One of the major challenges facing production companies is to enhance the speed in which information is exchanged between the plant and the business so that their customers can achieve the flexibility and quality of delivery that they need to remain competitive.
The Enterprise Connectivity (ECS) Production Planning Connector closes the gap between ERP and shop floor process control. It provides the connection between System 800xA and SAP PP-PI (Production Planning for Process Industries). The ECS Production Planning Connector also integrates the PP-PI module of SAP R/3 via the PI-PCS (Process Industry - Process Control System) interface and allows triggering of data movement based on the execution and content of PP-PI messages enabling bi-directional communication.
Data from SAP regarding the scheduled Process Order and SAP Control Recipe is forwarded to 800xA Batch Management. During and/or after production, process related data is returned from System 800xA to the SAP system.
Benefits gained by using the ECS Production Planning Connector include:
- Production data is made available in near real-time, providing updated status of the production order. This enables more accurate planning of production and customer commitments.
- The Production planning connector can provide fully compliant ISA-95 Enterprise to manufacturing communications.
- The SAP planner always has up-to-date information on shop floor production status, materials consumption and creation.
- Customer requests are satisfied faster, as the time from receiving the order until the products are produces is decreased.
- Automatic production order dispatching to shop floor systems eliminates errors associated with manual input.
Data mapping is made simple though intuitive point-and-click tasks.