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 Operation

Definition

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.

Use

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.

Integration

Task List and Work Center

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).

Task List and Order

Note the peculiarities for orders if you create a "task list for notifications" in which several notifications, which it makes sense to process together, are compiled into a maintenance or service order.

The system automatically generates the operations for the order. The system cancels the task lists assigned to a notification and copies the operations of the task list into the order. For more information, see Worklist for Notifications .

You can assign operations of an order that have not been assigned to any object in the object list or you can change existing assignments. For more information, see Change Operation Assignment of Object List Entries .