“Diet” MES builds on SAP MII

Diet MES for small/medium manufacturing plants.

At the outset, In most of the plants using Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to perform the Manufacturing process and other MES functionalities, none of the plants utilizing the complete MES functionalities or their scope of manufacturing process and automation is also nominal. Furthermore, the COTS (Commercial Off-the-Shelf) MES products are expensive.

To leverage the existing investment in SAP MII, few MES functionalities can be build in SAP MII. Please keep in mind, the decision of building a SAP MII solution to a complex MES functionality may lead to wrong implementation

Let’s see the functional structure of the MESA model for MES:

1. Resource Allocation & Status
2. Operations/ Detail Scheduling
3. Dispatching Production Units
4. Document Control
5. Data Collection/ Acquisition
6. Labor Management
7. Quality Management
8. Process Management
9. Maintenance Management
10. Product Tracking & Genealogy
11. Performance Analysis

SAP MII has rich interface capabilities as we know, so #5 is already enabled. Let’s take #11, SAP MII has build-in web enabled dynamic graphical components and logic would build on business logic services. In my earlier blog I had given a summary about how SAP MII can be a LIMS, so #7 is also possible

Lets look at the product tracking #10, it s most important demand for a any discrete manufacturing plant.

How to make product tracking enable in SAP MII? Tracking a WIP/FG/RM is a crucial need for a plant management. What we would get out of this ….

1. Product Management
Product Tracking Monitors and Tracks raw/intermediate material used in a plant and stores other associated attributes like sources, serial numbers, suppliers or batch.

2. Product Analysis
Helps in retrieving the relevant information in the event of quality problems or process changes to identify the root cause.

3. Genealogy Tracking
It records information which allows forward and backward traceability of components and their usage within each end product.

How it is possible technically in SAP MII?

In Our scenario, SAP ERP has master data, planning and scheduling is being done in ERP.

Here SAP MII plays a MES role

What we need basically is,
1. Integration with SAP ERP
2. User inputs GUI Or Label scanning inputs
3. data base to store the data locally

Lets take look at the below architecture



Here, the ideal interface technologies is IDoc, since sync the data between SAP ERP modules and SAP MII

Enable the IDoc configuration in SAP MII to download and upload necessary data from SAP MII to SAP ERP and vice versa

Material Master, Routing and BOM data need to download from SAP PP, PO, SA and VM from Material Master. From SAP SD, DN, Packing Instruction and customer Master data should download from SAP whenever data is being updated.

Let’s say, the plant had multiple line and each line has multiple work centers. We should track the product in every work center and of course, every line too,

1. Material Reception
Usually the label gets generated when raw material comes in to production plant (Material Reception), so the material reception happing at the entry level. That is raw material comes from warehouse.

The quantity of raw material would be updated back to ERP.

2. Production
Production consumption, declaration, reverse production can do in every work center. The quantity , material and production order also taken in to SAP ERP in every transaction

3. Quality Management
In QA, Lab should make sure the finished products must be in-line with the specification, Out of spec the product may send back to rework or scarp. This is most important transaction in a manufacturing plant. This transaction also sends back to SAP ERP.

To enable the above functionalities, we need to build SAP MII transaction to consume the Idoc download and upload IDoc from SAP
1. download Idoc
2. upload Idoc using B2MML structure
3. design the database table to hold the necessary production order and other master data locally
4. design the webpage to plant operator for executing the transactions
5. build the SAP MII transaction to load the Idoc data in to local database



--Subramaniyan Thangavel

SAP MII – An Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence System

The huge amount of data is being captured from shop floor systems everyday during every transaction, but it is most important to get right data at right time to make better decision on the plant floor.

Not like other systems, in plant, data should collect from various data sources and available in different dimensions to help the shop floor managers take critical decisions

A system required to

• Integrate and Analyze data across multiple systems
• Ability to quickly generate reports across multiple dimensions
• Ability to quickly identify and isolate problems
• Capability to predict problems based on historical data

An EMI system must have those above capabilities. Basically an EMI system should have capabilities to integrations and to provide reporting, analysis, visual summaries. SAP MII providing a real time version of events on the shop floor. Now the new suite of SAP Business Objects tools (Xcelsius) can now be used to enhance the data visualization capabilities of SAP MII.

Usually the historical data usually hold in the plant historian database, the real time data can acquire from various data source like OPC and other systems right away, the Manufacturing Intelligence system must have ability to interface with all plant systems and also historian database too. SAP MII has extensive technical capabilities of integrating any plant historian like OSI PI, Aspen IP21.

Manufacturing performance should be in line with the overall business objectives of the company, for plant production manager need to monitor and control the production in the real time basis make the intelligence systems to generate report or visual summaries faster.


EMI Benefits:

1. Improved plant efficiency
2. Increased asset utilization and returns
3. Reduced wastage and improved quality
4. Visibility of plant performance levels
5. Ease of benchmarking across product lines − plant-wise , shift-wise, facility-wise, geography-wise – to improve business performance

SAP MII Connect with Xcelsius Dashboard

SAP MII Connect with Xcelsius Dashboard –Subramaniyan Thangavel

SAP MII Visualization object to build operational user interfaces and java applet based graphs, but to develop a rich graphical reports and graphic, we have Xcelsius Dashboard. Lets take Xcelsius 2008 , which have rich graphical components like multiple charts , gauge,maps dial and sliders. Xcelsius Data Manager provide XML Data/Web Service and other connectivity option to connect with enternal database other then spread sheet. Leavrage the advantage of XML (Or Web service ) connecter in Xcelsisus we can feed the data to graphical objects, like charts and others

Lets see step by step procedure, in first place , In SAP MII, we need to create a query template which is required to pull the data from a data source, lets take a Tag Simulation data server

Once , Tag query template is ready, we need to develop a transaction for generating xml output to feed the data in to Xcelsius data manager.

The important, point to here is that Xcelsius can load the data in to excel spread sheet when the xml data should be in below format










In SAP MII Illuminator XML out format is simple, but there ,lets say “data1” is the data of column1 and row1, Variable meaning here is Column name of spread sheet, Since we need to format the output xml data .

Design a simple transaction that should read the Tag value from a Tag Query template. And define a output attribute of the transaction as xml data type

Read each row of the data and format in to the format which we need (as define in the above) and assign to output xml

http://server:/MII/Runner?OutputParameter=<>&Transaction=<>

This xml feed will be act as data source for the graph which we designed in the xcelisus








Excel spread sheet data will be loaded from the data manager configuration .set the refresh reequency in the usage tab




e

SAP MII Application for Manufacturing Quality Management

In my earlier blog I have given a summary about how SAP MII can communicate with lab instruments , to extent this and leverage the advantage of SAP MII Messaging facilities , how we should build a light-weight SAP MII application for Quality Management for a Manufacturing plant

Lets take a commercial of the self LIMS, usually its have
Samples management, laboratory users management, instruments integration , adopt the standards like audit trial and other laboratory functions such as sample invoicing, and workflow automation

To build an exclusive LIMS system in SAP MII is not a feasible solution I would say, rather we can make use of SAP MII to enable the crucial quality management functionalities which is basically required in the manufacturing plant

Let’s take a set of key functionalities which may required in a shop floor

1. Sampling and Sample Tracking (Sample Management)
2. Test Management
3. Application Integration
o With Control Systems
o With ERP
o With MES and other Sub Systems
4. Label Generation
5. Instrument Management
6. Certificate Of Analysis (COA)
7. SOP References
8. Result Entry (Manual / Automated)
9. Analysis Calculations
10. Event Triggers

And more….
Here , the list # 4 and 5 has been already given in my blog, lets see about basic sample management/Test/Result

In Sample Management
– System should automatically allocate a unique identification number for each registered sample, so that its analysis, approval and certification can be fully tracked
Sample Life Cycle
Lets see what we need to do to enable the sample management in SAP MII platform

Integrate Barcode Printer Server with SAP ERP ECC system in SAP MII

We know, SAP MII can make use of building manufacturing excellence applications and provide seamless integration with heterogenous systems. Here, the solution is, the leverage the advantage of SAP MII build-in integration adaptors, to get connected SAP with Barcode Printer Server, based on the plant operations, like Production Confirmation or SAP QM Lot creation

The challenge here is to give a comprehensive solution to barcode printer integration for multi-site and make sure that the barcode data should reach the printer server queue and simple graphical user interface to configure the printer

Advantage of SAP MII Messaging systems, MII with SAP ECC can do with asynchronies communications, on the other hand, the communication with Printer server can do either FTP or Share folder connectivity

Let’s take Loftware Label Printer server, one of the leading LPS vendor and how we can connect with SAP ECC through SAP MII.


Production confirmation and raw material consumption. Basically need to track the WIP and finished products in the plant





After Product Order downloaded from SAP, the production confirmation needs to send back to SAP for Inventory maintenance purpose, meanwhile, the barcode will be printed in the operator terminal for tracing the semi-product in every work-center.

SAP MII have messaging system to buffer the IDoc interface xml data in the MII server and can communicate to Barcode Label Printer servers Like Loftware.

Lets take production confirmation in each workcenter of a production line, When the Operator confirm the product, the martial and relevant information send to SAP MII server and then , push the data from SAP through IDoc messenger, After SAP MII get confirmation from SAP , the SAP MII transaction get fired to generate label data file and copy the file to Loftware Printer server’s scanning folder. This transaction can be done by FTP or file copy at share folder.

The rest of the part will take care by loftware server. In loftware Printer Server
, we should need to have a printer device and related printer queue, including the folder for a barcode printer, which basically should located in the plant floor.

Sample label printer data in the printer file.

*FORMAT,PROD_Label.LWL
Barc0002, MW0002345
*PRINTERNUMBER,3
*PRINTLABEL

Tools are used:

Barcode server : Loftware V9.8
Integrator : SAP MII 12.x
Client : SAP MII Web Client

Business Benefits:
1. Reduced investment for SAP-Barcode Server integration
2. Multi plant configuration in one system
3. Reduced in Maintenance cost