Decommissioned or dismantled assets in SAP PM

A reliable Functional Location Structure is one of the most important preconditions for a well-functioning maintenance organization. In practice, I often come across assets that have been decommissioned or even dismantled. They are then often still listed in the SAP Functional Location structure as active assets.

This can cause all kinds of problems. One of the typical problems is that PO tasks are still assigned to them. If the Management of Change (MOC) process does not work properly, the Maintenance Planner will not know that the asset has been decommissioned. As a result, the called-out PO tasks are scheduled when they are not needed. If there is no proper process, it often takes a long time before PO plans are updated. Consequence: for a long time ‘useless’ Work Orders are created.

A fictitious calculation example: assume that the Functional Location structure consists of 45000 assets and 2% of these assets have actually been removed or decommissioned. That is 900 assets. If only 2 PO tasks are assigned to these assets we already have 1800 useless PO orders in the system. Someone is spending valuable time to administratively handle these orders, while this in no way contributes to improving the reliability of the plant.

This fictitious calculation example shows why it is so important to periodically validate the asset Functional Location structure and keep it up to date.

How can you handle decommissioned or dismantled assets in SAP PM?

Suppose you start working with this in SAP. If you want to delete an old Functional Location, there is no such thing as ‘the recycle garbage can’ in SAP. Still, you want to start deleting Functional Location from the active structure. My tip is to create a Functional Location with the title “Old Functional Locations“. Now place all Functional Locations that are no longer in use under that.  Of course, you should also immediately check whether there are still active PO plans present and then de-activate them, give them a deletion mark and give the PO position as reference object also this old Functional Location. This way the CMMS stays as clean as possible and up to date.

In conclusion

Are you working in an environment where the asset hierarchy in the CMMS is incomplete or out-dated? Chances are, it’s going to be hard to find the time to tackle this thoroughly. You will really have to make time for it. A project-based approach works best here. My advice would be to work out some examples. Also make a Plan of Action in which you divide the factory into manageable sections and prioritize which sections need to be tackled first.

You then use these examples and the plan of approach to demonstrate to management why it is important to free up resources to validate and optimize the Functional Location Structure. The money and time that this will save in the long run certainly justifies the initial investment required.

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