We Need Standardization: A Call for a Recommended Practice for SAP PM (Keynote Address)

Americas' SAP Users Groups (ASUG)

2006 Enterprise Asset Management Symposium, Presentation Abstract (more)

The Problem

SAP PM is a powerful, integrated, and collaborative system for enterprise asset management.  The rich functionality provided by SAP has given their customers many different options for configuration of their PM systems.  Implementation partners typically educate their customers on the functionality of the PM system but generally provide little guidance on what others in industry have done.  Customers, many of whom have little experience with SAP, are left on their own to develop critical maintenance functionality, such as building technical object structures and configuring planned maintenance and transactional documents.  Consequently, PM system implementation projects in many cases are inefficient, costly, and result in poor PM system designs and non-comparable system configurations within companies and between different companies.  Poor system designs cause inefficiencies in asset management and can result in the subsequent need for costly PM system reconfiguration efforts.  Non-comparable PM systems result in non-comparable PM data and contribute to a lack of quality information and consequently poor asset management.

The Solution

ASUG should commission a PM Standards Committee to develop a recommended practice (RP) for configuration and use of the SAP PM system and make it available to all SAP customers.  This RP should be generated by a team of experienced SAP PM users and should be a consensus “best way” of doing things.  The RP should be made universally applicable where possible, and where not possible, the RP should note the exceptions and include specific industry segment practices for those exceptions.  The RP should reference and leverage from industry standards, codes, and recommended practices, such as ISO 14224, ISO 15926, API RP 520, and ASME Section VIII.

The Benefits

Standardization will simplify and reduce capital costs associated with the PM implementation process and ensure that configuration is done right the first time.  It will ensure that PM systems are robust, well-designed, and optimally configured.  This is turn will improve the quality of information by giving customers systematic, structured, and standardized processes for building and maintaining master data and for identifying and collecting transactional data.  Better information means better decisions.  Better decisions mean more reliable, more profitable, and safer operation of facilities.

When SAP PM is standardized across the customer base (45,000 customers worldwide), it will give SAP users great power in influencing others in industry to conform to the SAP standard way of doing things.  The SAP user base will be able to influence not only suppliers of goods, but also industry standards, codes, and recommended practices to ensure optimal compatibility with the SAP recommended practice.

We have standards for many things in industry, such as valves, piping, pressure vessels, and pumps.  We need a standard for our SAP data as well.

Key Lessons

Attendees will learn:

v  How “getting it right the first time” will reduce SAP implementation costs, provide robust and complete master data from project inception, provide high-quality transactional information, and in turn increase the economic viability of companies using SAP.

v  How a properly-configured implementation in conjunction with the use of recommended practices will make SAP much more user friendly and remove the misperception among users that SAP is complex, user unfriendly, and an impediment to productivity.

v  How, with standardized methods, the SAP user base can become a powerful force for influencing other industry entities to adopt practices beneficial to the SAP user base and thereby improve integration, reduce costs, and increase the economic viability of companies using SAP.

v  How standardization of technical object structures per ISO 15926 has the potential to save at least three percent of total capital expenditures for new facilities.