SAP PM Interview Questions

What is SAP Plant Maintenance?

SAP Plant Maintenance application component provides the organization with a tool for all
maintenance activities to be performed. All the activities that are performed under maintenance
are interconnected and hence this module is closely integrated with other modules- Production
Planning, Material Management, and Sales and Distribution.

What are the key responsibilities in SAP Plant Maintenance?

You perform the following activities under Plant Maintenance −

Inspection
Inspection is done to check the actual condition of a technical system.
Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance is used to maintain high availability of the technical system. It includes
maintenance planning and work scheduling activities for technical objects.
Repair
Repair involves all measures that can be performed to restore the ideal condition. Repair process
it is can be performed at many planning stages- like work scheduling, resource planning and
initial costing, etc. and you can response immediately w.r.t to a damage events causing
production shutdown. You can create required Purchase requisition, processed work orders to
reduce the downtime.

What is Equipment Master Record?

An equipment is known as an individual object in the system that is maintained independently.

Equipment can be installed at different functional locations. You can create individual equipment
in an organization based on Object based structure of a technical system.

What is Breakdown Maintenance?

In SAP PM, when there is a malfunction occurs for any of the equipment which requires a
response from Maintenance team. The process of correcting this situation is known as
Breakdown maintenance.

 What is Refurbishment process?

Refurbishment is defined as process to repair spare parts and to return the spare parts to
warehouse or to the equipment. You can define a Refurbishment order as Maintenance order by
which you can execute the process of refurbishing damaged equipment and to perform this you
need a material and Serial # combination.

As part of Refurbishment process, you can uninstall the damaged equipment or material from the
maintenance plant and this is moved to Warehouse using movement type 101. A Refurbishment
order is created to collect the cost for the refurbishment process.
Once Refurbishment process is completed, you change the conditional state of the material from
damaged to Refurbished state. The Refurbished equipment can be reinstalled in the maintenance
plant and order is closed.

What is the use of CATS?

Cross Application Timesheet component is a tool used for recording time and tasks in Plant
Maintenance. Employees can record their own data and hence ease the administrative workload.

What are the activities of a SAP PM?

The SAP PM consists of the following activities such as preventive measures to maintain and
measure the ideal situation of a technical system, to establish and measure the actual condition of
a technical system, repairs to restore and measures the ideal situation of the technical system and
other steps that need to be taken using the maintenance organization. The SAP PM is closely
combined with other programs such as production, controlling, Sales and Distribution, personnel
management and material management. The data is kept current always and the processes which
are mandatory for Customer Service and Plant Maintenance have triggered accordingly in other
fields consider the example, a purchase requisition for non-stock material in the purchasing area
or materials management.

 What is the use of the field “Standing order”?

The Standing orders are used to perform current maintenance jobs and help to settle them at the
end of the month instead of creating a fresh PM order every time. You can attach sub-orders to
the standing orders by using order hierarchies and can settle them to the standing order to bring
you the more precise recording of maint costs at the level of sub-order and the budget monitoring
at the level of standing order.

What is the use of item number in maintenance order?

The item number is the number that is used to identify the material component to perform
operations in the maintenance order. In the components tab of a maintenance order, it is the first
field and it is generally defined in increments of 0010.

Where is a service contract is assigned to a piece of equipment?

The service contract is assigned to a material. In the Equipment master, the Material is assigned
to the equipment. This functionality is not designated for managing equipment that is bought
from vendors, where we are getting service instead of providing services.

What is multiple counter maintenance plan?

A multiple counter plan can be created without a maintenance strategy and is used for
performance-based maintenance. In the multiple counter plan, you create maintenance cycles and
allocate counters of equipment or functional locations with different dimensions to them.
In live scenarios, you use multiple counter plan for the individual activities or for the individual
groups of activities.

What is Maintenance Planning? What are different types of Maintenance Planning?

As per the structure of the company, maintenance planning can be performed. You define the
tasks under maintenance planning as per the structure and defined technical objects. Following
types of maintenance, planning is possible −

Centralized Maintenance Planning

Decentralize Maintenance Planning

Partially Centralize Maintenance Planning

Is the functional location structure indicator unique across the system?

Across clients but not systems.

What steps must be defined in customizing for alternative labelling?

Activate alternative labelling and indicators for the primary label. Create a new structure
indicator, define labelling system.

What level of functional locations should be changed for alternative labelling?

Second level functional locations are to be changed, in changing master records

extras>alternative labels>overview, change label ‘internal view’ choose structure indicator and
press refresh.

Explain the meaning of equipment master.

Equipment Master pertains to one of the master data elements within the domain of Operations
& Maintenance i.e. The SAP Plant Maintenance Module.

The business object “Equipment” is an individual, physical object that is to be maintained

independently. It can be installed in a technical system or part of a technical system.

You can manage all types of device as pieces of equipment (for example, production utilities,
transportation utilities, test equipment, production resources/tools, buildings, PCs).

Since many of these physical objects are managed as “assets” in Asset Management, the term
“piece of equipment” was chosen for objects defined from a technical perspective, in order to
avoid confusion with the activated tangible assets.
You define and manage each piece of equipment in the Plant Maintenance (PM) System in a
separate master record and can set up an individual maintenance history for each one.

For an equipment master record what fields need to be filled in?

Depends upon the Equipment. Normally, the fields which used to maintain in an Equipment
master are:

Equipment Category, Constr.type (serialized), Planning Plant, Work center, Plant, Maintenance
plant, Location. You can attach an equipment to another using superior Equipment filed.

How to configure system to allow notification type change?

You can define in SPRO the “Allowed change of notification type”. Please follow the below
path:

Maintenance and Service Processing –> Maintenance and Service Notification –> Notification
Creation –> Notification types –> Allowed change of notification type

How overheades are calculated and from where the formula is picked?

My client has default setting of 10% overhead and now they want to change.

Plant Maintenance and Customer Service–> Maintenance and Service Processing–>

Maintenance and Service Orders–> Functions and Settings for Order Types–>Costing Data for
Maintenance–> and Service Orders–> Maintain Costing Sheet

Select the costing sheet that you are using and push costing sheet rows, next see the column
overhead rate, select the row and push overhead rate.

consumer number, check your maintenance item or plan details.

Can a service order be generated automatically without running IP30 if we have scheduled
a maintenance plan?

Yes, you can get a service order (PM Order) against this plant maintenance order with control
key as PM03 you can get PR from PR. You can get service order again here MM integration if
the auto PO concept used then auto PO (service order) gets generated.

But if you want to avoid lengthy process you can use IP10.

During each IP10 run if call falls within the date you will get maintenance call object that is

PM order – ——> PR —–> PO PM Order —–> FO (Frame Work Order) PM Order —–>
Service Contract ——> Value / Qty (These tab you will get in PM order operation header
general data)
Explain the integration points between PM and MM/FICO during the PM configuration.

Below are some integration aspects:

Integration with MM:

1. Material master record for Batch Managed material as Equipment

2. Reservations and Goods Issue for Maintenance Order
3. Material valuation class/types for refurbishment materials as equipment
4. Triggering PR from Maintenance Order

Integration with FICO:

1. Asset/Sub-Asset numbering in Equipment Master Data

2. Activity-based costing for Operations performed through Maintenance Order
3. Settlement of accrued costs in Maintenance Order to G/L Account, Cost Center, Asset
etc.,

How to configure the integration of PP and PM, where it is being done in SPRO, what are
the pre-requisite and what are the steps.

In SPRO – Under Maintenance and Service order —> general data —-> “Create System
Conditions or Operating Conditions” –> check the box for PM Reservation.

In the equipment Master,

Under the Location tab, mention the PP work centre and

In the Order Header data,

Give the system condition as “0” ie M/C not in operation.

How do you define equipment/material loaned/leased to a customer?

Read documentation on ‘Structuring Technical Systems’ in ‘Plant Maintenance / Service

management’ modules. You need to define sales area (sales org/dist channel/division) for an
equipment with equipment category being one for which the equipment reference category is
‘Customer Equipment’.

Where to get the table which is having user status with Notification number. (not the
system status).

From table QMEL get OBJNR(object number) using the QMNUM( notification number).
Using this OBJNR get STSMA( Status Profile) from table JSTO.

Using the OBJNR get STAT(object status) from table JEST. You may/ may not get multiple
object status for an Object number.

System status number will start from E. User status number will start from I.

To get the text of the status, use the status number (STAT) and STSMA to get the status text
from table TJ30T.

Explain the meaning of equipment master.

Equipment Master pertains to one of the master data elements within the domain of Operations
& Maintenance i.e. The SAP Plant Maintenance Module.

The business object “Equipment” is an individual, physical object that is to be maintained

independently. It can be installed in a technical system or part of a technical system.

You can manage all types of device as pieces of equipment (for example, production utilities,
transportation utilities, test equipment, production resources/tools, buildings, PCs).

Since many of these physical objects are managed as “assets” in Asset Management, the term
“piece of equipment” was chosen for objects defined from a technical perspective, in order to
avoid confusion with the activated tangible assets.

You define and manage each piece of equipment in the Plant Maintenance (PM) System in a
separate master record and can set up an individual maintenance history for each one.

What functions are determined by the category of the functional location?

Change documents, status profile, asset, object information key, partner determination,
measuring point category.

What is the menu path for displaying the structure of a functional location in list form and
as a graphic?

plant maintenance>technical objects>functional location>structural display

Give five examples of functional location structures.

Chemical Process, Energy (power station), Property Management, Transport, Steelworks,

Production line.

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