SAP PM Criticality Ranking: what is it used for?

What is criticality ranking and what can it be used for?

In this short blog I will explain how you can use SAP PM to provide the available assets with a Criticality Ranking. There is a standard field for this in the Functional Location and Equipment master data of SAP PM. Unfortunately, many organisations are not aware of this.

With a criticality ranking, you indicate how critical a certain asset is for the company. There can be 3 rankings:

• A = very high critical / safety critical
• B = medium critical
• C = low-critical

For example, if an A-critical asset fails, this has major consequences for operations. Whereas a C-critical asset is allowed to fail because it has virtually no impact.  Once a criticality ranking has been applied per asset, this has numerous advantages. For example, Maintenance Requests and Notifications can be better prioritised. Also analyses and decision making on reliability improvement initiatives can be done faster.

Each company will have to define its own criticality ranking policy to determine which assets are high criticality, medium criticality and low criticality. As soon as the policy is known, the recording of the criticality per asset in SAP PM can be started.

Where in SAP PM can the criticality be recorded?

In the master data of each SAP job location and SAP Equipment, there is a field called “ABC-indicator“. This is by far the most suitable field in SAP PM for capturing the criticality of the asset.

This field can be filled in manually per Functional Location and Equipment, but it is also possible to use specific SAP transactions to fill in the field for several Functional Locations and Equipments at the same time.

Below is a screenshot of a Functional Location containing the standard ABC-indicator field.

Do you need help with setting up the Criticality Ranking in SAP PM? Contact Incentro