Hello,

I have a question concerning the management of inspection dates: Our shopfloor staff uses a lot of tools, that have to be inspected once a year.

All we would need, is just to know the date of the next inspection (with a sort of reporting allowing us for example to see all tools that have to be inspected during the next month). When we would have to say: Yes, this tool has been inspected and set the next inspection date to the inspection date + 1 year.

What we would need is a very light process. Any comments are welcome!

1. Create each tool as an equipment (transaction IE01).
2. Create a Maintenance Strategy to control the inspection orders scheduling (transaction IP11). Verify the options for the "Scheduling Indicator" field to match your requirements.
3. Create a task list (or general task list) detailing the inspection instructions (transaction IA01 or IA05).
4. Create a Maintenance Plan for each equipment to call the task list on a yearly basis. Adjust the start date of the plan to follow the previous inspections schedule (transaction IP10).

After setting the data (steps 1-4 on previous reply) the Maintenance Planner must release the planned orders for the next month and then with transaction IW39 you can setup a report of next months orders/inspections.

The normal approach is to treat these tools as equipment and to plan and schedule their inspection as usual. However, if their inspection take some time to do eg 1 to 3 months (including logistics or transportation) for instrument third party calibrations, your next work order will be triggered earlier by 1 to 3 months while your tools are still valid by 1 to 3 months. No accuracy.

I use this approach for instrument calibration, however we have in our procedures that If previous annual calibration was done on (for example) 02JUNE2005 its is valid until the last day of the month or 30JUN2006 in this case. This gives us a little slack to work with the planning.

If all you want to know is the inspection date then I would also consider having maintenance plan generating a notification instead of an order. Workshop can then run their list and when inspected they simply tag the applicable notifications and complete (they don't even have to open the notification to do this).
We use this method for some operator tasks for which all we need to know is that they have been done. Not interested in any other history details or collecting the costs of the jobs.

Compliance to calibration of instruments (eg primary & secondary) is required by ISO9000. Therefore, time accuracy of triggering work order is required and I heard SAP PM can store calibration records which should be filled before the work order can be completed.

I'm in a pharmaceutical industry and we are to comply with goverment regulations like the FDA's 21CFR211 known as Good Manufacturing Practices or GMP (also required to comply to other countries health/drug regulations if we sell our products there). I have heard that the efforts to comply with FDA's requirements are more or less equivalent to comply with ISO 9000 certifications.
By the GMP we are required to have written procedures for all processes affecting the quality of pharmaceuticals products processing, (this include among many others equipment/facilities maintenance and instrument calibration). Written procedures must be approved by appropriate management and by our QA department.
* If in our instrument calibration program procedure we define that the calibration expiring date by a specific date, then the calibration will be valid intil the calibration date plus the calibration frecuency period:
Example: Annual Calibration performed on 02JUN2005 valid is until 01JUN2006, expired on 02JUN2006.
* However, if the calibration expiring date is defined by a specific month and year, then the calibration will be valid intil the last day of the month of the calibration date plus the calibration frecuency period:
Example: Any Annual Calibration performed between 01JUN2005 to 30JUN205 will be valid until 30JUN2006, expired on 01JUL2006.

As long we comply what we said in our written procedure we are fine. Our procedures has been subject to regular inspection by goverment regulatory agencies from USA, Europe, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and many others without comments in this policy.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Eugene,

My point is managing the calibration as a normal maintenance plan in SAP PM is not accurate in triggering a work order for the calibration as follows:

A yearly calibration expired on 30 June 2006 and the next work order will be triggered on 30 June 2007 (after one year period).

The instrument sent out for calibration by a third party which took about 4 months to return to the client (for whatever reasons). The new validity date given by the third party starts on, let's say 30 Sep 2006 so the calibration will expire on 30 Sep 2007 (after 1 year).

Do you notice that the next work order is triggered on 30 June 2007 whereas the next calibration date is 30 Sep 2007 ie. a difference of 3 months? So the work order is triggered 3 month earlier than the calibration validity date. This is what I call inaccuracy or mismatch. How to resolve this?

I would be also interested in the question Josh is just asking.

@David: Your proposition is good, but what if you wanted to add shortly (in form of text for example) what has been done? Where could you do this?

Is there a possibility somewhere in the equipment master to see when your tool has to be calibrated the next time?


Thanks already for all the answers!

Hi Josh

Your question mean how to keep one year period of calibration program?

My suggestion you have to set parameters in Maintenance plan scheduling: Shift factor late completed = 100% and Shift factor early completed = 100%

Then when you Tech. Completed WO you will fill calibrated finish date in Reference date, Next due to re-calculate from this day

I don't know this to solve your question?

Aromatics, Have you confirmed this by testing in SAP? You sound like a SAP PM analyst, r u? Hope this helps others.

This conceptual is confirmed because I have control calibration program in my company by use this method, I think it work for you. Any thing else if i can tell.

Martin,

"@David: Your proposition is good, but what if you wanted to add shortly (in form of text for example) what has been done? Where could you do this?"

You can do as much or as little as you like. It really depends how you intend to use the data in the future. If you want to do a detailed analysis over large sections of data then some use of codes is the only way to go. Analysing text entries is very difficult as it is too hard to ensure consistent entry of data eg. I might say 'replaced part', you might say 'changed part', Jack may have four thumbs and enters 'rwplcfd psrt' - How can you accurately analyse this data? By using codes.

SAP notifications allow the use of codes, also many opportunities to enter text, you can add files or links to files. If you have used the breakdown flag then there are standard reports fot Mean Time Between Failures. If you have entered the malfunction start & end times then it will calculate the breakdown duration and this can then be used to report Mean Time To Repair.
I have attached a screen dump of a notification showing some of the possible coding fields, opportunities to enter long text and also showing pop-up window for attaching files (report, pictures...)

SAP_Notification.pdf (1,379 Kb, 62 downloads) SAP Notification

quote:

Originally posted by Martin_:
Is there a possibility somewhere in the equipment master to see when your tool has to be calibrated the next time?

This information will be available from the Maintenance Plan. The maintenance plan is accessible via the maintenance items menu option in the equipment master.
Note if your maintenance items are setup at the functional location level rather than the equipment level then you will not find a link in this way from the equipment master.