SAP Plant Maintenance

What You Need to Know About SAP Plant Maintenance, Apps to Support It

Understandably, enterprises devote much of their time and resources to optimizing profit centers. They ensure production has all the tools and processes they need for maximum throughput, minimum waste, and maximum revenues and margin. However, optimizing cost centers – with tools like the SAP Plant Maintenance module – also has a significant effect on the bottom line. When maintenance in the plant or in the field isn’t addressed promptly and systematically, an enterprise can experience downtime, losses, and operational costs that eat into gains it’s made on the profit side. 

SAP Plant Maintenance provides businesses and enterprises with a way to replace paper and time-consuming, error-prone processes with accurate, real-time data and management capabilities. 

SAP Plant Maintenance Overview

SAP Plant Maintenance software is designed to manage all maintenance tasks within an organization. It can share data via integration with other application components, such as:

• Materials Management (MM) to manage spare or repairable parts
• Project Systems (PS) to control complex tasks with dependencies between orders 
• Quality Management (QM) to generate inspection lots
• Production Planning and Control (PP) to provision data about maintenance and repair at work centers
• Asset Accounting (FI-AA) to settle activities and displays the connection between business and maintenance-specific views
• Investment Management (IM) to monitor and manage accounts and budgets
• Personnel Management (PA) to assign employees for work based on their skills and qualifications
• Workflow Management (BC-BMT-WFM) to provide controls and editing of process flows during planning and work execution 

SAP Plant Maintenance’s Primary Functions 

SAP Plant Maintenance process flows streamline three primary maintenance activities. 

• Equipment inspection

SAP Plant Maintenance gives operators a process for managing inspections to determine the condition of equipment, machines, or systems. Inspectors who uncover issues during inspections can accurately document them in SAP so that managers can immediately address them and allocate resources to correct them. 

• Preventive maintenance

This component allows enterprises to perform maintenance to keep assets in peak operating condition. SAP enables businesses to perform some tasks automatically, such as initiating a purchase order for parts needed for the repair.  

• Equipment repair 

SAP Plant Maintenance gives managers the ability to initiate repairs and coordinate every step in a repair project. Integration with other SAP modules also enables stopping production if sudden damage or equipment failure occurs. 

Enterprise-Wide Benefits of SAP Plant Maintenance 

SAP Plant Maintenance enables consistency, expediency, and accuracy. However, it can also help businesses make progress toward goals that impact an enterprise’s entire organization. 

1. Data-Driven Decision Making: Operators and managers can leverage SAP Plant Maintenance to provide data that helps them make informed decisions. It shows work in process, completed jobs, and planned work. Historical data from the module can also help managers forecast more accurately and enhance their scheduling and budget decisions. 

2. Coordination with Production:  With maintenance activities planned in SAP, operators can orchestrate preventive maintenance and repairs with operations, so productivity won’t suffer. 

3. Informed Purchasing: Enterprises can also share information with purchasing to precisely replenish spare parts or schedule services when outsourcing is required. 

The Easy Way to Mobilize Your Maintenance Crew 

While SAP Plant Maintenance processes provide your enterprise with greater efficiency, it doesn’t include mobile functionality. As many SAP users have field teams, multiple locations, or expansive facilities, mobile solutions are essential to keeping those employees connected. Employees who don’t have access to SAP where they’re working may revert to paper processes –  negating any benefits that the organization would see from real-time maintenance data entry and coordination with other departments. 

Mobile applications allow enterprises to overcome that challenge – if the applications are integrated with SAP. Pillir’s low-code/no-code platform features deep integration with SAP via our EdgeReady plugin. This plugin communicates directly with the SAP system – no need to build or maintain OData endpoints. 

Furthermore, Pillir Plant Maintenance enables enterprises to deploy apps on any mobile device, iOS, Android, or Windows or embedded on rugged devices, such as Zebra handheld computers. Apps developed on the platform can be deployed on any device that is best suited to the use case. 

Pillir has also taken a realistic approach to offline functionality. Pillir covers fully offline and intermittent offline scenarios and delivers the same user experiences whether employees are connected to SAP or not. Pillir’s platform includes a process continuity engine, conflict resolution, and error management to synchronize data effectively when the connection is restored. 

Pillir’s low-code/no-code platform allows you to use pre-built Field Service Management apps and templates, including Maintenance/Repair Work Order, Field Inspection, Asset Management, or Inventory Manager. These customizable apps, based on industry best practices, can be adapted to your unique processes so that you can optimize your repair and maintenance workflows. 

Furthermore, if you have an app that you use with an SAP ECC system and want to continue to use it when you upgrade to SAP S/4HANA or another modern system, Pillir can help you make that transition 20x faster. Additionally, you can also leverage Pillir’s legacy modernization capabilities to minimize technical debt and control costs while using your current system or in preparation for a transition to the cloud. 

Implement an Industry-Leading Solution

SAP Plant Maintenance, Pillir Plant Maintenance, and Pillir’s Field Service Management apps with extreme offline functionality enable businesses and enterprises to manage maintenance and repair activities effectively. They are deployment-ready yet can be quickly and easily customized to your company's need, processes and KPIs

Want to know more about SAP Plant maintenance?

Keep reading on Pillir’s Plant Maintenance solution, or watch a recorded technical demo