HPC brings predictive maintenance to the midmarket

Until now, companies were dependent on their control system to report faults and failures in running systems. However, only what triggered an error in the control system was reported.

Delays in production and logistics and the associated direct financial losses were unavoidable, and the corresponding repairs and maintenance were time-consuming and cost-intensive.

In contrast to this exclusively error-correcting maintenance, the condition-based variant already provides the option of scheduling maintenance based on consumption by evaluating meter readings and operating hours.

Predictive maintenance is the logical further development. It offers permanent communication of selected sensors and actuators with the corresponding interpretation software.

The continuous evaluation of the measured and test values provides the company with a complete overview of all processes in production or logistics and makes it possible to anticipate errors before they occur and to initiate the appropriate measures.

With predictive maintenance, interrupting the production flow and accepting machine downtime is now largely a thing of the past.

But predictive maintenance should not only be worthwhile for industry giants in the future. With its SAP-certified Predictive Maintenance and Service (HPC.PM&S) add-on presented in 2018, the Mannheim-based consulting company HPC has created a tool for small and medium-sized companies that enables the automatic evaluation of all sensor-actuator data directly in SAP, regardless of the manufacturer. Depending on the setting, a distinction is made between fault messages, warning messages or measurement document updates.

The OPC UA industry standard (Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture) functions as the diagnostic interface. This is particularly suitable due to its ability not only to transport machine data (controlled variables, measured values, parameters, etc.), but also to describe them semantically in a machine-readable manner.

All well-known manufacturers have launched corresponding devices with OPC UA interfaces on the market for this purpose. Thanks to accelerated troubleshooting, high availability of machines and systems can be achieved. All documents are processed completely digitally and stored in SAP in an audit-proof manner.

The wealth of information from the translated data is made clear by the graphical display on the SAP Fiori Monitor. Depending on the system, the values can be processed either directly in SAP ERP/ECC, in SAP Hana on-premise or in the SAP Hana Cloud Platform (HCP).

The PM&S add-on connects all common sensors, fieldbus and PLC systems to the customer's own SAP system, provided OPC-UA is used. Depending on the message type and limit value determination, e-mails and SMS can be sent directly from the SAP system to the service technicians, so that the response time is reduced to a profitable minimum.

HPC is thus the only SAP consulting company to offer an uncomplicated predictive maintenance solution for medium-sized businesses that can be integrated into existing structures in a very short time.

The add-on enables even smaller companies to get involved in the future-oriented topic of Industry 4.0 in an uncomplicated and cost-effective way. With predictive maintenance and service, it is only a mouse click away to take the necessary measures and make tailored decisions in the current business process.