How can RFID Technology Enrich My OPInt Scenario?

[Former Member]

In August last year I published a blog around OPInt and how it could be used to give great visibility into your current business workflow and BPM processes (Operational Process Intelligence (SAP OPInt) + Tips For Your 1st Business Scenario), and I was recently tasked with creating a new FUN OPInt demo that we can show at the SAP Innovation Forum in London.

THE IDEA

In the recent months we have taken our dive into OPInt a little bit deeper and experimented with external influences and connection types to give our OPInt demonstrations more of a real life look and feel.

We recently pitched an idea around visualising the production of a luxury car using RFID Tags / Readers with OPInt as the real time dashboard.

The company were already using RFID tags on the cars to measure a certain set of metrics, so why not update HANA with the same RFID Technology??

In theory we could put an RFID reader at each step in the production line to update our record in HANA as to the development of our car.

BUILD THE DEMO

Using data sources in our OPInt scenario we mocked up the required data structure in HANA and exposed oData services that allows us to update our HANA table with a new status.

IMPORTANT - To update a HANA table that is connected to an OPInt scenario you must use XSJS services not xsodata otherwise there will be authorisation errors. Link to exmaple xsjs service

EXAMPLE SNIPPET FROM .XSJS SERVICE

Once done we needed to call this service from the signal sent from the RFID reader. Using oData4j we wrote a socket listener on the RFID Reader to update the STATUS of our car on the line when it passed over the reader.

In our demo to the customers we used remote control cars, and drove them over the RFID readers. As we did this our update to HANA would run and our OPInt dashboard would change from phase to phase. Cool Demo!

THE INNOVATION DEMO

After demonstrating the OPInt Scenario to the customer we modified the demo so that it could be used at the Innovation Forum.

It was now a user entry competition!

A race against time to unlock the secret puzzle box and retrieve the RFID tag to stop the clock!

Users could enter some basic information and once they click submit the record is in HANA....

The OPInt dashboard is green, and the timer has started!!

They then have 4 minutes to complete the puzzle before the Opint instance turns read (just to add a little more pressure :smile: )

Finally the customer could then come back to the UI5 desktop app and look at the right hand side of the application which displayed a leaderboard of the top times.

A Fun and interactive Demonstration that shows UI5 / HANA / OPint and potential external influences like RFID Technology.