A Notification is usually written to record an equipment malfunction: Asset ID, dates, duration, damage, causes of damage, actions performed can be entered to a Notification. The Notification is often a ‘trigger' for subsequent responses by Maintenance such as repair of a critical asset. For companies with organizational maintenance planning and scheduling and who want to track the costs of maintenance activities, however, Notifications will not suffice because:

• Notifications are not integrated with Materials Management module: Storeroom parts (‘components') used for the repairs cannot be assigned in a Notification
• You cannot create a purchase order for non-stock components from a Notification alone
• SAP will not map planned, actual or estimated labor costs for maintenance activities to a Notification

The Notification data must be transferred into a Maintenance Order by the Planner in order to track costs. SAP copies the short text and long text data from the Notification into the Order when you click CREATE in the Order field of the Notification: You should examine and edit these texts to ensure applicability to the new Order before you click SAVE. Double-clicking the number in the NOTIFICATION field of the Order will call up the Notification again any time you wish: Similarly, in the ORDER field of the Notification, double-clicking the number displayed will bring up the Order created from this Notification. Both Notification and Order are usually closed out together when all work to address the malfunction is completed and confirmed.

Tip provided by: Shawn McGuire, Principal Field Engineer
MRG
Tel: +1 203.264.0500