Why not start in production?

Many Industrie 4.0 projects get off to a slow start because companies take on too much. Those who first develop overall strategies have to reconcile many stakeholders and work out solutions for all open questions.

Long planning and preparation times pass, while pending improvements in the production environment are omitted: As long as no strategic concept has been adopted, investments are postponed.

From my experience in various sectors of industry, I recommend the opposite: instead, start benefit-oriented with small projects in the production environment that fit into any overall strategy.

As the top level of control for manufacturing processes, an ERP system such as S/4 Hana from SAP contains a lot of important information about raw materials and recipes, tools and production programs, delivery dates and quality requirements.

They are needed to set up machines, prepare product variants, trigger quality tests, produce the right sequences and properly store the finished products.

On the other hand, SAP cannot perform many tasks without feedback from manufacturing: Only with up-to-date manufacturing information can shipping documents and labels be created, quality histories and post-calculations be calculated, or the right sequence for just-in-time deliveries be found. All these tasks can be solved by getting the right information to the right data point at the right moment.

With an OPC router these problems can be addressed in practice: Thus, the OPC plug-in can be used to read and write the data points from OPC servers.

The standard OPC DA and OPC UA protocols open up platform-independent connections with sensors, actuators or programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and a wide range of systems.

All components of process automation such as barcode readers, RFID or label printers can be integrated step by step. Own program routines can be integrated or templates for different processes can be copied and adapted.

If the data transfers to SAP are made via Remote Function Call (RFC) with handshake, this additionally increases security and reliability in the system. However, the certified integration module for SAP NetWeaver can also use BAPI or IDoc.

In this way, you achieve flexible and secure Industrie 4.0 networking along the company's entire value chain and ensure event-driven data exchange across all automation levels.

Solutions can be found for all communication tasks between hardware and software. Should controllers receive order information from a database? Or should machine data be stored in an SQL database? Should PLCs send event-driven e-mails to request material replenishment, trigger setup processes or send completion messages?

The risk of downtimes and the associated production losses can also be effectively limited if fault-relevant signals are sent immediately to the responsible persons by e-mail notification.

Those who start such Industrie 4.0 projects in production immediately generate measurable benefits for their operations: greater safety, a higher degree of automation and seamless processes without media discontinuities improve profitability.

At the same time, the resulting benefits provide valuable information for the development of an overall strategy. The central communication platform for automatic data exchange can be flexibly integrated and expanded step by step into a complete scenario.