SAP PM (Plant Maintenance) Interview Questions and Answers

SAP Plant maintenance is an often-overlooked department of a plant or company where substantial savings and even earnings can be gained. We have listed of SAP PM Interview Questions and Answers that have been designed for SAP PM professionals who are preparing interviews on SAP PM (Plant Maintenance). Here, we have added some basic and advanced or both questions on SAP PM Interview Questions and Answers.

SAP PM (Plant Maintenance) is managed properly, materials and labour can be used less in order to achieve cost savings, or more materials and labour can even be used in order to prevent costly breakdowns of equipment, possibly affecting production. Below list of SAP PM Interview Questions help beginners to learn more on Plant Maintenance.

Best SAP PM Interview Questions and Answers

What is Cost Centres and Cost Elements in SAP PM?

If the cost of maintenance is of even the slightest interest, cost centers and cost elements must be defined from the CO (Controlling) module. Costs incurred by work orders may be settled to cost centers. Cost centers are also used to determine the rate at which people are charged to work orders.

What is Bills of Material?

Before bills of material can be defined for any module, the materials that make up the bill of materials must first be defined, typically from the MM (Materials Management) module. Work with those responsible for the maintenance of material records to define materials required for BOM use.

Explain about Work Centers

Plant Maintenance Work Centers are based on the same functionality as Production Planning Work Centers in the R/3 system. That is, an entity with a finite capacity for work can be defined as a Work Center, whether it is a person or a machine.

What is Plants?

One or more plants appropriate for a company’s operations must be defined. In the Plant Maintenance module, these plants are often referred to as Maintenance Plants. It is best to work with those configuring other modules to determine what plants must be defined in R/3.

How to explain Planning Plants in SAP PM?

In the Plant Maintenance module, these plants may also be referred to as Maintenance Planning Plants. Planning Plants are “chosen” from the list of Plants defined previously as a plant where maintenance planning is carried out. If maintenance planning, including materials planning, is performed at every plant, then every plant will be also be defined as a Planning Plant.

Assignment of Planning Plants –what it means?

Once the plants and planning plants have been defined, the assignment of maintenance plants to planning plants must be done. Beside each maintenance plant listed in the configuration step in the IMG, the appropriate planning plant is entered or chosen.

How to assign Internal Number Range?

An internal number range is numeric only, characters are not permitted, starting from a specific number and ending at a specific number. Internal numbers, when used, are assigned to an item automatically by the system. The next available number is always used and no selection of numbers is possible by the system users.

What is External Number Range

An external number range can be numeric, alphabetic, alphanumeric, and may contain certain special characters (consult the SAP documentation). This can be useful in cases where specific values need to be assigned to items.

What is Permits?

Within the Implementation Guide, only permit categories and permit groups are defined. The actual permit definitions themselves are defined as master data, outside of the IMG, to more easily accommodate definitions and changes.

One or more permits can be associated with an object such as a functional location or a piece of equipment. 

How to define Permit Categories

A permit category is simply a logical grouping of permits. For example, permits related to safety could belong to the Permit Category “Safety.”

How to define Permit Groups

Defining Permit Groups allows the use of the classification system for permits. If permits are not to be classified further than grouping them into categories in the previous configuration step, this step need not be performed.

Explain about Warranty Counters

A characteristic may be supplied here to provide a warranty-related counter. The characteristic must have already been defined in the Classification system. The counter may be used to represent, for example, operating hours. Another counter may be used to represent, for example, time. The counters can be checked each time that a piece of equipment breaks down in order to determine whether the equipment is still within its warranty period.

How to define Partners?

A partner, from a Plant Maintenance perspective, is a person or other entity that has anything to do with a work order (or other object), for example. Work order-related partners include, but are not limited to, person responsible, department responsible,vendor, and so on.

What is Functional Locations in SAP PM?

A functional location can be used to organize equipment or other functional locations into logical groups usually based on function and/or geographic location.

What is Measuring Points?

A measuring point, simply stated, defines a place on a piece of equipment at which some type of measurement is taken. The measurement may be pressure, cycles, miles, or one of many other types of measurements. Measuring points may also be defined for functional locations, if appropriate.

Define Consumable Types

Fleet equipment may consume certain materials, such as gasoline (petrol), lubricating oil, and engine oil. Those consumables may be defined here.

How to define Usage Types for Fleet Objects

The purpose of fleet objects may be defined here. An example of a usage for a fleet object might be “Company Business Only.” Define Engine Types for Fleet Objects Engine types, such as gasoline, diesel, electric, etc. may be defined here.

Define Object Types

Additional categories relevant to object linking may be defined here. 

How to define Media for Object Links

The “medium, ” as discussed previously, may be defined here to provide a common linkage between objects. Two media that may be provided by default are “H2O” and “220v.” Other media can be added as required.

Define Checking Rules

There is a default checking rule for PM provided with the system. Unless additional checking rules will be required, no changes are required here.

What is External Scheduling?

The settings in this configuration section are only relevant if scheduling will be performed by an external program and the dates passed to the SAP R/3 system. The settings may depend on the functionality of the external program.

The above are the top SAP PM Interview Questions that are mostly asked in an interview these interview questions are more helpful for beginners and professionals.