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The SAP Portal for Availability Workbench

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The SAP® PortalSAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries.

Overview

The SAP Portal allows users to connect directly to their SAP system from within Availability Workbench (AWB). Historical maintenance data may be downloaded from SAP into AWB, analyzed, and then uploaded back into SAP in the form of maintenance plans. If SAP has not yet been configured for plant maintenance, the portal may also be used to upload a functional location hierarchy with installed equipments, criticality rankings and cause groups and codesfrom the RCMCost module of AWB. Alternatively, an existing SAP functional location and equipment hierarchy may be downloaded to populate a new AWB project together with criticality rankings, labor resources, BOMs, effects and maintenance plans.

The SAP Portal functions may be summarized as:• Uploading master data to SAP• Downloading master data to AWB• Uploading maintenance plans to SAP• Analyzing maintenance data for use in AWB

Requirements

Before using the AWB SAP Portal you will need to install the SAP GUI (version 640 or later). On some SAP systems you may also need to install the ZISO_READ_TABLE function which is used as an alternative to the standard RFC_READ_TABLE SAP function. This function only reads data from SAP and does not upload any data to SAP. Users who wish to upload data to or download data from SAP will be required to enter their SAP login details when opening the SAP Portal. The data that the user may view and edit via the portal will be dictated by the privileges associated with their SAP user account.

SAP Logon

Before entering the SAP Portal ensure that the AWB project you wish to download data to, or upload data from, is already open. Then select the File, ERP Portal, SAP Portal pull-down menu option. You will then be presented with the SAP Logon dialog. If you have previously entered logon details for your SAP system, and saved these details to a SAP Portal template file, these details will already be entered (except for the password). Enter the password and select the Log on button to connect to SAP.

Refreshing Data and Saving Data Images

All upload and download operations require the Portal to obtain an image of all relevant SAP PM data before the operation can take place. Upload operations need to ascertain which elements of the current AWB project already exist in SAP. Download operations need to be able to display the SAP data to the user for selection before the actual download takes place. Users must therefore select the Connection, Refresh Data pull-down menu option or equivalent toolbar button to obtain an image of the relevant SAP data. Typically the data extraction operation may take a few minutes and so the Portal provides a facility to save an image of this data once it has been obtained. This is useful if you intend to re-enter the portal frequently for downloading data and the SAP database is not likely to have changed since the last refresh operation. Images may be saved to a file using the Connection, Save SAP Data Image pull-down menu option or equivalent toolbar button. They may later be retrieved using the Connection, Open SAP Data Image pull-down menu option. If you are using the portal to upload information to SAP you should refresh the SAP image between separate upload operations unless the operations are unrelated.

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Uploading Master Data to SAPThe ‘Upload Master Data to SAP’ tab of the SAP portal allows the user to read data from the project currently open in AWB, and then upload it to their SAP database. AWB data that already exists in SAP will be highlighted in the tree control. The data available for upload includes:

• Criticality Rankings• Cause Groups and Codes• Functional Location Hierarchies

The ‘Upload Master Data’ tab of the SAP Portal

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Downloading Master Data to AWBThe ‘Download Master data to AWB’ tab of the SAP Portal allows the user to read data from the SAP database, and then download it into the project currently open in AWB. SAP data that has already been downloaded to AWB during the current session will be highlighted in the tree control. The data available for download includes:

• Functional location Hierarchies• Criticality Rankings• Effects• Spares• BOMs• Labor• Maintenance Plans

The SAP Portal also provides a maintenance plan reporting facility. Maintenance plan reports may be written to Microsoft Word documents.

The ‘Download Master Data to AWB’ tab of the SAP Portal

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Uploading Maintenance Plan

The ‘Maintenance Plans’ tab of the SAP Portal allows the user to upload AWB task groups to SAP as maintenance plans. Task groups can be uploaded to SAP as either single cycle maintenance plans, or as strategy plans. AWB task groups that already exist in SAP as maintenance plans will be highlighted in the grid, as will individual, non-matching values. Uploading a new maintenance plan to SAP consists of the following operations:

• Create a technical document in SAP for operation to be uploaded• Create a work instruction document in Microsoft Word format for each technical document• Create a task list for each maintenance item with the appropriate operations• Assign the appropriate technical document as a PRT to each operation• Create the plan and associated maintenance items• Attach the appropriate task list to each item

The ‘Maintenance Plans’ tab of the SAP Portal

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Analytics

The ‘Analytics’ tab of the SAP Portal allows the user to filter and analyse work order data from their SAP database, and then download the data to AWB as a Weibull set. Work orders are viewed via a grid control and may be filtered by equipment class, or by criticality ranking and effects.

The filtered work orders may then be viewed in a histogram, showing the work orders for each equipment broken down by corrective, planned and inspection tasks. The histogram may be filtered by plot type (e.g. Equipment, Criticality or Effect), plot variable and location.

The filtered work orders are displayed in a grid control at the bottom of the tab. The time to failure associated with each work order may then be calculated and the data downloaded to the Weibull module of AWB for further analysis.

The ‘Analytics’ tab of the SAP Portal

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Templates and Data Images

The SAP Portal options allow the user to modify arms settings that will affect the way that data is transferred to and from SAP. These settings, along with the SAP login details, may be saved in a template file. This file will be applied automatically each time the user opens the portal, retrieving all of the associated settings.

Once data has been downloaded from SAP to the portal, it may be saved as a data image file. This data image can then be opened and edited offline and then uploaded at a later date. This is useful in cases where AWB users are required to provide new and modified data for upload to AWB, but do not have the privileges required to upload new data to SAP themselves.

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