Using CATS Data: Updating PM (plant maintenance)

In our previous posts, we discussed Understanding the basics of CATS (cross-application time sheets) showing how SAP provides a very robust method to capture time data and have that data passed to other SAP modules. We then covered Using CATS Data: Updating CO (controlling) to see how controlling may use the CATS data. The next module we will discuss CATS updating is Plant Maintenance.

CATS will generate confirmations for maintenance and service orders and will do this with Receiver orders, Operation number, and Sub-operations. The confirmations tell us the state of processing, work center where the activity was carried out, and the individual who carried out the activity. The generation of confirmations is simultaneous to activity allocation in CO.

Keep in mind, that processing time can be a major issue if there is a large volume of open PM orders. Consider using nightly batch runs with narrow periods to reduce the processing time. However, narrowing the period to much may cause prior period corrections to be missed so performance vs. time period narrowing must be weighed carefully.

An effective schedule we have put in practice is a nightly run pulling data for the last two weeks and a weekend run that pulls in data for a year. The weekend run will capture corrections that were made outside of our two week window we captured during nightly runs.

Next we’ll discuss Using CATS Data: Updating PS (project systems).