Permits are agreements needed before the order can be released or technically completed.
You can setup the permit categories in the Customizing for Plant Maintenance and Customer Service by choosing Master Data in Plant Maintenance and Customer Service -> Basic Settings -> Permits -> Define Permit Categories.
Overview of the Permit Process Flow
1. You define permit categories in Customizing.
2. You create permits as master data in the system.
These can be based on safety advice from the manufacturer of a technical object, general legal regulations on safety in the workplace or fixed company rules.
3. You can create authorizations for issuing and canceling permits in the system.
4. You assign permits to a technical object if these permits could be relevant (now or later) for an order on an object.
If a permit should be valid for each order on a particular technical object or its subordinate objects, then the indicator Proposal can be set when assigning this permit to the technical object. The permit is then always assigned to all the orders.
You can edit or delete the assignment of permits to technical objects at any time.
5.You create an order. If permits have already been assigned to the reference object for the order or the subordinate objects, and these assignments marked with indicator Proposal, these are also automatically referred to the order.
In addition, classified permits can also have been assigned automatically to the order.
However, you can assign permits manually to the order. To do this, you can use the default values supplied by the structure for the technical object.
You can then only delete the assignment of permits to an order if the assignment was performed manually. If the assignment was made automatically, only the indicator Not relevant can be set.
6. You issue the permits in the order. To do this, you have the following options:
- You print the permit papers. The employee responsible signs these and issues the necessary permits. An employee subsequently enters who issued the permits and when.
The printing of permit papers is integrated in the printing of order papers.
- As the employee responsible, you can either issue the permits directly in the system when changing the order or by using the permit list.
Depending on which indicator you have set in the permit master record, the permits must have been issued before the order is released or before the technical completion. Permits do not affect the order status.
7. Issued permits can be canceled in the following cases:
- The permit must be issued before the order is released, but the order has not yet been released.
- The permit must be issued before the order is technically completed, but the order has not yet been technically completed.
8. The order can be executed.
9. At this point, you can use specific selection criteria to create a list of permits. A traffic light display helps you to assess the urgency of reprocessing a particular permit.
Some Constraints
Please note that there are also some constraints for the SAP PM Permits Functionality:
1. Work place monitoring (safety or authorized people usually visit the place and sign on the papers, on the spot if he found everything fine. but in SAP he has to release the permits after visiting the place. Until that time, order cannot be released.)
2. Permit paper contains of safety instructions along with Do's & Don’ts. (In SAP, we have only one authorization mark to release the permit. may not be sufficient to capture the data for future references).
Two ways to maintain permits in SAP:
1. Master data to Technical Objects Level.
Some of the equipment’s like vessels or reactors, we need to consider them for standard permits like for e.g.: Confined space permit. We need to get approval for these permits, whenever maintenance happens.
We can mark these permits in Technical objects level itself.
While creating the Equipment Master IE01 -> GOTO -> Permits. We can select the suitable permits to that technical object.
2. Order level
While creating the order, based on the work and technical objects, we can select the permits.
IW31 -> GOTO -> Permits.
The permit release authorization been given to the authorized people (safety / production head, etc.,) based on the permit type.
(Authorization symbol in the down side of permits screen (or) in Oder screen.)
System wouldn't accept to release the order, If that order contains any permits.
It will throws the message "Order release refused as permits still missing".
** We can work with permits in Order level only, not possible in Notification level.** where we don't have release system for Notification.
