Planning and releasing service orders

After you create a service order with the appropriate labor and materials, you can plan the service order’s execution. This planning consists of assigning the material, providing for the necessary inventory transactions to ensure that the material is available, allocating engineers, and checking the business partner’s credit. Planning consists of two phases: global ERP and detailed ERP. Global ERP makes the mid- to long-term plans, such as several weeks or months, while detailed ERP performs the detailed planning for a few days or weeks ahead.

Overview of service resource planning (SRP)

Planning for engineers and service orders is called service resource planning (SRP), and is controlled in the Service Order Control module. The input for this planning is all service orders created in the other modules and the constraints defined in contracts, calls, and service master data.

Note: 

You use the Service Order Resource Planning (tssoc2260m000) session to carry out SRP for a serviceorder.

Preliminary conditions

To run SRP successfully for a service order, the following conditions must be met:

  • At least one activity must be present for the service order.
  • The Planned Start Time and the Activity Duration fields for all activities of the service order must be filled.
  • The serialized item for which the activities are planned must be valid.

If the First Order Procedure Step for Blocking field is Order Planning or Order Definition in the Service Order Parameters (tssoc0100m000) session and global SRP is run, LN carries out the following actions:

  • If no parameters are set for service order blocking, no checks are carried out and all service orders is processed.
  • If a service order's Blocked check box is selected in the Service Order session and the service order blocking is still valid, LN does not plan the service order.
  • If the Blocked check box is selected and the service order blocking is no longer valid, LN unblocks the service order, and the service order is planned.

If the service order's Blocked check box is not selected, LN carries out the SRP. If a blocking reason limit is exceeded, the Blocked check box is selected, and LN creates the service order blocking reason in the Blocking Reasons (tsmdm1101m000) session. The service order is not planned.

If you select the Process Report check box and the Error Report check box, the blocked service orders are printed on the error report, and the unblocked service orders are printed on the process report.

SRP actions

When you run SRP, and the required conditions are met, LN processes the service order and service order activities with the following statuses:

  • Service orders with a Free, Planned, or Released status can be processed by the SRP.
  • Service order activities with a Free status are planned. Activities with a Planned status are replanned if the Replan check box is selected.

The attributes of a service order and its related activities that are affected when you run SRP, depend on the status of the service order and its related activities.

If the service order status is Free, LN carries out actions on the following:

  • Preferred engineer
  • Planned dates of the service order (recalculated)
  • Travel cost line
  • Service order status
  • Service order cost lines:
    • Purchase
    • Allocate material
    • Plan tools

If the service order status is Planned, LN carries out actions on the following:

  • Planned dates (recalculated)
  • Service order cost lines:
    • Purchase
    • Replan tools

If the service order status is Released, LN carries out no actions on the service order.

If the service order status is either Free, Planned, or Released, and the activity status is Free, LN carries out actions on the following:

  • Subcontractor (buy-from business partner)
  • Planned dates (recalculated)
  • Coverage date
  • Inspection lines
  • Service order activity status
  • Service order activity cost lines:
    • Purchase
    • Allocate material
    • Plan tools
    • Reallocate material
    • Replan tools if the service order status is Planned

If the service order status is Planned or Released, and the activity status is Planned, LN carries out actions on the following:

  • Planned dates (recalculated)
  • Service order activity cost lines:
    • Purchase
    • Replan tools

When you run the Service Order Resource Planning (tssoc2260m000) session, the actions LN carries out on the attributes of a service order (SO) and/or, service order activity, if the status permits, are described in the following sections:

Preferred engineer

The Service Engineer field of the service order is filled with the Installation group's Preferred Engineer 1, when:

  • The Default Preferred Engineer during Planning check box in the Service Order Parameters (tssoc0100m000) session is selected.
  • The service order status is Free.
Note: 

The Service Engineer field of the service order is not be changed if this field is already filled.

Recalculated planned dates

If the activity status is Free or Planned, the Planned Finish Time field will be recalculated based on the serialized item and Installation group calendars. If these calendars are not available, the engineer, work center or company calendars are used. If a serialized item or Installation group calendar is available for the serialized item, the Planned Finish Time field on the service order header will also be recalculated. If the required capacity (time) is not available, LN prints the following message in the process report: Required capacity for activity line %1$s not (completely) available.

Note: 

If you add, delete or change an activity line, the Planned Finish Time of the service order will be updated directly. Activities with the status Planned are only re-planned if the Re-plan check box is selected in the Service Order Resource Planning (tssoc2260m000) session.

Coverage date

If the Coverage Time field of the service order activity is empty, LN enters the planned start time of the service order.

Travel cost lines

Estimated traveling cost lines are created in the Service Order Estimated Other Costs (tssoc2140m000) session, if the service order status is Free and the Travel Cost Method field in the General Service Parameters (tsmdm0100m000) session is not None.

On the Costing tab, in the Service Order Parameters (tssoc0100m000) session, if:

  • Only the Distance check box is selected, LN creates one cost line for the travel distance and one cost line for travel total.
  • Only the Time check box is selected, LN creates one cost line for travel time and one cost line for travel total.
  • Both check boxes are selected, LN creates one cost line for the travel time and one cost line for travel distance and one cost line for travel total.

Inspection lines

For each measurement type of the Installation group/serialized item that is entered in the reference activity of the activity line, LN creates an inspection line in the Inspections (tscfg3100m000) session.

Service order (activity) status

LN updates the status of the service order or service order activity to Planned when the SRP was carried out successfully.

Purchase

  • In Service, only SRP creates the purchase-order lines, if required.
  • LN creates purchase orders for a service order's material cost lines whose delivery type is By Purchase Order and Estimated Quantity greater than zero (0).
  • For a subcontracted service order activity, with the Service/Cost Item field entered, LN creates a purchase order for the subcontractor's services.
  • If the planned delivery date of a purchase item is later than the planned start date of the service order, the Required delivery date %1$u001 for item %2$s not feasible message is printed in the process report.
  • The buy-from business partner for the purchase item is determined as follows:
    1. The buy-from business partner of the material line ( Service Order Estimated Material Costs (tssoc2120m000).
    2. The buy-from business partner of item/supplier information ( Items - Purchase Business Partner (tdipu0110m000).
    3. The buy-from business partner of the item purchase data ( Items - Purchase Business Partner (tdipu0110m000).
Note: 
  • The selected business partner or its parent business partner must also have a pay-to role. If this role does not exist, LN prints a message on the error report and does not create the purchase order.
  • If the planned delivery date of a purchase item is later than the planned start date of the service order, LN displays a message.

Materials

If the statuses of the service order and service-order activity are Free, SRP creates soft allocations for the required items, which means:

  • Items with a delivery type of From Warehouse, From Warehouse in Car, From Warehouse by Transp., or From Service Kit are listed in the Order - Planned Inventory Transactions (whinp1501m000) session with the transaction type - (Planned Issue).
  • Items with a delivery type of either To Warehouse or Tom Warehouse by Transport (materials expected to be received) are listed in the Order - Planned Inventory Transactions (whinp1501m000) session with the transaction type + (Planned Receipt).

Tools

  • For other costs lines whose cost type is Tooling, the required tool is soft allocated, listed in the Estimated Tool Requirements (titrp0111m000) session, with a Tool Requirement Status of Requested for the period from the Earliest Start Time until the Latest Finish Time.
  • If these times are not available, the period from the Planned Start Time until the Planned Finish Time is used.
  • Tool allocation also takes place when a tool must be refurbished, which is when the selected serialized item of the service order activity is of item type Tool in the Items (tcibd0501m000) session. The Tool Requirements Planning check box in the Implemented Software Components (tccom0100s000) session must be selected to implement tooling.

Reports

  • Process report: Lists all the service orders that are successfully handled by the SRP, as well as whether an earlier blocked service order is unblocked and processed. The current service order status also appears.
  • Error report: Lists all the service orders that are not successfully handled by the SRP, and the reason why. The current service order status also appears.

Service Order Status

After you plan the service order, LN changes the service order status to Planned.

Parameters

The following parameters are used:

To create traveling cost lines:

  • Travel Distance
  • Travel Time

To allocate preferred engineers during service orders planning:

  • Default Preferred Engineer during Planning

For service order signaling and/or blocking:

  • If Credit Limit Is Exceeded
  • If Credit Review Is Overdue
  • If invoice Is Overdue
  • If Business Partner Is Doubtful

For service order procedure step when service blocking must be carried out:

  • First Order Procedure Step for Blocking

For traveling costs:

  • Travel Cost Method

For implementing tooling:

  • Tool Requirements Planning (TRP)

Release Service Orders

After you plan the service order, you can release the service order to service engineer to execute the order. Use the Release Service Orders (tssoc2200m000) session to release a group or a batch of service orders with Free or Planned statuses. You must have at least one activity linked to service order. An activity must have either one or more engineers assigned to it or a header engineer for the service order to be released.

Note: After you release the service order, LN changes the service order status to Released.