Plants
One or more plants appropriate for a company’s operations must be defined. In the Plant Maintenance module, these plants are often referred to as Maintenance Plants. It is best to work with those configuring other modules to determine what plants must be defined in R/3. For Plant Maintenance purposes, a plant can be any, usually static, location where maintenance can be performed. Groups of buildings at one facility are usually together referred to as one plant, but there may be exceptions.
Planning Plants
In the Plant Maintenance module, these plants may also be referred to as Maintenance Planning Plants. Planning Plants are “chosen” from the list of Plants defined previously as a plant where maintenance planning is carried out. If maintenance planning, including materials planning, is performed at every plant, then every plant will be also be defined as a Planning Plant. In some cases, more centralized planning for several plants will be performed at one plant. In this case, the plant where maintenance planning is performed will be defined as a Planning Plant, but those plants where maintenance planning is not performed will not be defined as Planning Plants.
Assignment of Planning Plants
Once the plants and planning plants have been defined, the assignment of maintenance plants to planning plants must be done. Beside each maintenance plant listed in the configuration step in the IMG, the appropriate planning plant is entered or chosen. In the case where each plant performs its own planning, the same planning plant number will be entered next to each maintenance plant number. In the case of centralized planning, the appropriate planning plant number must be entered for every maintenance plant.
Security: Authorizations and Roles
The responsibility for security, both setup and maintenance, in the SAP R/3 system is usually assigned to one or more individuals whose sole responsibility is security. If this is the case, those individuals will not likely be familiar with the Plant Maintenance module and will require some information in order to set up security for the Plant Maintenance module. It is not common for those responsible for configuring or using a particular module to also set up security for that module or other modules. Some of the terminology used in SAP R/3 security includes:
Transaction Codes
There is a transaction code associated with each screen in the R/3 system. Some screens may share the same transaction code and there are some screens that are not accessible by menu paths, in which case the transaction codes must be used to access the screens. The transaction code for a particular screen may be found, in versions prior to 4.5, from the menu path System -> Status, while later versions also make it available by right clicking with the mouse on the status bar near the bottom of the screen. Also in later versions, the transaction code may be displayed by default on the status bar.
Authorization
An authorisation is comprised of one or more transaction codes. It may be useful to consider the job requirements of a particular position when defining authorizations. For Plant Maintenance purposes, an operator may require access to, and be restricted from, different transactions than a maintenance planner, for example. Grouping transaction codes into authorizations by job responsibility seems to make sense in most cases.
Roles
A role will consist of one or more authorizations, giving some measure of flexibility in building an authorization/group hierarchy, as desired. It is possible to include all of the operators’ transaction codes in the authorization intended for maintenance planners, and then add the additional functions required, for example. It is also possible to make the transactions in the maintenance planners’ authorization mutually exclusive from the transactions in the operators’ authorization, and then assign both authorizations to an activity group intended for maintenance planners. In addition, composite roles can be defined, which consist of authorizations contained in other roles. In SAP versions prior to 4.5, profiles are used in a similar fashion to roles.
Engineering Change Management
Engineering change management provides a more formal method of reference to changes made, or changes that will be made, to materials, bills of materials, documents, or task lists. Although there are other object types to which engineering change management applies, such as classification objects, the same principles apply. This functionality is available to the various SAP R/3 Logistics modules, so co-ordination with the other logistics modules is recommended if this functionality is to be implemented.
While engineering change managementis not required for a basic Plant Maintenance implementation, the importance of formal change tracking forma particular implementation should be considered. When the engineering change management functionality is used, change master records are used in the system. Change master records include such data as the type of object, possibly the date of the change, and the reason for the change. The definition and assignment of revision levels and sequences may be made. Engineering change management can be further formalized with the use of engineering change requests and/or engineering change orders.
Number Ranges
Throughout the SAP R/3 system, there are many number ranges. Some of the defaults may be acceptable as SAP has provided, while other number ranges will need to be defined or adjusted.
A number range defines limits for the unique identifier for each item. In Plant Maintenance, for example, each piece of equipment (among other items) has a unique identifier, called Equipment Number. A number range for equipment numbers must be defined in order to identify valid equipment numbers. A number range in SAP R/3 can be defined as an internal number range or an external number range.
Internal Number Range
An internal number range is numeric only, characters are not permitted, starting from a specific number and ending at a specific number. Internal numbers, when used, are assigned to an item automatically by the system. The next available number is always used and no selection of numbers is possible by the system users. Note that there are technical conditions under which the next number(s) in sequence may be skipped, based on buffer settings. Basis personnel may need to adjust buffer settings if this may be a problem for a particular implementation.
External Number Range
An external number range can be numeric, alphabetic, alphanumeric, and may contain certain special characters (consult the SAP documentation). This can be useful in cases where specific values need to be assigned to items. However, there is no provision for displaying the next available “number, ” and some planning may be required for each location to have its own range. In general, this method of “smart numbering” is discouraged, since there are many other methods of finding objects in the SAP R/3 system. In some cases, however, it may be required.
Mixed Number Range
A mixed number range is available in some rare cases such as document management. This type of number range, when available, permits the user to provide a prefix in the number field, after which the system assigns a sequential number. If there is an inclination to use external (user specified) numbering, try to restrict it to more static data, such as equipment. For transaction-related data, such as work orders, it is often more beneficial to allow the system to assign the numbers.
