP 6.0 system (I’ll talk more about that in another post), but one of the things I tried was doing a system copy (unfortunately that also is causing me headaches), but it reminded me of another little tip. How do you get the system key from solution manager. Obviously, step one is to have solution manager, or access to someone else that does (a solution manager system key doesn’t need to be connected to your system. You can call up any Basis friend, give them a little info and get a key that will work).
Now, on with the show:
After executing T-code SMSY in Solution Manager system, you need to do the following steps:
Create a system by right clicking on System entry and select Create new system.
Enter the System Name i.e., SID (3 chars)
Product = SAP ECC (select from the list)
Product Version= ECC 5.0 (select from the list)
Save the entries.
Select Menu Item “System—>Other Configuration” and enter the SID which you have created earlier.
Enter the Server Name(hostname)
Finally click on Generate “Installation/Upgrade Key Button ”
The system generates a system Key ,copy that system Key and paste it in the SAPINST screen when it prompts for Sol man Key.
That’s it. Pretty easy, but still required…
Have a great new years eve, and remember as the new budget cycle opens up, if you need help with anything, or have use for one of our SAP Easy Button’s please let us know.
Thanks,
MIke
I found this cool post that showed me a way to have my own ABAP custom header default into every new program I created. I thought I’d share it with you all (and add it to my note book :> ).
It’s really pretty easy. Simply go to table: TSE05 (use SE16N, since no table maintenance has been defined).
If you want to update a program, use the following:
APP_OBJ = ADDM
KEYWORD = REPORT
Next up, just make the changes as you’d like. Feel free to add additional lines, move around what’s there, etc. Now you don’t even need to paste your header into every program, just set up your boilerplate once, then you only need to populate in the information. Just like that you have your own ABAP custom header that will populate every time you create a new program.
Happy Hacking,
Mike
Well, one of the obstacles I’ve recently had to tackle is to handle variant configuration iteration within a model. If you’ve done VC for a while, I’m sure you’ve heard about the advanced mode modeling, and it’s ability to have rules talk to different line items etc. Well, short story, I don’t have that option. So that means I have to go old school. While it’s uglier than I’d prefer, it does still work. So I wanted to go over my method and either give you a new idea, or perhaps hear of a better way to accomplish the same thing.
Here’s my situation. I have a multiple level KMAT. Inside of the second level (which is a cabinet), I have different types of shelves that needs to be iterated. The business has said that the customer can choose up to 5 different types of shelves to go into a single cabinet. Originally, the model was designed to use a single type of shelf. So we need to adjust the current design. What follows is my method to accomplish this.
1. Create a Class that contains all of the shelf related characteristics. This class needs to contain all the attributes that the Bill of Material will require to run all the object dependencies. This can be an opportunity to do some cleanup work. In my current project, we were able to do some characteristic consolidation. This becomes especially important because of my next task.
2. Duplicate all the necessary characteristics. This is the part I really hate. Having to make copies of existing characteristics always frustrates me because it creates needless work. If I make a change to one cstic, I now need to change it 5 times (one for each duplicate). My problem is that I don’t know of a better way to handle it.
3. Create a KMAT material master that will handle the shelves. Pretty straight forward. Make the material, then create the configuration profile, and attach the class we created in step 1.
4. Bill of Material Creation/Change. First, find all the components of the shelves and add them to the new KMAT you created in step 3. Be sure to move the object dependencies along with them. If it was already modeled, like it was in my case, you need to go into the cabinet BOM and remove those same components so you don’t add them twice to your finished BOM. In addition, you need to add your KMAT to the cabinet BOM. In my case, I added it 5 times and included a selection condition on each item. One more note. you now have the option to maintain the qty at the KMAT level, or you can leave it at the component level. You’ll need to review the qty procedures existing on your components and make that choice for yourself. Initially, I’m just moving the qty procedures as they currently exist to the lower level. If time permits, I may come back and adjust them.
5. Create a Constraint for each position. Now, here’s where the magic comes in (at least I think it’s pretty cool). Since I intend to use a single KMAT for the 5 iterations, I still need a way to make sure I pass the correct cstic values to each position. For that, I use a constraint with the RESTRICTIONS section and the PART_OF command. This syntax allows me to look at a specific BOM position. Since I chose to put shelf 1 at 500, shelf 2 at 501, etc. I know where they will be, so I can pass all the shelf 2 characteristics to position 501. You get the idea. If you haven’t already, be sure that the constraint net has been attached the cabinet configuration profile.
6. Be sure all the new characteristics are passed to the lower levels. Depending on how deep your model currently goes, you need to make sure that all the new duplicated characteristics get pass down to the cabinet. In my model, I’m utilizing some phantom levels, plus nested KMATs, etc. so I needed to do a procedure/CNET to pass those values down to the cabinet level where the Shelf KMAT’s exist.
Finally, test your work. make sure the components are all showing up like you expect, then hand it over to the business. In my case, we are using order BOMs, so we’ll need to pass an example down to production to make sure that the planned/production orders explode the same way that CU50/CU51 explode. If you’ve dealt with order BOM’s you’re already familiar with some of those hassles.
Anyway, that’s been my latest adventure. I hope to hear back that someone has found a better way, or if not, I hope this may help in your own iteration adventures.
As always, if there’s anything we can do for you, please click contact us above, and let us know how we can help,
Thanks for reading,
Mike
Well, the time has finally come, and I hope you’ve finished all your Christmas preparations. For me, this is always a hard time of year. I love Christmas, but I hate all the additional stress it inevitably brings with it. So, again, I hope you can learn from my mistakes, and coast a little for the next few days. I confess, I doubt I’ll stop working between now and New Years, but I do intend to take things easier and just enjoy my family.
Above all else, if you’re doing anything like I am, remember WHY you’re doing all this work. For me, I want to build a business so I can spend more time at home with my family. So I often need to remind myself that it’s ok to enjoy my family NOW. So that’s what I’m doing as I write this… reminding myself the reason behind my pursuit of this endeavor. I won’t pretend it’s not for me too… =)
So on that note, I’ll keep this short. I hope you have a great Christmas and I’ll be back on Wednesday.
If you’re anything like me, sometime getting started is the hardest part of any new endeavor. Right now, I’m ready to start converting my Service Dashboard to Web Dynpro. I haven’t done a real project in Web Dynpro yet, so getting started can be tough for me. I have a tendency to get stuck in my own head. Like tonight, I’ve got things setup by moving the ERP code into my Web Dynpro system, but then I started waffling… where do I start? what do I do first? How did I start when I did the textbook exercises?
Ugh… I tend do this from time to time… Every time, this is one cure. DO SOMETHING!!! it doesn’t matter if it’s right, or if you need to re-do… but for me, if I don’t do something, I end up never doing anything.
Learn from me… just start doing something… when I finish this post, that’s exactly what I’m going to do =)
Now, if only I didn’t have 10 other things I was trying to accomplish at the same time =) I covered that in another post though on time management.
I think I may have touched on this a while ago, but I’m constantly reminded of just how useful having a ropbox account is. Originally I created a Dropbox account just so I could easily most large files from one computer to another. Since that time, my appreciation has only grown.
The first great thing about Dropbox is that you can share folders. This means it is incredibly easy to share pictures (even large file sizes) with any group of people you choose. If you have Dropbox start automatically on your computer, you will get a quick notification that new files or changed files exist in your folder, so it’s easy to know if you have something new to look at.
Next up, the whole cloud concept. I confess, I heard about the cloud for a long time and never really got the concept until recently. Now I finally get that it’s just a virtual location for some or all of your files. Why do you care? Well, you never know when your HDD is gonna fail (if you read some of my earlier posts, you know that I’ve had major heartaches when my hard drive died). The cloud lets you put those files somewhere else that is safe, and highly unlikely that those HDD will die at the same time as your own.
Collaboration is the next great thing. While it’s not quite as cool as I’ve heard that Google docs is, sharing specifications and business documents with my partner has never been easier. We have a shared folder, and we keep everything important in there. If we make changes to something, we can instantly let the other know to take a look at the latest updates. Otherwise, I’ve always had to deal with emailing file back and forth, and waiting for a new attachment, then making sure that you only keep the latest version, blah blah blah… you get the idea.
Anyway, I’m not getting paid for this, but I do highly encourage you to get a Dropbox account. It’s a free cloud if nothing else (and you can share things even on your smartphone from your computer).
Mike