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Author's profile photo Nabheet Madan

SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence for ABAPer’s

Trigger

I have recently switched my job and that job super technical, each day is a new challenge.  So one of the challenge which came my way was to ramp up myself in SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence(MII).Initially I thought it must be new module like SD/MM/FICO, language will  be ABAP only, I can do no issues. The moment I had my first call where the other person asked me few of the MII jargons like BLS, queries, PCO etc. , I was shocked I knew nothing.

Normally when I want to learn something new, I always read few of the basic blog posts which gives me a head start. But sadly in this case we did not find much except the SAP Help which for me is always overwhelming if I have learn something new:) So while I started learning, I had this thought that I will share my set of experience via series of blog posts which will help any ABAPer in getting a basic understanding of it.

What We are planning to do?

So the plan here is to write a series of blog posts where we will first build on our basic understanding of MII, it’s workbench, how do we do developments and how do we display data etc. So in this first blog post I would like to set the context. Sharing the experience is beneficial for me also as we tend to dig more technically before sharing anything with the larger audience:)

Let’s begin

So the first question as always is what the heck is SAP MII? So basically imagine this you are big company with N number of plants across world wide. Now there exist a disconnect between the shop floors or plant floors what ever you want to call them to the existing ERP system like SAP. What I meant by that is your machines  are not in real time integrated with the SAP system. Each Plant might be using a different local software to run its production line. So how do we address this gap is via SAP MII. So MII is like an integration platform which integrates the floor to ERP. Yes you could argue that why do we need MII when already the many of the machines can send the sensors and other data directly to the IoT cloud platforms. We have N number of ways of doing the same thing for example different ways to integrate same way we have it here.  So MII is something which bring clear visibility into the manufacturing process. So let MII be the integration platform for integrating shop floor with SAP systems.

So do we use ABAP in MII?

The simple answer is NO a big one. But yes your knowledge of ABAP will compliment it.  So MII has its development workbench which looks like below.

I hope many of you have worked during your college days in projects like where you connect SQL server, MYSQL etc. Same way here also  the local software running on the Plant floor machine has similar kind of databases(keeping things simple). So MII has what it calls as options of creating different queries where you make connection to remote databases and fetch/modify the data as shown below.

Of course now you have the data you want to do some processing on it, so do we write code, I will say most of the time NO. We basically draw the flow as shown below.

The example flow shown above basically fetches the data from floor system and then basically do certain steps which we call as Actions. An action can be a loop, read data,  convert from XML to JSON, connect to SAP ECC etc..   This set of logical steps is what we call in MII as BLS Business Logic Transactions.  Now you have the data the logic then what about the UI Part.  MII also provide in built charts etc. but in addition to it we create our own SAPUI5 app which interact with it via endpoints urls as shown below. So all these data fetching, BLS etc. have an attached URL via which you can consume them.

So What is next?

So now we have superficial knowledge of how it is placed,next step is to dig deep into different components of MII. Feel free to provide your feedback or suggestions.

Updated based on feedback from Mohamed EL HANDOUS, thanks appreciated!

PS:SAP MII is not an SAP Module like MM, SD, etc. It is more like a solution dedicated for the shop floor level. Furthermore, it even can be implemented without having an SAP ERP (R/3 or later releases), it can be implemented with other ERP solutions. Even more, it can be used as a stand-alone solution (but of course you will need a source of data somewhere).

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      19 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Mukesh Dubey
      Mukesh Dubey

      Nice and very informative blog...

      Author's profile photo Sachin Nagal
      Sachin Nagal

      Thanks Nabheet for sharing this. Never heard of this before :p

      Very informative

      Author's profile photo RAJA SEKHARA REDDY BANNURU
      RAJA SEKHARA REDDY BANNURU

      Hi Nabheet

      Thanks for sharing this useful Info. Good Start !!
      Best Regards : Raja

       

      Author's profile photo PAPPIREDDY SANJEEVA REDDY
      PAPPIREDDY SANJEEVA REDDY

      That's great step towards sharing your knowledge.

      My question is what prerequisite required in the ECC to get this. Is this pre installed or need to install any add-on.

      Hope in the next blog we might get the answer for this.

       

       

      Thanks

      Author's profile photo Nabheet Madan
      Nabheet Madan
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks PAPPIREDDY SANJEEVA REDDY for the feedback. I have updated the blog post for the same at the end. Please check.

      Author's profile photo Dheeraj Mishra
      Dheeraj Mishra

      Very informative and useful Nabheet Sir, Many Thanks for sharing.

       

      Regards,

      Dheeraj

      Author's profile photo Mohamed EL HANDOUS
      Mohamed EL HANDOUS

      Thank you for the initiative. And I believe that this will be a very useful resource for everyone!

      However, you should have mentioned that SAP MII is not an SAP Module like MM, SD, etc. It is more like a solution dedicated for the shop floor level. Furthermore, it even can be implemented whithout having an SAP ERP (R/3 or later releases), it can be implemented with other ERP solutions. Even more, it can be used as a stand-alone solution (but of course you will need a source of data somewhere). 

      Author's profile photo Nabheet Madan
      Nabheet Madan
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks for the feedback. Agreed let me add it.

      Author's profile photo Syambabu Allu
      Syambabu Allu

      Hi Nabheet,

      Thanks for sharing blog on SAP MII Technical and it’s more helpful.

      Thank you

      Syam

      Author's profile photo mahesh kamsali
      mahesh kamsali

      Hi Nabheet,

      Blog is very useful for beginning... could you tell us where we get complete development guide ?

      thanks in advance,

      mahesh k

      Author's profile photo Nabheet Madan
      Nabheet Madan
      Blog Post Author

      Thanks Mahesh, you can SAP help here for the same.

      Author's profile photo Alejandro Jacard Plubins
      Alejandro Jacard Plubins

      There is SAP MII and SAP ME, i've never quite understood the difference, but as far as i know, ME covers the management part, while MII deals with the connection and integration part.

       

      Wish SAP would just merge those two products to be honest.

      Author's profile photo AZEEMULLAH SYED
      AZEEMULLAH SYED

      Very nice blog. Simple and informative. Thank you...

      Author's profile photo Wises Keshom
      Wises Keshom

      Hi Nabheet,

       

      This blog is very nice and very very useful, Thanks for sharing.

      Author's profile photo Jelena Perfiljeva
      Jelena Perfiljeva

      Nice blog, Nabheet! I've also always thought SAP MII was just another module. 🙂 Learned something new today.

      Author's profile photo Amit Kumar Kataria
      Amit Kumar Kataria

      Excellent Document Nabheet Madan!

      Could you please share some information on functional side of SAP MII? Can a functional consultant PP/QM should learn SAP MII?

      How this is related to new buzz word Digital Manufacturing and SAP Leonardo?

      Thanks in Advance!

      Regards,

       

      Author's profile photo Michelle Crapo
      Michelle Crapo

      Nice - I'm trying to remember when I worked on mii.  I believe it was 10 years ago.  What's amazing to me is that I still recognize a lot of the things in the toolset.  So they didn't change it too much.

      Author's profile photo pieter teirlynck
      pieter teirlynck

      Very nice blog explaining the first steps into MII.

      Author's profile photo Vipin Nagpal
      Vipin Nagpal

      Hi Nabheet,

      Can you please suggest/ guide about learning map of SAP MII? What is available on SCN?

      Please share some resources to learn more about SAP MII.

       

      Thanks