6

Immediate Repairs

The business process for an immediate repair is characterized by the facts that it
is not known in advance, and the resources (work centers, materials, external
companies, and so on) cannot be planned. You can and must react as quickly as
possible to a business transaction, such as a malfunction, for example. An
immediate repairs business process occurs, for example, in the following cases:
A pump fails.
A forklift breaks down in transit.
An elevator in a building gets stuck.
A closed valve cannot be opened.
Measuring equipment, such as a scale, for example, displays nothing.
A robotic arm no longer extends.

The process for an immediate repair differs from a planned repair in terms of the
ability to plan for it—you can only react to malfunctions, but not plan them—and
from preventive maintenance in terms of the prescribed schedule—maintenance
and inspection tasks have regular cycles and, consequently, recurring deadlines.
Figure 62 shows how the process for an immediate repair could proceed. The
five-step cycle of a plannable maintenance process is summarized into a three-
step cycle for an immediate repair.

Figure 62 Immediate Repairs

1 Order creation
The starting point in the first step is formed by the creation of an order
(possibly with data about the notification) for damage or a malfunction. This
 order is not planned, but released immediately for processing, and shop
papers that may be required are printed out.

2 Processing
The processing phase involves the withdrawal of the spare parts from the
warehouse and the actual processing of the order.
3 Completion
After you complete the tasks, the required actual times are confirmed in the
order completion in Step 3; technical completion confirmations about how the
damage was processed and the status of the technical system are also
entered here. The order is finally settled by Controlling.

It is important that you set up the repair order and print out the required shop
papers as quickly as possible for this business process to enable the technician to
begin the repair work.
The layout of a fully detailed order type, like the one shown in Figure 18 shows
that the order type consists of ten tabs with up to four screen elements on one
tab. This is too much detail and too confusing for entering an order quickly.

Defining a Simple Order Layout

One of the most important functions in terms of an immediate repair involves
defining a separate screen layout for each order type—in this case, one that is
as basic as possible, preferably with only one single tab containing a few input
fields. You achieve this via the Customizing function SIMPLE ORDER VIEW.
There, you can use the Customizing function DEFINE VIEW PROFILES to arrange the
tabs according to your own requirements and assign them to your order types via
the Customizing function ASSIGN VIEW PROFILES TO ORDER TYPES.
You can also create a notification at the same time as setting up an order,
provided that you activate the integrated entry of order and notification data for an
order type in Customizing. You do so via the Customizing function DEFINE
NOTIFICATION AND ORDER INTEGRATION.

Entering Notification and Order Data in Only One Screen

You can use the Customizing function DEFINE NOTIFICATION AND ORDER
INTEGRATION to enable you to enter order and notification data on only one
screen.
A suitable reduced layout for an immediate repair could, thus, look like the one
displayed in Figure 63. The tab with the order header data simultaneously
contains notification data and the option to assign spare parts.

Figure 63 Order with Notification and Components

You complete entering the order using the PUT IN PROCESS function ( button)
because this means that you immediately accept the order and generate the shop
papers.
We recommend the overall completion confirmation (see Figure 64) for completing
an order for an immediate repair because you can enter not only the actual times
here, but also the unplanned material issues and technical data. You can also
immediately complete the order and notification from there.

Figure 64 Overall Completion Confirmation

You must now also perform the functions for the order settlement and business
completion.
This completes the business process for an immediate repair, and the information
is entered into the SAP system in just two steps (order creation, completion),
which does not require much time.
There are also after-event recording business processes, a modification of the
immediate repair business process. This is characterized by the fact that, at the
time when you enter the order in the SAP system, the order processing has
already taken place. You have this type of business process, for example, in the
following cases:

A pump was put into operation again.

A broken-down forklift truck was repaired.
The backup of control elements was replaced in a process plant.
A jammed sliding door in a building was made accessible.
An unscheduled adjustment had to be made to test equipment.

The difference between the after-event recording process and an immediate

repair process is that the repair work was already completed when you entered
the order, and thus, it is entered into the SAP system later on. Figure 65 shows
the schematic diagram of after-event recording.
SAP provides a standard solution for the after-event recording process. However,
this is not available within SAP ERP, but only via the SAP NetWeaver Portal and
via SAP NetWeaver Business.

Figure 65 After-Event Recording

There Is No Standard Transaction for After-Event Recording

What do you do if you require after-event recording but are not yet using SAP
NetWeaver Portal and SAP NetWeaver Business Client?
Option 1: You enter the data for an immediate repair, only you do this in
immediate succession; that is, you enter the order in Transaction IW31
and then immediately confirm it in Transaction IW42 (including the
technical completion).
Option 2: You enter the data using Transaction IW61 (historical order).
However, this transaction does not have any integration with the other
SAP components. Thus, if you want to allocate the actual times entered
there to the asset cost center, you have to write a batch program in
advance that would carry out this transfer posting.