Like all SAP projects, an SAP Warranty Management Project involves testing and migrating complex warranty related data. Whether you’re an established automotive or aerospace manufacturer or a company that sells stand-alone warranties, the data volumes can be huge.
Warranty Data Mostly Comprised Master Data
While any specific warranty may generate transactional data both before, during and after the warranty is in effect, when it comes to warranty data test and migration, the majority of the data you end up dealing with is Master Data.
SAP Data Migration Tools Don’t Quite Cover the Warranty Scenarios
While most SAP consultants and SAP Customers have ran across and used various SAP Data Migration Tools such as the Advanced Legacy System Data Migration Workbench (LSMW), as well as many others that exist within the SAP technical stack and many 3rd party tools, we have found major gaps in the warranty data test & migration tool capabilities that we require.
What Functionality Gaps Do We Encounter
Let’s take a typical example from an aircraft OEM, which is a type of customer we frequently work with. There are many warranties, and extended warranties that an aircraft might have. They would mostly resemble functional hierarchy one encounters when setting up an aircraft within the system:
- Airframe
- Engine(s)
- APU - Auxiliary Power Unit
- Propeller
- Avionics (such as Rockwell-Collins, Garmin, Meggitt, L3, et al) installed in the aircraft
- Landing Gear, Brakes
- Interiors
Within the military environment, this hierarchy is completely detailed out from the largest to the smallest component, in a hierarchical fashion, see SPEC 2000, or ATA chapters as examples.
The Warranty Migration consultant, in order to successfully migrate the warranty data, must know much more than just the fact the data was migrated. He must understand the context of the warranty, in order to recognize errors. Some of these errors were there already and need to be addressed by the business process owner. Others have been induced by the new warranty design.
We Built Eleven Warranty Specific Migration Tools
As a result of our on-going SAP ACS Warranty project work, we’ve successfully developed eleven specific SAP Warranty Data Migration Tools and associated migration methodology.
The tools provide:
- More data (qualitative, quantitative)
- Much more confidence in the migrated data
- More repeatability
- Data Validation
- Automatic equipment updates for example at the time of shipment, or when the equipment is in service
- Super User Power
More Data
More data means having the data to enable as many integration test scenarios as possible. Oftentimes, your consultants will cover a ‘happy path’ and neighboring scenarios initially very well. However, testing all possible scenarios completely can be very demanding, even impossible; considering the rubrics cube type of possible combinations.
More data helps cover more cases.
Much more confidence in the migrated data
PMO executives understand the primary cause of project delays: Master data issues.
Master data issues can be quantitative, or qualitative. For example, you are a multi-national part manufacturer for North America, Europe, and Asia. A material master may be set up for the NA sales area, but may be missing it’s MVKE sales view for Asia. A test case for NA will run just fine, a test case for the Asian Sales Area will error out.
More repeatability
When using our test & migration tools, a load program and method can be repeated in any system: Dev, Test, even in Production. That is very valuable. We piggy back on the SAP transport management system.
Being able to repeat previously tested data loads in your system landscape: test, mock-1, mock-2, mock-3. And finally in Production while honed to perfection in previous iterations, - is a huge time saver!
Systematically repeat data load will also reduce human error typing in that data.
Super User Power
Super user functionality otherwise not available in SAP, because SAP “does not allow it”. For example, a finance posting can’t be deleted, a Master Warranty, a claim can’t be deleted. Your IT, business and consultants need certain Super User powers in your test and development environments to make their lives easier.
When using SAP, your organization is provided with a huge treasure trove of existing super user type tools: programs that are not normally known! You have heard of using certain fire-fighter tools in production, when a certain fix has to be made right then and there. Tools that help resolve issues quickly, that otherwise would require painful hours of consultant’s time to achieve that certain fix. Now, SAP obviously can’t cover all possible scenarios out there. Modules are differently designed in SAP, some modules are more technical than others. We are here to provide the missing pieces for you.
Data Validation
The data that is coming into SAP that is being validated is master data, transactional data, rules and control tables, and processing results. This data validation processing is best left to the experts.
When validating data this may include systematically comparing results from your previous transactional systems to the SAP processing results. Previous transactional system such as Oracle, AS.400, or any other “Legacy” system.
Automatic Equipment Updates
Highly sophisticated programs run in foreground or background while updating the main unit (car, aircraft, vehicle, main equipment, etc.) and lower level equipments at the time of
- customer shipment, and
- when the equipment is in the the shop for service, or serviced in the field
Updates immediately reflect the new situation in the system, for example what is the best known warranty start date of this unit. Equipment history is kept over time, no-one has to touch anything. Aptly termed Equi Modify, varying approaches for different industries allow for fully automated warranty assignments.
Rules Tables
Your SAP system runs among many other concepts on a number of rules tables that drive defaults, behaviors, types, codes, etc. via command & control flags and fields. Some rules tables have so many entries that it is prohibitive to maintain manually: this is where we support with upload tools,- that follow the SAP and SAP ACS methodologies, nomenclatures, standards.
AS400 to SAP Warranty Migration
While we work in a variety of IT environments, one we frequently run into is an AS400 legacy system retirement moving to SAP HANA – SAP ACS Warranty Management. The AS400 has been the workhorse of many industries for many years but finding personnel to provide support is a challenge that many companies have not overcome.
In one recent project, there were approximately 40 unique warranty scenarios. The number of combinations of these warranty scenarios, spread across thousands of ‘in the field’ units, meant that the data migration had to be perfectly transparent to the customer, while still taking the minimum amount of time.
SAP Portal Integration – A Challenge Met
Like many clients, one of our recent clients already had their own custom Portal, which was being integrated to SAP. These warranty data portal integration scenarios had proven to be one of the more challenging aspects of this client project. As a result, and based on the need to develop a more generalized solution, we developed a Portal to SAP Warranty Claims via RFC connector with full validation checks, sporting 20+ API components.
Service Bulletin/Recall Management
A second critical area we needed to address was aviation specific, yet has wide applicability. That is, Recalls, Service Bulletins, Technical Campaigns, which are also known as TCTOs (Time Compliance Technical Orders), by the military, or at least by the USAF.
These must be handled with absolute accuracy, as bad data can result in an aircraft operating in an unsafe or worse, unknown condition.
Case in point: A very long time ago, the author of this blog was involved in updating the TCTO records of all the aircraft of a foreign government. As it turns out, just on one aircraft type, there were around 8,000,000 TCTOs across a span of 20 to 30 years. While we were able to develop programs to help us get this task done, they were primitive by comparison to what we have been able to develop today.
Complete List of Helper Programs
There is lots more we could say about the reasons we developed these programs. However, this blog is getting to be quite long and probably its best to provide a list of all the data migration programs we developed to make the process more smoothly.
Following find a short list of useful 'helper' programs that can help accelerate your SAP project implementation:
- Upload Programs for
- Claims
- SB/Recalls
- Rules Tables
- Spare Sales Orders
- PSA - Product Support Agreements
- Warranty Assignment Program (aka Equi Modify)
- Warranty Assignment Rules Table Upload
- Fleet data validation utility
- MaWa Load Innowera
- MaWa Where-Used List
- Coverage Report API
- MaWa removal from SAP Database
- Change claim status (super user)
- Remove claim version
- Utility to allow fields changes on any claim level
These programs represent a great deal of development time and effort. But if you are interested in purchasing these, please complete the form and we will get right back to you.
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