Shop Floor Integration with SAP MII 12.2

[Former Member]

Hi Experts,

I am currently doing blue printing for one of large steel making company. They have decided to use SAP MII for plant automation. during my study i have found couple of things on which i would like experts confirmation / advice.

As Is process:

Planning in paper -> Received and manually input as set point in L2 system -> Production details noted and communicated further to respective department (like SMS giving details to WRM or CRM)

To be Process

Planning in SAP -> SAP MII push planning data to L2 system -> Production and process data recorded received from L2 and recorded in SAP and push further to next L2 system which will perform next operation (example SMS L2 output will be Input to WRM L2)

My questions are

1) We are not going to give any control command to PLC's or SCADA , it is just planning data and required production data will be sent to L2 system. Is this accepted integration?

2) As per my study shop floor systesm are like Siemens Simatic, wonderware Intouch, Schneider Citech and many more. What do i have to ensure before committing any integration with SAP MII with these systesm? OPC compliance ? Historian ? what else ?

3) There are around 10 departments which client want to integrate with SAP MII, each deparment like SMS has around 3 to 4 different L2 system (SCADA or HMI). All these systems are working in individual network, not under one network, should i ask them to have physical integration of each L2 system with SAP MII ?

4) Considering such a distributed network what would be our architecture One SAP MII -> Connected to Multiple PCo -> Each department will have one PCo which will connect to multiple L2 systems. Do you experience DCOM configuration issue ? How many PCo we can have which can be configured back to SAP MII?

please consider me as beginner here as i do not have any practical experience in doing this kind of integration, my knowledge is more theoretical. i may have more questions which i will put in based on your advice.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Vinod,

You could / should consider various approaches to this puzzle.  It may be that PCo is not the best fit solution and this depends on the network topology, types of L2 data sources and the context of the data usage in each.  As a general rule I wouldn't ever deploy an MII solution without some form of staging database (eg: SQL) in order to delineate, manage and monitor data hand-shaking between systems. This may lead itself more appropriately to a different (ie: non PCo) integration framework between MII and your L2 systems.

PCo (and UDS) have many good features and connectivity options but I'd simply be conscious of introducing potential and/or unnecessary complications such as OPC compliance, DCOM, service compatibility etc until all integration requirements are considered.

On another tangent, if planning data is to be used only for reference, why is there even a need to push it down to the L2 systems?  You could simply provide the same data via web based (MII) interfaces at (or embedded within) the L2 systems?  Confirmations are a different story of course, but again you just need to consider the requirements such as frequency, network redundancy, etc in order to arrive at the best solution.

Kevin

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Stephen / Kevin,

Sorry i am answering both of you together..

1) I may not be able to achieve this integration by scheduled job. Order confirmation will happen manually through SAP MII screen. In that screen some of the data will come automatically from L2 system but some data can be inserted manually and then they will do confirmations.

2) whatever data we will be keeping in MII would be in SQL Server.

3) Personally i also feel it should not be a problem doing 3000 confirmation in a day by various people..but just one point, it will be done manually by SAP MII screen ..not automatically..so user accessing SAP MII confirmation screen would around 500 operators accessing every now and then..

4) As stated above, order confirmation will be through MII screen where some of the details will come automatically and some will be manual, so can not do this buffer..Additionally unless one confirms next inline L2 will not get the data so operation continuity depends on the confirmation..they have to do confirmation as soon as they complete their production so that next operators will get production detail from previous one..

5) My point of using PCo is --Many of the L2 system are having database as SQL or Oracle which we can connect through IDBC connector ..PCo i will use for the one which has data either in Tag form or Excel file or may be in some encrypted history file (.HXT)..do you guys see this as right approach ? Consider all L2 systems are OPC compliant..

6) regarding planning data -- please consider this scenario where Operator is performing operation through L2 system where he is referring planning data..it will be difficult for him to toggle between L2 and MII screen..currently they have fields in L2 where set point data is there currently they put manually looking their planning sheet..

7) The most important point here is -- Order confirmation is not just pushing actual production data into ECC, it does multiple things once a operator confirms his production actual consumption , process data will go to ECC and some of the data which is required by another operator to perform his operation which is next in line as per process will get data as soon as previous operator confirms..

hope my explanation helping you understand the situation..

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

any more details or comment on my above recorded statement? I really would like to get some confidence based on your personal experience and case studies.

[agentry_src · Accepted solution]

Hi Vinod,

I must have missed your posting when it came out.  Sorry I did not respond previously. 

1) We are not going to give any control command to PLC's or SCADA , it is just planning data and required production data will be sent to L2 system. Is this accepted integration?

This is a fairly normal use of MII and I would consider it acceptable integration.

2) As per my study shop floor systesm are like Siemens Simatic, wonderware Intouch, Schneider Citech and many more. What do i have to ensure before committing any integration with SAP MII with these systesm? OPC compliance ? Historian ? what else ?

Probably the biggest issue that needs to be resolved is do the right tags exist for the information that you want to analyze or collect.  So I would start creating a list for each system of what you want and whether it exists.  The second issue is likely to be figuring out how you want to collect the data.  It is far too large a subject to go into much detail, but if you go through recent and not so recent postings, there are lots of threads relating to how to integrate your L2 systems.

3) There are around 10 departments which client want to integrate with SAP MII, each deparment like SMS has around 3 to 4 different L2 system (SCADA or HMI). All these systems are working in individual network, not under one network, should i ask them to have physical integration of each L2 system with SAP MII ?

You will need to integrate those systems using PCo as the intermediate connector between the L2 system and MII.  So your choice of how many MII installations to have is based on your local conditions rather than the number of departments.  Again, too large a subject to discuss in much detail here, but you will need to put together a list of all the systems and departments along with their needs in order to properly plan your architecture.

4) Considering such a distributed network what would be our architecture One SAP MII -> Connected to Multiple PCo -> Each department will have one PCo which will connect to multiple L2 systems. Do you experience DCOM configuration issue ? How many PCo we can have which can be configured back to SAP MII?

I am not sure why you want to break down according to departments.  PCo can handle multiple systems, but perhaps one PCo per network makes sense.  MII can handle multiple PCo systems, so there is nothing inherently wrong with your approach.  It might not be the best, but I don't know enough to say what would be better.

Regards, Mike

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

thanks Mike for specific answers.

Out of all the most worried part i have is about the over all capability of MII handling such a large integration. Just to Quantify

1) No of Level 2 system (HMI or SCADA) : 45

2) No of order confirmation per day : 5000 + (Confirmation will be manual but data will be manual and automated both)

3) Most Important : If the order of one department will not be confirmed on time then operation and stock to next inline department will be affected. Example SMS will not confirm it's order on time then Caster will not get liquid steel to cast with heat chemistry coming from SMS.

4) Integrating so many L2 systems, Am i not positioning SAP MII as MES which may not be the right choice?

Sorry if i am not able to explain my thoughts in detail but i will be really thankful to you if i will get confidence for implementation.

Regards

Vinod Mahajan

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hello Vinod, your concerns are understandable but to give you some field feedback; 5000+ confirmation per day is a very achievable load for MII.

As per production use of MII, I work with customers having more than the double of ECC postings per day alongside other processes. Also doing some load testing, we reached around 500K declaration sper 24h so well above your requirement with a very average sized MII server, limitation here for  integration is more ECC than MII...

Regarding the number of HMI, SCADA, the limitation is not so much into the number but into the concurrency of all the systems accessing MII and in the level of aggregation those systems are providing. Reporting every ms or every hours makes quite a significant difference. Nothing that cannot be tackled.

My opinion (I'm happy to be corrected) is that your load on a per day basis would probably prevent you from using MDO and would require an external database (you can use the Netweaver DB ie MS SQL or Oracle or db2 or...), 5000+ records per day -> 150K records per month. If you're keeping
current month + next month, that would require at least 300K records +additionals

You'll probably want to have some daily-weekly-monthly reports which would be quite db intensive too.

Regarding you process, it is ok to have critical/important operation and relying on MII. BUT, MII is not a safety system therefore the immediate safety of persons, processes and infrastructure cannot depend on MII. What I mean is that it should be ok to have a 15 mins downtime to reboot a system. To the look of your process this is seems to be acceptable, if people are expecting an SMS, an unexpected system downtime can be compensated by a call without any difficulties.

Hope this address some of your concerns,

Regards,

Arnaud

[Former Member]

Vinod,

A couple of questions.

1. Are you not planning on sending data back to ERP?

2. You said 10 departments are to be integrated with MII , does that mean the integration between a SMS L2 & WRM L2 would be handled using MII ?

Other than that , from a technical feasibility perspective I think Steve's got it covered for you.

Goodluck.

Udayan

[Former Member]

Thanks Steve and Udayan.

@Udayan :

1) Answer :Yes we will send data back to SAP from one L2 and then pass it on next L2 in line ..Now there are couple of things..when i get PDO from one L2 i may not not pass entire output some of the details i will keep it with MII only ..I will pass only production confirmation details (actual consumption, process data etc.). we are still debating if we can send entire data to ECC.

2) Answer: Process will be..output of SMS L2 will come to SAP MII where they will do Order confirmation and some of the data will go to ECC as confirmation ..some will be stored in MII..on continuation WRM L2 will receive some of the data produced by SMS L2 via SAP MII ..

@Steve: As per my above answe to Udayan, SAP MII will work like a middleware between ECC and L2 systesm..i hate to say they do not have any other abstract layer between SAP MII and L2 ..so moreover MII is working as MES ..i do know SAP MII can be places as light weight MES but considering live production senarios of Steel making do you see this SAP MII can handle this..

some facts to determine this..

1) Minimum Frequency of Data transfer from one L2 to another would be in minitues not in seconds.

2) We are just passing planning data to L2 (output of one L2 will be planning data for another) ..actual instructions or data for production will be provided manually ..they will take provided data as reference..

3) There are 40 to 50 L2 systems we are considering to integrate..is it too much of load to MII?

4) every day order confirmation will be around 3000.. 

thanks for your replies...it will really help me determine my way forward and design SAP MII interfaces..

[Former Member]

Hi Vinod,

There should not be any problem running MII as a light weight MES, we have actually done that for more than one previous client, including a steel maker. In that particular case there were over 60 interfaces, so your 40 - 50 should not be an issue. just make sure you have a nice server for MII to run on.

1). you can set schedules in MII to run transactions at almost any interval; seconds, minutes, hours, days,

2). i would suggest you use SQL  with MII to help with data transforming and storage. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by data being "provided manually". do you mean typing it in? or selecting from a group of pre set options? with eitherr is possible in MII.

3). as i said above, not a problem.

4). I would probably suggest you stagger your confirmations so you are not constantly hammering SAP. we have used hourly confirmations for clients before which worked well.

If you are looking for external consultants to to do/assist with a project, Plaut would be glad to help.

[Former Member]

Hi Vinod,

To answer a few of your questions:

1). yes you can push data to your L2 systems from MII, and it makes no difference what the data is used for, so no problems just sending planning and productions data.

2). OPC compliance is what you will want to look for. you should have no problems connecting to the three that you have listed.

3).  yes you will need to have network access between MII and the L2 systems.

4). you can have as many MII to PCo connections as you like. DCOM issues can occur. If you are lucky, your OPC client will configure them correctly. I know Kepware KepServer EX does this. or you can find a few guides around. your suggested landscape sounds good, but i would need to know a lot more to give any real advice.

I hope this helps,

Regards,

Steve

[Former Member]

Vinod, lots of answers above and know you are not looking for details but needs to be talked through.  Shoot me email at greg@seeitmii.com and I can get someone to address some of this with you.