Manufacturing and Industry 4.0 - Smooth as butter interface

The internationally active company's core business includes production optimization as well as the manufacture of Industry 4.0-capable products. A range of tasks that requires smooth information management.

But it was precisely this that gave those responsible a hard time. The trouble-free workflow via the SharePoint collaboration platform was a particular cause for concern.

SharePoint as a basis

In this specific case, SharePoint is not primarily used as an intranet, but as a technical basis for handling projects and workflows in order to ensure improved collaboration.

However, processing a wide variety of projects via the SharePoint interface also means that data and forms from third-party systems such as SAP ERP should be able to be integrated or mapped as required.

It is not uncommon for a material number from a specific supplier to be needed quickly in a project, or for a form to be transferred to the SAP system without tedious intermediate steps.

This is precisely where problems have arisen in the past during implementation. Because whenever certain data and forms had to move back and forth between the systems, there was additional work.

As a result, employees had to laboriously extract the data from a static system environment using a text file and then import it back into the right place on the SharePoint interface.

"Such a process with additional, completely unnecessary work steps creates so much redundancy in our customers' databases that additional resources are needed"

analyzes Peter Wohlfarth, authorized signatory at Theobald Software. A solution was therefore sought that would enable smooth data and document transfer at the interface between the systems, with SharePoint serving as a kind of input interface.

Without middleware

This integration was successfully implemented using the ERPConnect Services solution. This ensured direct communication between the systems, no middleware was required and read and write access to SAP objects could be guaranteed.

After just a few months in productive operation, the benefits of this software became apparent. The customer was suddenly able to implement a type of master data management in which SharePoint elements were enriched with SAP data.

This saves employees a lot of time searching for information and multiple maintenance. The real special feature of this technical link was its details.

Simply linking entire SharePoint lists with SAP tables used to be very cumbersome. Firstly, forms could not be found in the SAP system straight away and secondly, this task was previously only the responsibility of those with in-depth XML knowledge - a scenario of the past with the use of the new solution.

Data could even be written back to SAP via the cross-system connection path in order to be subsequently updated in the corresponding business process, such as supplier management.

Overview

Branch: Manufacturing industry

Challenge: Avoiding additional work, increasing data quality and improving the workflow within the project work

Solution: SAP interface ERPConnect Services

Advantages:

• Single sign-on between SharePoint and SAP
• Direct connection SharePoint-SAP
• No additional middleware
• Efficient data transfer for better project management

System environment:

• SAP ERP
• Microsoft SharePoint
• Nintex Workflow