In Plant Maintenance, unforeseen events can occur in addition to periodic maintenance tasks. Such malfunctions or exceptional operational situations require a quick response from the maintenance organization. For this purpose, the Plant Maintenance application component provides numerous options for entering maintenance tasks flexibly, tailoring them to the specific requirements of your company, and managing them easily.

This scenario describes the process flows, which occur when maintenance tasks are executed that usually precede a malfunction at a technical object, for example:

• Malfunctions that seriously endanger further production (processing of emergency tasks)
• Malfunctions that do not seriously endanger further production, but that should be rectified in the medium term to restore the optimal condition of the system

This scenario also describes corrective maintenance processing, which involves work scheduled based on dates and resources, even if immediate repair work is not necessary (for example, when an old, but still functioning aggregate is replaced).

In the Breakdown Maintenance scenario, you use business functions integrated from the following R/3 application components:

You can use notifications to describe in detail an exceptional technical condition at a defective reference object. You request the necessary maintenance task using a notification and document the task performed.

During notification creation, the Plant Maintenance application component distinguishes between the following types of notification:

• Malfunction report:
  Describes the condition or malfunction at a maintenance object, which is limiting its performance in some way.

• Maintenance request:
  Requests a service or task from the maintenance department when no malfunction exists.

In this scenario, the term notification refers in particular to the malfunction report. Malfunctions at a technical object are first entered using the malfunction report.

You can plan the following sub-aspects for the order:

• Spare parts required (internal/external)

• Work centers affected

• Decision on internal or external processing

In particular, you use the order to:

• Manage maintenance activities in terms of planning and execution
• Collect the costs incurred by the tasks
• Create a subsequent maintenance history for the technical objects

When processing orders, you can use Work Clearance Management if you have to isolate technical objects electrically for the duration of maintenance tasks or special tests, or separate them mechanically from other system parts.

You can only perform the following activities once you have released the order:

• Print shop papers for the order

• Withdraw material for the order from the warehouse (planned and unplanned)

• Execute purchase orders for requirement requests

• Post goods receipts

• Enter external services

• Post invoice receipts

• Enter completion confirmations of time

After the order has been released, the individual activities can be performed either by internal maintenance employees or external service companies (external service providers).

You generally plan dates and resources before executing a plannable, non-ad hoc maintenance task. You can evaluate the capacity situation and, if necessary, perform capacity leveling during any phase of order processing.

During maintenance processing, you can install, dismantle and replace individual pieces of equipment, several pieces of equipment, or complete equipment hierarchies for functional locations. To do this, you change the assignment of the equipment or equipment hierarchy to a functional location. You can save the installation and dismantling data for a piece of equipment in its usage list.

The material movements in this scenario involve goods issues of required spare parts and materials.

You can use the order confirmation to implement the following confirmation types:

• Completion confirmations of time
• Goods movements
• Service entries (services)
• Invoice receipts
• Entry of tasks/activities
• Technical confirmation report (for example, causes of damage)
• Entries for measurement and counter readings
• Equipment changes

Time sheets (CATS) can also be used by internal and external employees to enter time data for all applications. Completion confirmations are generated from working time data entered (for example, to update capacity requirements and dates, or calculate costs).

The time sheet is equipped with an approval procedure for the time data entered.

Both the notification and order are completed after the requested maintenance work has been executed. There are two completion functions available:

• Technical completion

• Business completion

Technical completion is used to cancel all outstanding purchase requisitions, open reservations and capacities that still exist for the order. Although the order can continue to receive costs (for example, from invoice receipts for materials delivered and used), it is blocked for all other processing changes.

During order settlement, the costs incurred, which were collected temporarily on the order, are forwarded to the receiver (for example, to the cost center of the repaired object).

Business completion is used to indicate that the order posting has been completed. The order cannot receive any more postings.

You can use the Plant Maintenance Information System to perform various analyses (for example, on damage, activities performed, or costs for particular maintenance objects).

The R/3 System provides various methods for analyzing this data:

• Predefined standard analyses, which you use to analyze generally known and required data constellations without having to make any further settings

• Flexibly defined, customer-specific program, which you can use to define your individual list layouts and specific formulas