GIS "Touch Points" to SAP's Work Management

GIS "Touch Points" to SAP's Work Management

Nancy Koger
Intergraph Corporation
M/S LR23A1
One Madison Industrial Park
Huntsville, Alabama 35894

SAP Modules Involved With Work Management
There are three modules that comprise the Work Management solution within SAP. The modules Plant Maintenance (PM), Materials Management (MM) and Controlling (CO) are described below.

Plant Maintenance (PM)
The Plant Maintenance (PM) module in SAP provides the ability to define, plan, commit resources, report actual costs, and archive history against igtechnical objectslc defined in the SAP System. Plant maintenance orders are associated with customers for installation, maintenance, service and billing purposes. A utility could use the Plant Maintenance module of SAP to manage and track transmission and distribution work. Additionally, work performed within other parts of the organization, such as hydro and facility maintenance, could also be managed and tracked in PM. SAP PM "notificationsl" and "orders" are used to schedule work and capture actual costs.

Materials Management (MM)
The Materials Management module of SAP manages and tracks inventory and materials. It forecasts material requirements based on the planned material and schedule of those deliveries. A material master record represents each stock item. This record contains key details about the item including the price. The MM module is used to issue materials to individual work orders. Additionally, MM tracks inventory and provides a mechanism to purchase both stock and non-stock goods.

Controlling (CO)
The Controlling component in the SAP System provides for internal cost accounting. The Overhead Cost Controlling (CO-OM) component focuses on monitoring and allocation of overhead. The Cost Center Accounting (CO-OM-CCA) analyzes where overhead occurs within the organization. Costs are assigned to the sub-areas of the organization where they originated. The SAP CO module offers a wide variety of methods for allocating posted amounts and quantities. Overhead Orders (CO-OM-OPA) collects and analyzes costs based on individual internal measures. The SAP R/3 System can monitor and automatically check budgets assigned to each measure.
"TOUCH POINTS". WITHIN EACH MODULE
Plant Maintenance (PM)
The Plant Maintenance (PM) module has three interface intouch pointslc within the GIS: job initiation, job estimation, and job completion. Each one of these will be discussed below.

Job Initiation
Most work is initiated in PM using a notification. A notification defines the work to be performed, lists the specific equipment to be worked on, records information on cause of damage if applicable, and can include a list of tasks to be assigned to one or more individuals. From the notification, a work order may be created. The ihwork orderld further defines the work to be performed and has the functionality to support the planning of resources and tracking of costs. It contains information on the location, scope of the work, job type, and work order status. When a work order is created requiring a GIS design, SAP will trigger a SQL command that will add a record to the GIS Job Management table. This record will contain work order information from SAP, and this initiates the creation of the GIS job. The following workflow diagram illustrates this process.

In addition to the creation of jobs, this interface will support updates to the GIS job management table when changes are made to the job information within SAP.

Job Estimation
SAP PM is different from many of the Work Management systems available today. This module does not have estimating capabilities. This information must be stored and calculated in the GIS and associated with a job. After the work order has been designed in the GIS, GIS will transfer labor and material estimates to SAP PM. Multiple estimates can be sent to SAP for the same job. To accomplish this transfer, GIS will initiate a Remote Function Call (RFC) to SAP PM via a Business Application Programming Interface (BAPI).

The RFC will call a Change Maintenance Order transaction and update with Stock and Exempt Materials, Non-stock material, Contract Special Services, Special Equipment and Labor data. The material availability check will be carried out in SAP, and if the material is partially available or totally unavailable, a message can be sent back to the GIS.

Job Completion
SAP PM stores the electric facility data model in a technical object hierarchy broken into Functional Locations and Equipment. A Functional Location is a way to organize the data for ease of reporting and queries. Equipment is an item of plant associated with a facility within the GIS. The definition of the hierarchy can be unique with each SAP PM implementation. The following diagram illustrates a sample technical object hierarchy.

Sample SAP Hierarchy

The top level of the hierarchy has been defined with two categories of work: Transmission and Distribution. Let's look at the Distribution side of the hierarchy. Under Distribution, the second level of hierarchy is broken up into planning areas. This is where the utility's service territory has been divided into geographical areas. The third tier of the hierarchy is divided up by different facility groupings such as: Sub-transmission, Overhead, Underground, and Network. The last tier is the site where a piece of equipment may be located. Again, these are all Functional Locations used for grouping the data to support facility management.

Equipment is the physical item of plant. Examples would be a Pole, Transformer Pad, Vault, etc.

During the job design, several facilities could be installed and/or updated within GIS. Once a job is completed and the facilities are posted to the master model, certain facilities and their attribution will be passed to SAP PM. A Functional Location (Site) and Equipment record will be created for a newly installed facility. Modifications to a facility will just update the associated record within SAP.

Materials Management (MM)
SAP will be the driver for material maintenance. In order for the GIS to be able to build accurate estimates, the material databases that are managed within the GIS must reflect what is in SAP. This involves updating the GIS material database with SAP MM information on a periodic basis. This would include information such as Material Number, Moving Average Price, Material Description, Unit of Measure, etc.

Controlling (CO)
SAP will be the driver for maintaining the activity types that are selected during the design of a job. In order for the GIS to be able to build accurate estimates, the labor databases that are managed within the GIS must reflect what is in SAP. This involves updating the GIS labor database similarly to the interface for material updates. This would include information such as Activity Type, Rate, Description, Crew Size, Work Center, Unit of Measure, etc.

Success With Change
When integrating two distinct systems such as GIS and Work Management, decisions will need to be made, such as how tight the integration should be, who owns what pieces of data, and where it starts and ends. We have discussed the major pieces that are involved, but the intricate details are what make it work. And once it works, you™re one step closer to a total solution for Enterprise Resource Planning.