SAP S/4HANA release 2022 – new EAM functionalities for maintenance

SAP is continuously optimizing and updating S/4HANA. Just think of the Maintenance Planning Overview in the initial S/4HANA release. With this year's new S/4HANA release, new functionalities have been added to the Enterprise Asset Management domain. It is clear that SAP is investing in its development.

This year's recent release contains best practice processes and capabilities that many companies have been dreaming of for years. It is crucial to always upgrade your system to the latest version to continue to make optimal use of SAP S/4HANA.

In this blog we explain the main new functionalities in the S/4HANA 2022 release with which SAP can support the maintenance process even better.

Figure 1: The Enterprise Asset Management dashboard in the initial S/4HANA release

New processes with SAP's new 9-phase model

The SAP maintenance process has been the same for years and is fairly standard. Companies regularly use user statuses to further expand the maintenance process and better tailor it to their company. With SAP's new 9-phase model, this is no longer necessary.

With the 9-phase model, SAP is adding new maintenance processes - called 'new scope items' - to the 2022 release. In addition, new Fiori apps now guide users through the process and notifications, orders and operations still form the basis of every process.

Examples of these new processes:

• Reactive Maintenance (corrective maintenance)
• Proactive Maintenance (preventive maintenance)
• Improvement Maintenance (project based maintenance)
• Operational and Overhead Maintenance (routines, inspections, ...)

Figure 2: SAP's 9-phase model and the relationship between notifications, work orders and operations

Create maintenance reports clearly with the priority matrix

Creating a notification for maintenance tasks is often the start of the maintenance process. This is already a simple action in SAP S/4HANA, but still lacks some crucial features. After Maintenance Managers and Gatekeepers have been getting gray hairs for years when trying to properly prioritize maintenance reports, you will now no longer see a selection list, but rather a priority matrix with an overview.

It is now possible to determine the priority of maintenance reports using a priority matrix. Priority is determined based on the chance of failure and its effect. You can configure the priority matrix yourself for different categories such as production, safety and environment.

Figure 3: The new 'Create Maintenance Request' app in SAP for maintenance notifications with the priority matrix

As you can see in the image above, the new 'Create Maintenance Request' app contains new fields for Failure Mode and Detection Method. The breakdown indicator can also be set more easily.

Notifications can now also be automatically saved as drafts after creation. You can edit these afterwards before sending them.

Easily follow up on maintenance notifications

With the new 'My Maintenance Request' app you can easily follow up on your own maintenance reports; from creation to complete handling or rejection. If the applications are incomplete or more information is required, this will also be made clear. In short, the 'My Maintenance Request' app is ideal for Operation Managers.

Figure 4: The new 'My Maintenance Request' app

Gatekeeping finally supported

A process that was not well supported by standard SAP is Gatekeeping. Even though this is the process step that should ensure good cooperation between operations and maintenance, there were no tools to implement this optimally in SAP.

The Gatekeeper can now use the new 'Screen Maintenance Request' app to thoroughly check new maintenance reports and, if necessary, send them back to the requester and reject or approve them. Of course, both the priority and the deadline of the notification can be revised.

Figure 5: The new functionality for checking maintenance messages

Many more new EAM functionalities in SAP S/4HANA

This blog contains some interesting new EAM functionalities in the S/4HANA release 2022. In addition to the above functionalities, there are more, including:

• An extensive 'maintenance order approval' process with workflows that allows you to approve more than just costs
• The operation execution stages: PRE, MAIN & POST. This allows you to plan the placement of racks on the work order, for example
• Bundling orders with Maintenance Planning Buckets
• New Maintenance Backlog Overview for a better overview of all maintenance tasks on the backlog
• Even better planning with SAP Resource Scheduling for Hana (RSH)

The implementation of the new S/4HANA release that is suitable for you

With our expertise in Enterprise Asset Management for project and asset-intensive organizations, we can support the IT department in the implementation of new releases that are suitable for you. We can also fully take care of the activation of the new functionalities. With our years of expertise in SAP and with specific project and asset-intensive processes, we map the current process and see which new EAM functionalities in SAP S/4HANA release 2022 can help you support current maintenance processes even better.

Vincent Beumer

Vincent is a marketing manager and highly experienced consultant with extensive knowledge on Digital Transformation and Analytics within the SAP-domain.

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