Put Organizational Master Data To Work

Organizational master data in SAP reflects your site’s organizational strategy and enables efficient execution of the work-management process.

Master data is any information that is used by several groups and  plays a key role in the operation of a business. Some examples of master data, as it pertains to the work-management process, are:

• plant sections/locations
• workflow
• planner groups
• work centers
• HR mini-masters.

Why is organizational master data important? If current and properly entered into the system, it makes possible effective reporting of maintenance KPIs and allows efficient sorting and filtering of data. It also automates much of the work-management process data handling by automatically:

• populating appropriate information fields in notification/work orders, thereby saving time and reducing data entry and data-entry errors

• automatically providing necessary work-management-process data.

Combining accurate master data elements enables users to create transactional data such as maintenance-work orders. Key elements include:

• Plant Section: Aligns with production unit or product-authorization structure to automate SAP workflow.

• Locations: Indicates a physical location within a plant where the equipment is installed to enable grouping, sorting, and/or filtering.

• Workflow: This element uses the Plant Section specified in the work order to identify the Approver to automatically send an SAP/Outlook/LN e-mail message. 

• Planner Group: The fields that identify the person(s) responsible for planning, alignment of maintenance activities, and resources within a given process area or craft(s).

• Work Center: The field defaulted at the equipment level that identifies the crew assigned to perform a specific operation in a work order at the operations level. This can be aligned by craft or by process area.

The resources needed to plan and execute work orders are managed through planner groups and work centers. The Planner Group is the assignment of planners to specific technical objects and can be used to segregate planner backlogs and work lists.

Work centers are designed to provide logical groupings of craftsmen resources. They are also assigned capacities and average costing for use in work orders and in the resource-planning process.

Another master-data resource is the HR mini-master which assigns employees to an organizational area to keep track of costs. When entering labor hours against a work order, an employee will reference his/her employee number from the mini-personnel record. The mini-master keeps a history by employee of work orders against which they have billed time.

HR mini-masters are also used to assign employees to an organizational area to keep track of costs. This makes it possible to reference an employee number, confirm hours on a work order, and view work history by employee. EP

Kristina Gordon is SAP PM Leader, DuPont Protective Solutions Business, and SAP WMP Champion, Spruance Site, Richmond, VA. If you have SAP questions, send them to editors@efficientplantmag.com and we’ll forward them to Kristina.