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