shop paper printing

[Former Member]

Hi,

   We have SAP PP along with an MES system. What is the best place to do print the shopfloor papers ? Is it in the SAP PP module or should we have them all printed in the MES itself ? What are the pros and cons of each approach ? Aany ideas ?

Thanks

[salvatore_castro · Accepted solution]

An excellent question and one that comes down to a bit of a choice for you...the pros to having the printing from PP are that it's built into the ABAP engine to handle directly.  The con is that if the network is down, for whatever reason, nothing will print and I am not 100% sure how printer failover is managed in the case that the intended printer is out of ink, jammed, broken...etc...

I recommend, especially if you have MII, to look into the ways to interface to your label printing software...often web services and xml files are supported mechanisms...and using MII to facilitate this integration.  As an additional option I have also built custom MII actions in the past that can leverage the Java printing API for spooling documents direclty to printers.  However, if you do this have a printer failover scenario put in place as printers tend to fail and you can't have this hold up your operations.

Sam

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

any other things to consider ?

[salvatore_castro · Accepted solution]

Let me list them in order to ensure I can collect my thoughts properly...

Things to consider:

1. Network reliability - Affects printing over network distances so plan for limited survivability scenarios
2. Printer failover - As we all know that printers jam/run out of ink/etc...any number of reasons cause printers to stop working but the show must go on.
3. Management of printing templates - Need to come up with a way to manage and version control printing templates to ensure consistency in your labels across your operations.
4. Type of printers - Depending on the types of printers (fixed or mobile) there will be different requirements for interfacing to them.

If I think of any more I will update my post, but hopefully this list is enough to get you started.

Sam

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

cant all of the above be done in an MES as well ? MES can also speak to printers, to label printers. You can do all the programming in the MES as well for version control. I guess I am struggling to find a true demarcation line between SAP and MES. Looks like either can do the others job.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

I find you using the term MES often, which makes me think of SAP ME(Manufacturing Execution) because SAP ME is the application that takes care of MES level operations and I notice the question is posted in MII space which is little confusing .

So can you clarify whether its SAP ME (or) SAP MII, so that we can be pretty much precise of our inputs in the thread?

Thanks

Anudeep KM

[salvatore_castro · Accepted solution]

The difference is not the "ability" to but rather the overall cost of ownership required to achieve and maintain the solution for the long haul.  The MII product strives to reduce the cost of ownership for extending an existing MES solution rather than have to write custom code from scratch.  It also allows SAP to support your development efforts and provides a migration path and a way forward for your solutions as the platform improves over time.

Sam

[Former Member]

Hi,

As per my knowledge, you can do printing in SAP PP module. It's easy to configure and lot of links & help are there to do configuration.

Some of the links are listed below for your reference

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp60_sp/helpdata/en/b1/c04a27439a11d189410000e829fbbd/content.htm

http://help.sap.com/saphelp_erp2004/helpdata/en/89/a431a6461e11d182b50000e829fbfe/content.htm

https://scn.sap.com/thread/1184947

Already some threads are available in SAP PP forum. Better you can post this question over there.

Thanks.

S.Rajesh