Connecting STO to SAP? Here are the must-have integrations

If you use SAP PM to run your EAM…

And you need to shutdown your plant to perform critical maintenance.

Then you need an STO Management solution.

Here are the critical SAP integrations every STO must have 👇🏻

Must-have SAP ~ STO Integrations

Master Data

SAP Master Data is the foundation of all integration between STO and SAP.

To effectively integrate your STO application with SAP, your STO must include evergreen SAP master data, including:

Revisions

Revisions are used by SAP to group notifications and work orders under a specific event. Since it is highly likely you will be planning multiple shutdown events with different oil-out dates, we need a way to assign notifications and work orders such that they are scheduled with the correct event date. The Revision performs this task in SAP and is therefore a critical data element to integrate to STO.

Functional Locations

Functional Locations are the organizational elements that make up a production facility. It is a hierarchical structure that can be quickly used to locate specific equipment items. Every maintenance activity should map to a specific functional location, regardless of the level in the structure the activity occurs. For example an activity could take place at the unit level, or at a specific equipment item (e.g. pump). An STO application should always include the full Functional Location structure, ideally as a hierarchical parent / child display.

Equipment Classes

Equipment classes are a taxonomy of classifications into hierarchical groupings with each level being a further detailing, for example (Fixed Equipment > Heat Exchangers > Shell & Tube Exchanger > Floating Head Exchanger). Equipment Classes are important to STO applications as frequently scope items are identified by class instead of functional location or equipment description / type. STO work package planning is frequently broken-out by equipment class.

Equipment Items

Equipment Items are the physical equipment objects performing work in the plant. It can be a fixed equipment that does not change ever or frequently, or it can be something that is regularly replaced (e.g. motor or safety valve). Maintenance work is performed on the physical equipment item unless it is going to be replaced during the STO event (e.g. safety valve). Whilst some companies only plan to the functional location and don’t go down to the equipment level, it is best practice to plan and execute work at the individual equipment item.

Material Masters

Material Masters represent each spare part within a plant or across the organization. Frequently the same pump will be in use across many sites, with each site being a (plant) extension of the material master. Materials can be grouped together to represent an equipment Bill of Material (BOM) or they can be planned individually. Companies with highly mature STO processes will maximize the use of material masters while companies with a lower level of STO maturity will use free text materials and Purchase Requisitions (PR’s) to plan materials. The problem with using PR’s is that these materials are immediately expensed by SAP upon goods receipt (GR) unless the company has invested in a custom inventory tracking tool.

Material masters are used in the material planning of STO work packages, a critical activity in the success of any event.

Transactional Data Creation

Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) Elements

WBS Elements are PS module objects frequently used in STO projects, especially if the company intends to amortize the cost of the event over many years. In extreme cases they can be used for project management and even control of restricted project stock. WBS elements are frequently assigned to work orders for project management or accounting purposes, or both. Because the WBS elements are freqently complex numbers with many levels, it is important to import these into the STO to avoid errors with assignment that will prevent work orders being created or updated correctly.

Notifications

Notifications are used to identify potential scope items and can be created at any time, including during a prior turnaround event as an inspection finding. Many scope items will not make it onto the approved worklist, and the most common way to flag a notification as a turnaround item is via the priority field, although other options such as planner group are available. Fully integrated STO’s will initiate unapproved scope items that will create notifications should one not already exist. Approved notifications become work orders.

Work Orders

Work Orders are cost objects that carry the cost associated with a work package. Typically there are many types of work order ranging from routine maintenance, corrective maintenance, capital and project expense. Each workpack will include a budget category (who pays for the work) and therefore any integration between the STO application and SAP must assign the correct order type at creation as this cannot be changed afterwards. In many cases the work order is created with reference to an existing notification. Work orders are crucial to the successful integration of an STO application as they carry the internal / external labor and material plans / costs; as well as settle these costs to the correct receiver (e.g. cost center, WBS).

Material Reservations / Purchase Requisitions

Turnaround materials are planned on the work order and can be either stock reservations or purchase requisitions (PR’s). Reservations rely on material masters and MRP to determine if there is sufficient stock to handle the requirement. STO applications can be used to plan these materials to avoid the planner having to login to SAP and update the work order directly. Materials planned on the work order without a material master will automatically generate a purchase requisition in SAP. The PR will then be converted to a purchase order (PO) by the procurement team.

Transactional Data Updates

It is not enough to just create and adjust transactional data objects such as notifications, work orders and PR’s. These objects need to be monitored daily, as the planning phase of a large event can last for over a year. Your STO application must continually communicate with SAP and update accordingly, be it with material purchase / delivery status, order costs and notification / work order system status.

As the planning phase passes through the many milestones in readiness for execution to commence, it is imperative that all planning activities are complete before the oil-out milestone. This is crucial in the elimination of parallel tracking spreadsheets and SAP reporting.

Summary

So remember, you wil need an STO application to reduce outage cost and risk, but you and your IT team cannot be responsible for supporting complex and critical SAP integrations. It’s essential that your STO application communicates with SAP in an advanced and automated way.

What else do you need to know about STO ~ SAP integration?

Drop a note in the comments or email me at tmartin@xytalis.com