SAP bullish on Composite Architecture Framework

BANGALORE: In its endeavour to achieve manufacturing excellence, the production team of a manufacturing unit faces several challenges. All the key personnel involved - from the shop floor to the top management, from machine operators to production supervisors to plant managers and even the vice president of the supply chain would have to weigh their options well.

The key challenges aired by the production team include lack of visibility, lack of responsiveness or the ability to respond efficiently and cost-effectively and the overall patchy performance.

According to Narasimha B T of SAP Labs, all such challenges that may crop up in a manufacturing environment may be tackled by leveraging SAP's manufacturing strategy. He was speaking at the SAP TechEd session on 'Adaptive manufacturing: Driving Innovation across the shop floor and the enterprise'.

He outlined the cornerstones of SAP's adaptive manufacturing strategy: NetWeaver as the manufacturing integration platform, the opportunity to leverage all newer manufacturing capabilities in SAP ERP, and the chance to align with industry-specific SAP manufacturing partners to develop a manufacturing ecosystem.

SAP's adaptive manufacturing strategy envisages the ability of a factory to profitably replenish the supply chain while dynamically responding to unpredictable changes. It enables the production personnel to run manufacturing at the speed of their business. For this,SAP has introduced SAP xApp Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP xMII) packaged composite application for manufacturing environment.

SAP xMII enable realtime transactional integration between plant floor and enterprise systems. It ensures that all data that affects manufacturing is visible in real time -- including information about orders, materials, equipment status, costs, and product quality.

The solution takes advantage of an enterprise's existing IT infrastructure, enabling to deliver information securely over intranets, extranets, or the Internet without the need for modifications. Enterprises can achieve superior manufacturing performance while decreasing total cost of ownership, Narasimha said. With SAP xMII, one can also reliably produce to target, with cost reductions and quality improvements that are above industry average. So the key challenges of the production team is met and you have the visibility, responsiveness, and performance you need to succeed.