SM

In a previous post I talked about the equipment status.  This field can be very powerful, but at times, it’s very painful.  I have run into issues the status doesn’t get set or reset properly after certain transactions.  Today I want to talk about how to reset equipment status.

Once inside of the equipment record, edit–>special serial number functions –>manual transaction.  The manual transaction is the equivalent of the equipment status reset.  It allows you to force the status (remember, this won’t impact the stock)

that will bring up this nice pop-up window that presents you with the following options:

To stock: ESTO
From Stock: add AVLBTo Customer: ECUS
From Customer: ESTO
Delete Assign to HU: Clears the handling unit
Delete Inv. Assign: clears inventory connection

Save, and should be able to continue with your transactions.
Good luck and thanks for reading.

I recently learned a cool trick when dealing with inter-company in-house repairs.  One of the scenarios in service management I’m seeing more often is having one facility bill for a repair while another company performs the repair.  There are 2 common ways of transacting this intercompany billing in the system.

1.  Create a repair sales order in both the billing and the repairing facility.  While this method provides the greatest flexibility, it also requires the greatest amount of transactional data to be entered.

2.  Create a single repair order with the main line item in the billing plant, and the receiving/repairing lines in the repair facility.

The biggest challenge with option 2 is billing the “billing plant” for the repair.  Sounds simple, but with only a single sales order, how can you invoice the customer and the “billing plant”.

That’s where I discovered this SAP provided report: RVIVAUFT that generates an inter-company invoice from the customer invoice.  it’s pretty simple and pretty slick.  there is however one drawback to this approach.  You can’t invoice the “billing plant” until after you invoice the customer.  Typically this shouldn’t be an issue, but depending on your business process it is something to be aware.

Hope you find this as useful as I did.

Well, I recently started helping a new client to revisit their current service processes across multiple organizations.  My first observation with all of their processes is that in many places things are disconnected because they aren’t using some of the functionality that is native to SAP.  This made me wonder, are there other places that aren’t connecting things in the system?  So I thought I’d do a post on serial number / Equipment history.  I think there will be follow on for connecting other documents later 🙂

So, on with the show.  the serial number history is an amazing resource, but only if you use the serial number properly.  If you are using standard SAP, in your equipment record there is a tab called serdata.  This magical tab is by far my favorite on the equipment record.  it gives you the material, serial number, if it’s currently in stock and of course the history button:

Now this is a sample history of a single serial number.  This becomes invaluable because if you look at the legend that included in this screenshot, you’ll see a huge list of documents that will be shown in the history, but only if you add the serial number to them.

Some of the biggest culprits are the SD delivery, especially if you do in-house repairs.  if you don’t add the serial number to the inbound delivery, it won’t show up anywhere in the document chain.  You can manually add it to the SD repair sales order (using the menu extras->technical objects), then even the sales order will show it.  Now, keep in mind, your serial number profile will define where the serial number is allowed and where it is required.  I’ll be doing a post soon talking about the serial number profile to give you more details.  the important detail to take away from today’s post is that everywhere you can put a serial number you should.  If you include it in a document, it will show up in the history and give you a complete picture of everywhere the number has been used.

This will be an ongoing post with more details, so don’t be upset that I’m keeping this kind of vague…  have to start somewhere 🙂

I’ve come to realize that I haven’t talked much about a very important aspect of service management, that’s serial numbers.  If you haven’t checked out my SDN post on the serial number profile, I recommend it.  It will help you understand this coming post even better.  Today I wanted to continue talking about the serial numbers, but today I want to focus on the system status’ you will encounter and what they mean to you.  Like everything in SAP, there are a lot of possible status’ out there, but I’m going to concentrate on the common ones you will see, and the some of the headaches you may encounter because of them.  Here’s the most common equipment status you’ll encounter:

• AVLB:  This is the easiest one to deal with, but the least informative.  This status is pretty much the same as saying I exist, but I don’t know where.  If you have the status AVLB, then you use it in scenarios from or to the customer.  Typically this status is assigned if you manually (or in mass) create the equipment record and it hasn’t been assigned to anything yet.
• ECUS:  This means that the equipment is at the customer.  If this status has been assigned, then you won’t be able to use it for outbound deliveries, or material movements (at least if you have stock checking turned on).  The only thing you can do with this status is an inbound delivery or Lock it.  You may also see this status combined with EDEL (which means that it is customer owned and on a delivery).
• ESTO: This means that the equipment is in stock at your facility.  it could be any plant or location, but it is now in stock, and you can no longer perform an inbound delivery, but you can do material movements on the serial number and you can do an outbound delivery.
• EDEL:  This means that it is on a delivery.  If you have an open delivery that has not been PGI’d or PGR’d, then you will see this status with either ECUS or ESTO (which will tell you if it’s an inbound or outbound delivery).  This can be a particularly nasty status.  I’ve seen many instances where deletion of a delivery does not always reset this status.  (Next post I’ll talk about how to fix things that get messed up).
• ELOK:  This is the same as marking the equipment for deletion.  Once you set this status you can’t do anything with the serial number.  If you need it, you can unlock it again, but as long as this status exist, the serial might as well NOT exist =)

I hope this helps explain the status’ a little better on the equipment.  Next time I’ll explain how you fix the status when SAP gets “Confused”.  ha ha ha.

 

I recently got a question on my linked-in account about the difference between Equipment Records & Functional Locations.  So I figured, what better way to answer it than to post it on the blog so everyone can see it :).  And it gives me an idea of what to write about, which some days is easier than others.  So equipment vs functional locations.

So, onto the question.  An Equipment Record and a Functional Location are very similar as far as SAP functionality.  They can both do pretty much all the same things, hold the same data etc.  The difference between these items is really more fundamental in terms of what they represent.

Equipment:  this is typically any piece of equipment, say an Iphone, a printer, a laptop.  They can be anywhere, with anyone etc.  Typically serialized, etc.

Functional Location: This is typically more of a permanent structure.  For example, this may be a punch press machine, a central office for your cable company etc.  A functional location is just that, a fixed location.  It can often contain equipment records (especially in the case of a central office, there may be racks, switching devices, fiber optic routers, etc.).  In my experience, I tend to see FL’s used much more in plant maintenance for items that are fixed in the plant.

If anyone cares to comment further, please add it to the post.

Thanks for reading, and please keep shooting me questions,

Mike

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

How about another simple tidbit on service order.  Using the Service order List.  You can use IW72 or IW73 (if you only want to display).  Now if you notice this screen has a LOT of options.  It gives you an incredible amount of control allowing you see only what you need to see.  The top portion lets you limit if it’s Outstanding, In Process, or Completed (TECO).  In addition, you can control by dates, numbers, customers, etc…  This is highly valuable when you have a lot of notifications and multiple people processing them. 

Once you have all your selections in, I encourage you to save it as a variant.  No sense in reinventing the wheel.

Next up, press execute and let’s see the results.

Now, by default there are always set fields that will be displayed.  If you’re not aware, there is a huge catalog of fields that you can display.  Priority, start and end dates, status, etc…  Pretty much anything you want to know about about the service order aside from long text.  Just press the variant button, add the fields you want, you can even save sums and sorts.  Maybe I’ll do a reporting post to show you the fun parts of ALV in the future.

Now, on top of all this, you can also select a group of orders to Release (green flag), TECO (checkered flag).  If you use the menu option:  Order–>completion–>complete (Business) is also an option.

For most clients, this is a great tool out of the box.  Occasionally, customers need a fancier work list, but most times, IW72/IW73 is more than sufficient.  However, if you’re looking to gather true metrics, I recommend checking out our Service management Dashboard: Broadsword.

Well, it’s a nice easy lesson for today…  but for no point in frying your brain today.  I’m sure you’re busy thinking about Christmas shopping anyway =)

If you need some Service help, press the contact us button above and let us know how we can make your service business better,

thanks,

Mike