Hi all!

I'd like to get some more info regarding the use of work centers in SAP PM. As far as i know, one of the benefits of using work centers is to effectively group the mainternance teams to their respective areas of responsibility. Like Zone A Mechanical and Zone A Electrical, etc. Which in turn also helps us generate efficiency reports.

I'd like to ask some more info regarding practical uses of the work centers in PM.

Also, if you declare cost centers in the equipment you are maintaining, expenses incurred by these equipment through maintenance orders are settled to the declared cost centers right? so what happens if the work center that you used for that maintenance order holds a different cost center apart from the equipment's cost center? what happens to the settlement rule?

hope you guys can help.

thanks

The settlement rule will send the costs to the equipment's cost center.
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We have at our company our maintenance crews divided by areas they serve, and at the system we have main work center matching them, just as you described.

You can default or change the settlement rule values.

My suggestion: Not necessary to config cost center to equipment

When do you have equipment Pump failure but planner verify that scope require electrical team to action, the cost center of electrical team must be used in MO settlement rule when you assigned (not mechanical team)

We default the settlement rule to cost centre of equipment to cater for most of the normal scenarios. Exceptions being like if the jobs are for other dicisplines. In this case, change the default setllement rule manually or create another work order or suborder for other related jobs by other dicispline using the right tag.

The functional location used in the work order must be right in the first place (as far as possible) eg if the fault on the motor, not on the pump, then the pump tag should not be used.

For misalignment problem, which tag to use?

If I purchase a pump with its motor as one unit I only assign one tag (Equipment ID) and use the pump code in it. Example: 100P001. Then, at the equipment master record I would assign the mechanics' Main Work Center to the equipment since the large majority of the work orders I expect that will be assigned to them, the minority to the electricians.

For me it is similar to a vehicle. I would not give an Equipment ID to the motor and another to the rest of the pick-up truck.

Yes, we can assign the cost centre to the pump set (package of a pump & motor with instruments etc) but how to split the costs incurred to respective disciplines eg pump cost to mechanical & motor cost to electrical & instrument cost to Instrument? Do you use proportioning to respective disciplines in the settlement rule?

In view of this, we split the package into several equipment belong to each discipline. However, if tracking cost for each discipline is not important because the cost centre is asset based, then it's not necessary to assign cost centre at equipment level.

You can sort out orders by Main Work Center, if your Main Work Center are set by trade (Mechanics, Electricians, Instrument Technicians, ...) then you can get the costs splitted by discipline.

Are you saying something like this:
1) You assign cost centre and main work centre to pumpset
2) You assign a work order to a main work centre with the above assigned cost centre

If yes, that means your cost centre is generic and area-based ie it can be used by any disciplines within the area. In this case, somebody has to be assigned responsibility as a budget owner or controller eg the head of the area.

This area-based cost centre is suitable for a large plant or a company with many plants which can be divided into smaller manageable sections.

I assign only one Equipment Id to the pump-motor. At the equipment record I assign a Cost Center and a Main Work Center which is in this case is the mechanics' that are responsible for the area where the pump is located. Then, when the client creates a maintenance notification the system will fill it by default the mechanics work center at the notification. If the requestor or the requestor's supervisor knows that the job must be attended by the electricians they change the main work center field to the electicians's. If not, the Maintenance Planner when creating the order will change the main work center as applicable before releasing the order. At the end, we can sort the maintenance orders (for example at IW39) by the main work center and report costs per work center. I also have an ABAP cost summarizing report with breakdown by main work center and order type.

Account charges will all go to the equipment cost center.

By equipment cost centre, do you create a cost centre for each equipment? How many cost centres do you have?

No, I do not create a cost center for each equipment, I have thounsands of independent equipment/instruments registered at SAP R/3.

For maintenance costs purposes we have less than 25 cost centers for two mutlibuildings plants.

Pls give examples of your cost centres with description.

quote:

Originally posted by Josh:
Pls give examples of your cost centres with description.

In the smaller plant we have just four cost centers for maintenance costs:
* Mechanical maintenance costs
* Electrical maintenance costs
* Instrumentation & controls maintenance costs
* Building & Grounds maintenance costs
In the bigger plant we have multiple cost centers like the above segregated by plant areas.
If an equipment (say an electrical substation)is in an Area B, and the majority of the orders for that equipment are likely to be attended by the electricians, then the cost center for the electricians of Area B is assigned at the equipment master record.
It is important to say that in our plant the maintenance department runs the complete maintenance budget; not the individual operation department section budget the maintenance costs in their annual budgets. If your budget organization is not like this then our solution is not going to work for you.