Condition-Based Maintenance 

Purpose

Condition-based maintenance refers to the creation and processing of tasks that derive from the condition of a certain asset. The tasks can be inspections and maintenance, but can also be repair work for restoring the target condition of an asset.

Every technical asset has a certain service life. If the service life is exhausted or if the asset is no longer in good enough condition to perform its service to the required quality, then the service life must be restored through maintenance or repair work. These maintenance tasks are generated and performed based on a certain asset condition.

You can use this business process to guarantee the following activities.

·        You can make the productive operation of assets and the recording of the actual condition of assets as smooth as possible.

·        You can automatically trigger the necessary tasks at the right time and make the necessary resources available before the service life of the asset is exhausted.

·        You can increase the safety and availability of assets and reduce their operating costs.

Prerequisites

A prerequisite of condition-based maintenance is that the critical asset conditions that make certain maintenance tasks necessary are known. There must also be a connection between asset condition and the necessary tasks.

The assets’ conditions must be measured automatically or manually and entered and copied to the SAP system. The service entry is subject to the definition and assignment of counters or measuring points to technical assets. One or more counters or measuring points can be assigned to an asset.

The system has open interfaces for recording and transferring the data. As a rule, the threshold values, the crossing of which leads to maintenance tasks, are not defined in the SAP system.

Process Flow

The following business process runs in SAP ECC:

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       1.      Process measurement document

The measurement values and counter readings to be monitored of an asset, that were recorded by an external process control system, can be analyzed within the PM-PCS (PCS = process control system) and transferred automatically to SAP ERP.

       2.      Create / process notification

In the external interface it is possible to automatically generate malfunction reports that describe the error and allow follow-up measures to be determined, in SAP ERP when the threshold values have been exceeded.

       3.      Perform follow-up action

The type of malfunction that occurs determines what action is taken. If the maintenance worker does not need an order to process the task, he or she prints the notification papers and performs the task.

If it’s a cost-relevant or planning-relevant activity, then the maintenance worker creates a maintenance order from the maintenance notification.