Seal vs SAP Plant Maintenance

1SAP Plant Maintenance and Seal, side by side.

SAP Plant Maintenance and Seal both plan maintenance and record calibration results against equipment. They differ in where the record sits. Plant Maintenance (PM) is an application component of SAP’s ERP, and in SAP S/4HANA, SAP documents it as maintenance management within Asset Management, for planned and unplanned maintenance of machines and production installations.¹² In Seal, teams configure lab, manufacturing and quality workflows on one platform around a shared ontology, so equipment evidence is checked where the method or batch step runs.

2What SAP Plant Maintenance is built for.

SAP PM is designed for companies that run their operations on SAP and want maintenance in the same system as materials, purchasing and finance. Its work is organised around three kinds of object:

• Technical objects: equipment and functional locations, with measuring points and measurement documents. For SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition, SAP documents OData APIs for these and for maintenance notifications, orders, task lists and plans, published on the SAP Business Accelerator Hub.³
• Maintenance plans, which describe the maintenance and inspection tasks for maintenance objects with their dates and scope. They can be time-based, performance-based or multiple-counter plans, and generate maintenance or service orders automatically when a date falls due, using the task list assigned to each maintenance item.⁴
• Maintenance orders, which plan tasks by type, scope, dates and resources, monitor their execution and carry rules for account assignment, settlement and budgets. An order holds operations, a material list, production resources and tools, a settlement rule and costs.⁵ In Cloud Public Edition, maintenance requests and orders follow nine phases, and some orders need approval before release, depending on their attributes and cost.⁶⁷

Calibration of test equipment sits in Test Equipment Management, which links Plant Maintenance with Quality Management. It covers equipment master records with maintenance history, classification by technical specification, inspection characteristics in maintenance task lists with target values, tolerances and repeat measurements, calibration intervals based on time or performance, and monitoring of equipment status, such as whether equipment is released for use.⁸

SAP positions its wider enterprise asset management around AI. Its Asset Operations Assistant is aimed at acting faster on alerts, and SAP describes converting signals and requests into prioritised work packages and synchronising finance, supply and execution in real time.⁹

3How a calibration result decides what equipment may do.

Both products stop the use of equipment that fails calibration. In SAP the inspection result sets the status of the test equipment; in Seal the restriction belongs to the intended use.

In SAP S/4HANA, a calibration order, standard order type PM05, is created for equipment set up as test equipment, standard category Q. It comes automatically from a calibration plan, or directly when, for example, a gauge is found to be no longer measuring exactly. Releasing the order creates a quality inspection lot of inspection type 14. Results are recorded in Quality Management, which supports upper and lower tolerance limits, multiple measurements per characteristic and control charts. The usage decision then triggers follow-up actions, such as changing the test equipment’s status between “Ready for use” and “Not ready for use”, or updating measurement readings.² Where a characteristic is rejected, the inspector can record items for a maintenance notification while recording results.¹⁰

In Seal, eligibility is checked for the task when a workflow selects the equipment. In the example in Seal’s equipment blueprint, on 7 September calibration CAL-007 measures HPLC-007’s pump at 0.92 mL/min at a 1.00 mL/min set point, against an acceptance interval of 0.98–1.02 mL/min. HPLC-007 is then blocked for release testing while an authorised work order on its pump goes ahead, and that service work produces no reportable sample results.

The failure is also a question about earlier work. The last acceptable check was on 1 September, and two release tests used the instrument in between: USE-041 for batch B-041 and USE-042 for batch B-042. Each use was recorded with its method version, sample, batch, start time and acquisition, so the impact assessment opens with both uses linked. The earlier check is a review boundary, not proof of when the failure began, and the conclusion stays open until laboratory and quality have assessed each use on its own evidence.

4Maintenance in the ERP, evidence in the work.

SAP keeps maintenance in the same system as materials, purchasing and costs. Seal keeps GMP equipment evidence with the laboratory and manufacturing work, and connects to the ERP for the records it needs.

In SAP, the maintenance order is also a cost object. Its costs are entered, assigned and settled; it can be assigned to a profit centre, project or investment programme; and its data passes to the maintenance history used for evaluations and future planning.⁵

In Seal, the maintenance record sits on the same records as the equipment, laboratory and quality work it affects. Parts link to their stock location, compatibility, reservation and inventory transaction, and the installed lot or serial identity stays with the repair, so the next investigation can find which other assets received the same part lot. Return to service is a separate, authorised decision rather than a closed order. When experience shows a plan should change, the revised plan is a changeset with its requirements, verification and approvals, and existing work orders keep the version they ran against.

5Where SAP Plant Maintenance is the better fit.

SAP PM is the better fit when maintenance belongs in the ERP that already runs your materials, purchasing and finance.

• Your company runs on SAP S/4HANA and wants maintenance orders, materials, purchasing and cost settlement in one system.⁵⁹
• You want maintenance plans that generate orders automatically and calibration orders that create quality inspection lots, with results recording and usage decisions in SAP Quality Management.⁴²
• You want calibration intervals driven by usage as well as time, such as how often test equipment has been used.⁸
• You want approval workflows for maintenance orders based on their attributes and cost.⁷
• Your integration landscape relies on SAP’s standard APIs for equipment, notifications, orders and plans.³
• Your maintenance spans many plants and asset types beyond GMP equipment, all planned in the same system.¹

6Where Seal is the better fit.

Seal is the better fit when GMP equipment evidence should be checked where laboratory and manufacturing work runs, and lead straight to the work it affects.

• You want calibration, qualification, cleaning and maintenance evidence connected to the workflow that selects the equipment, so a missing prerequisite stops that path with the reason recorded.
• You want restrictions to belong to the intended use, so an instrument can be blocked for release testing while authorised service work goes ahead.
• You want each use recorded with the method, sample and batch, so a failed check opens with its candidate uses linked.
• You want return to service and the assessment of earlier results kept as separate decisions with their own evidence.
• You want an AI agent that prepares the review. Neil assembles the uses since the last acceptable check, the evidence behind them and what is missing, and can answer a question such as “Which results used HPLC-007 between the last acceptable flow check and today’s failure?” with each fact traced to its record. People approve, and Neil never releases a change on its own. In line with the EU’s draft GMP Annex 22 on AI, Neil is not used in GMP execution. It helps set up configuration, which your team verifies and releases under change control.

7Running Seal alongside SAP Plant Maintenance.

You can keep SAP as the system for maintenance orders and costs. Seal’s SAP S/4HANA Cloud connection is an organisation library for SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition business partners: an SAP administrator creates a dedicated communication user and an SAP_COM_0008 communication arrangement, and selected business partners become available to quality work in Seal, such as a supplier review. Bank details, addresses and transactions are excluded, and the library does not carry maintenance records. Seal’s SAP guide notes that anything beyond the business-partner library, such as a BOM or consumption posting, needs a separately specified interface.

For maintenance records, Seal’s REST API and Scripts can connect the maintenance APIs your SAP edition exposes. Scripts are versioned Python in Seal that can call an external service after an event or on a schedule, and are edited in a changeset, tested and published like other Seal records. Agree the records, the direction of transfer, the credentials and the failure handling before setting up the connection.

Start with read access: bring order identity and status and equipment status into the equipment record in Seal, and treat any write-back to SAP as a separate decision with defined actions, review gates and audit evidence. Define source identifiers, field mappings, units and time zones, test missing, delayed and duplicate records, and reconcile transferred records against the source, as the regulatory guide describes. SAP can remain the source of execution for maintenance while Seal connects its work-order identity and status to equipment use, laboratory records and quality review.

8Moving from SAP Plant Maintenance to Seal.

You do not have to move maintenance out of SAP. Move the GMP evidence for one equipment family first.

1. Choose an equipment family whose uses matter, such as the HPLCs used for release testing.
2. Bring the equipment list with its SAP equipment numbers and functional locations, a recent calibration order with its inspection results, and one method or process that uses the equipment. Start with sample material, or arrange an NDA before sharing confidential records.
3. Neil drafts proposed asset records, specifications and point-of-use requirements from manuals, certificates and inventories; review identifiers, dates, units and ranges against the originals. Once the scope is agreed and the inputs received, Seal prepares the first working process and its validation pack within 48 hours. Production timing then depends on scope, interfaces, migration and your release requirements.
4. Connect SAP read-only for the order and equipment status the process needs, and agree which system owns asset identity, work orders, calibration results and current restrictions.
5. Test the exception paths: select an eligible asset, restrict it, trace its prior uses, assess a change and show the evidence required before it returns to service.
6. If you later move maintenance planning for that equipment, reconcile assets, components, open orders, due dates, plans and historical evidence, and preserve SAP identifiers, approved versions and any source gaps.

Retention obligations continue for the records that stay in SAP. The equipment and CMMS blueprints describe the workflows in Seal in detail.