Now, it’s been a while since something got me really excited. But a few weeks ago, I sat down with my WM guru friend, Jeff, we walked through what would need to happen in order to be able to do “staging” on service orders. I did a post a couple weeks ago going into all the details of exactly what service staging is, so I won’t bore you again. I’ve had an idea on my “to-do” list for a couple years now to integrate SM with WM. Little did I know at the time that this would springboard me into a new idea, that I’m pretty excited about. It’s the service supervisor transaction. Now, if you’ve followed my stuff for any length of time, you might remember me talking about a Production transaction I built called Proximity. The idea is to provide a single location to handle all the SAP work for a shop floor manager or technician. We built one for the supervisor & and for execution. Well, frankly, I never gave it much more thought. This was my partner’s thing, he knows production, so I built it. Then fast forward a couple years. I’m talking with Jeff, and it FINALLY hits me. Why don’t I make a set of transactions for the service shop. After all, that’s my expertise, why shouldn’t they have a transaction to help in their day to day life. And before you know it, Service Execution was born. But something like staging, or releasing service orders is not typically something the service technician does, there’s usually a supervisor. And next you know, Service Supervisor was born.
I literally just finished this last week, and I’m so excited, that I just had toot my own horn a little bit. Now I’ve developed lots of things, had lots of ideas… but this one became special on multiple levels. First, it provided me with a vested interest in one of our products. Proximity, up until now was just Mike’s thing, not mine. Now that there is a rather large service component, I suddenly have a much bigger stake in the game. Next, I had always had these “tool sets” for service orders. They were kind of a side project because who wants to buy some little gadgets, even if they are helpful. Now, I have a vehicle to package them and make them useful within a transaction. So my service order availability tool that’s been sitting out there forever, is now a button on Service Supervisor. I’ll still provide the transaction so you could run it nightly, or in background, but now, the supervisor can just run it whenever they want, and for as many orders as they want.
Now, coming full circle, is the advent of Service Component Staging. After years of wondering what user exits I’d have to program, wondering how could I deliver this as a product, I finally solved all of that. It’s now my favorite button within service supervisor. Mostly because I think it’s so cool :). I’ve included many of the same configuration options you see in WM for production orders, and give you additional options geared toward service. Including the option to print a picklist to a designated printer every time you stage components. You can decide what material movement should be used. I even provide the functionality to do WM to WM transfers, an option you can’t get out of the box for service orders. There’s more to it, and if you’re curious, let me know because I’d love to explain it to you 🙂
The best thing is that as I come up with more ideas to help the service shop, I can just add them to these transactions and give them to anyone using Proximity. Then to sweeten the deal, if you buy Proximity, you get service and production, all in one. Sorry if I sound like an infomercial. I kinda feel a little like one right now, because this really is cool.
Thanks for reading, and if you’d like to learn more about Proximity for Service, please comment or email me:
mpiehl@javellinsolutions.
As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,
Mike