Procurement via Maintenance Plans (PM)
Purpose
For services that have to be performed on a periodic basis (e.g. regular gardening and grass-cutting work, daily or weekly cleaning of offices, or the half-yearly servicing of company cars) you can record the service specifications in a maintenance order (application component PM Plant Maintenance) that references a maintenance (servicing) plan.
In the normal course of events, these specifications for external services will be entered in a purchase requisition (MM Purchasing). The source determination process then takes place for the requisition, after which it is converted into a standard PO or a contract release order. The recording of the services actually performed is based upon the PO or release order.
If you wish, you can shorten this basic process as follows:
You dispense with the maintenance order and enter the specifications directly in the maintenance plan.
You do without the purchase requisition.
To accelerate the procurement process, you create a purchase order with an extended validity period for the desired vendor, which you can repeatedly reference when periodically recording the services performed by the vendor.
You omit the service entry process.
If a secure, long-term supply relationship exists with a certain service provider, you can have the system generate service entry sheets on the basis of the information from the maintenance plan.
This means that you do not incur any manual data maintenance effort up until the time of service acceptance.