Functional location in SAP: structuring plant correctly

The functional location is a master data object of maintenance in SAP – in the classic Plant Maintenance (PM) module as well as in asset management in S/4HANA. It represents a place or a function within a plant: a site, a hall, a production line, a pump station, the installation point of a pump. Functional locations stand in a hierarchy, so a plant can be broken down from the site to the individual installation point.

The location carries the data that belong to the place: location, cost centre, planning plant, responsible work centres. Maintenance notifications and orders refer to a location, and costs can be rolled up through the hierarchy. A functional location is created with transaction IL01, changed with IL02 and displayed with IL03; the structure list IH01 shows the hierarchy with the installed equipment.

The distinction is the most frequent question and the most important decision. The functional location describes the place, the equipment the specific unit. An equipment master record stands for an individual object that is maintained in its own right – with manufacturer, model, serial number and year of construction. It is installed at a location and can be dismantled again.

When the pump at the location “cooling water pump 1” is replaced, the location remains. The old equipment is dismantled and goes to the workshop or the store; the new one is installed. The history of the unit – where it was installed when, what was repaired on it – travels with the equipment. The history of the place – how often something failed there, what it cost – stays with the location. As a rule of thumb: whatever is to be exchanged, lent, inspected or tracked individually is equipment. Whatever structures the plant is a functional location.

Every functional location bears a label, for example “1000-CW-P01”. How that label may be built is defined by the structure indicator. It consists of two entries: the edit mask, which determines for each position whether letters, digits or both are allowed and where separators sit, and the hierarchy levels, which state at which position of the mask a level ends.

From this the system derives the hierarchy. If the location “1000-CW-P01” is created and “1000-CW” already exists, SAP places it underneath automatically. This works only when creating from the top down – entering the lower locations first produces locations without a superior functional location and means rework. The structure indicator is a Customizing setting and should be in place before the first location is created.

A common breakdown of a production plant runs from the site via the area or building to the plant or line, on to the unit and finally to the installation point of a piece of machinery. Whether four, five or six levels are right does not follow from SAP but from two questions: at which level does operations report a malfunction? And at which level does maintenance want to analyse costs and failures?

The structure does not have to be invented. In process plants it already exists – in the tag numbers of the piping and instrumentation diagram. Power stations work with an identification system of their own, and the EN 81346 series sets out general principles for structuring and reference designation of industrial plant. Adopting the designations that are on the nameplate at the unit spares the maintenance technician the translation between plant and system.

The hierarchy is not only order; it saves maintenance effort. Data such as cost centre, location or planning plant are passed from the superior functional location to the subordinate ones and from there to the installed equipment. If a line moves to another cost centre, this is changed in one place.

For each field it can be defined whether it takes the value from above or carries its own. The location also determines whether equipment may be installed and whether only a single piece is permitted – sensible wherever exactly one unit sits at one place. For plants that exist several times with the same layout there is the reference functional location: a template whose data are taken over by the locations derived from it.

Drawings, flow diagrams, inspection reports and manuals are worth something to maintenance only if they are attached to the object. SAP document management keeps document info records for this – created with CV01N – with version, status and the original files. Through the object link a document info record is assigned to a functional location or to equipment and can then be reached from the master record, from the notification and from the order.

The assignment follows the same logic as the distinction between the objects. What describes the place belongs on the location: piping and instrumentation diagram, layout drawing, piping isometric, design data. What describes the unit and moves with it belongs on the equipment: data sheet, manufacturer’s operating instructions, inspection certificate, test records.

Most problems with location structures do not arise in operation but on the first day – through decisions that can later be corrected only with a clean-up project.