SAP PI as a middleware to integrate SAP with Teamcenter

[Former Member]

Hello Gurus,

can we use SAP PI as a middleware to integrate SAP with Teamcenter ? if yes, what are the Pros n cons ?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Dear Anshul

Which particular application in the Team Centre PLM would you like to integrate to? It has suite of products.

PI can be used to integrate with Team Centre. I had used the File FTP Adapter to integrate with Team Centre Auto Cad.

Regards

Monika

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks for ur reply Monika.

we need to shift from Teamcenter PLM to SAP. I dont have any knowledge of Teamcenter, i am more into SAP side, i need to figure out the ways to do the integration.

Regards

Anshul

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Dear Anshul

First identify the applications in Team Centre, that you need to integrate with SAP. Integration approach will not be problem, if you tell me the applications and business processes that you want to integrate.

On ECC side definitely you would have RFCs, Idocs, etc. Team Centre also supports FTP file exchange, XML exchange and other mechanisms.

Regards

Monika

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Monika,

can you tell me how you integrated SAP with TeamCenter Auto Cad, i mean integration approach that you followed ?

Best Regards

Anshul

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Dear Anshul

We used the FTP mechanism to download the Auto Cad designs and diagrams into SAP. Take all files from Team Centre shared folder and drop it to SAP folders,

Regards

Monika

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Dear Anshul

There is one more approach to it. you can take the designs and upload them into DMS (document management system KPro )

The RFC used is BAPI_RECORD_CREATE.

Regards

Monika

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Thanks Monika for your help. Highly appreciate it.

Best Regards

Anshul

[Former Member]

Yes, you can absolutely use PI to integrate Teamcenter with SAP ECC.

RFC is Faster – it will be because we don’t have system in between so there will be a performance gain. But there is a reason why Companies are using middleware. Maintenance and monitoring would be the main reason. There are other reason like re usability, decoupling, monitoring etc.. also

Based on the documentations my understanding was,

They have both PI and RFC packages available.

They are telling that RFC is better based on their experience.

But I think the reality is, they don’t have readily available package for PI and they never tested too. Direct connections are easy to implement but will not be that easy to maintain. Whether it is same TC team or separate team but there should be dedicated people to monitor and maintain it. We cannot Manage with existing support team.

There are exceptions always but if you think, tomorrow we are planning to upgrade ECC. Now we need to check the connections and setup only between PI and ECC. If we allow few other direct connections then we are adding more items to our scope to analyze , update and test.

However I think here the actual trade off is, effort and time required to build PI solution now and leverage existing support option in the long run Vs Setup whatever TC provided and spend in the future whenever it is required. Honestly It’s tough call and based on my experience (technology point of view) better one is leverage existing options and reduce TCO and I think that’s what middleware are meant for . But the perception will be different when it comes to Manager or Business person. My suggestion is, if Business is looking for a quick turn around and  that’s is important for IT management group then go for RFC option. If we have time and support from business and management then really evaluate PI option by doing a POC before we take decision. Hope this helps.