Turnaround Scheduling and SAP: Pt. 1

Preface

One of the most common questions we get asked is about turnaround scheduling in relation to SAP.

Younger professionals call us old, but us older professionals prefer to call ourselves 'experienced'.
Let us just say that we refer to ourselves as 'experienced'. Since 1997 we have been working hard to improve the lives of project personnel through effectiveness gains and efficiency improvements inside and outside of SAP.

"SAP can schedule projects". That's the first thing you will hear from a PS consultant, and they are correct! It can.

PS Networks have all the components of a scheduling application like Primavera. They have activities, durations, relationships, constraints, resources and all the other elements needed to create a time-analyzed schedule.
We have implemented network scheduled solutions to over a dozen customers and we know this area of SAP inside and out.

But there is an old saying 'just because you can, doesn't mean you should' and this applies perfectly to SAP when it comes to scheduling turnarounds and large construction projects.
In the last ten years SAP has developed Enterprise Portfolio and Project Management (ePPM) to also manage project activities. We know this area very well, having deployed it back when it was called xRPM and cProjects. ePPM is not the right tool to schedule turnarounds and large capital projects either.
To be honest - only external scheduling tools like Primavera can handle the complexity, volume and performance of turnaround schedules. And SAP recognized this when they acquired the Enterprise Project Connect (EPC) software back in 2010.

This is a good place to end part 1 of this blog series on scheduling. In the upcoming blogs we will look at the options open to companies that use SAP to manage their master data but need powerful scheduling capability to deliver their turnarounds.

After such a lengthy career in this field we intend to document our experience in a way that you can relate to and learn from.
The ultimate objective with this blog is to help you avoid the mistakes we made along the way.
We look forward to sharing our insights and collaborating with you in the future. Please check back soon for Part 2 of Turnaround Scheduling and SAP.