SAP Digital Manufacturing (DMC) – QA Environment Setup with a Single SAP Cloud Platform Integration Bridging a 3-Tier SAP ERP Landscape to a 2-Tier SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud Landscape

[KatjaHuschle]

In this blog, I would like to summarize and share the learnings of my colleagues Felix Stingel and Tobias Spaegele who have set up this type of landscape in multiple customer projects using standard content provided by SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud for SAP Cloud Integration.

So, the applause is due to them 😊

Business Context

Depending on the role of your organization (customer or partner), the license purchased, and the purpose of the subscription, different entitlements (SaaS (Software as a Service) applications) for SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud are available.

By default, each customer is eligible to subscribe to two tenants: one for production and one for testing (quality).
That means that for SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud we foresee a 2-tier landscape:

Quality (Q) - Production (P)

Most customers, however, have a 3-tier landscape for their SAP ERP on-premise systems. In these systems, plants are configured with the same plant identifier, which is possible as they are different systems.

For instance, Plant 7000 exists in all three systems:

Development (DEV) – Quality (Q) – Production (P)

In many implementation projects, the question is how to design the solution landscape. The aim is to preserve the 3-tier ERP landscape without changing the plant identifiers, as the plant identifiers are already used in a wider context. Instead, the aim is to match the ERP landscape to the 2-tier SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud landscape that only allows unique plant identifiers in an SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud tenant.

 

Integration of SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud with SAP S/4HANA or SAP ERP - short recap

The technical integration between SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud and SAP S/4HANA or SAP ERP is achieved using SAP Cloud Integration (CPI) and Cloud Connector (CC) as illustrated below.
I will not describe the steps needed to enable the integration in this blog. For more information, you can refer to the detailed description in the Integration Guide on the SAP Help Portal.

In the next chapter, I will simply highlight additional steps needed to be performed to achieve mapping between systems and plants.

Target Landscape

The diagram below shows the target solution landscape. The 3-tier SAP ERP landscape is mapped to a 2-tier SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud landscape using SAP CPI.

In the example below, only one instance of SAP CPI is used for the DEV and Q systems.

Example Target Landscape

 

Note: If you are using SAP EWM (Extended Warehouse Management), the client ID in DEV and Q systems must be identical.

To be able to transfer transactional and master data from plants that have the same plant ID in an SAP S/4HANA DEV and SAP S/4HANA Q-system using one instance of SAP CPI, you need to map the plants in the ERP system to unique plants in the SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud Q-system.

Note: This mapping also enables you to transfer data from SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud to SAP S/4HANA.

Set up procedure

1. For each on-premise system, you need to set up a unique destination in your SAP CPI subaccount. You can use one Cloud Connector to integrate multiple on-premise systems with the cloud.


2. Define a unique plant name that you want to use in SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud. Configure the plant including the required integration settings such as the ERP Destination using the Manage Plants app in SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.


3. Enable Plant Conversion in SAP CPI
   Prerequisite: You have downloaded the SAP S/4HANA Integration with SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud CPI content package. For more information, see SAP HELP.
   
   
   
   1. Go to your SAP CPI application.
   
   
   2. Choose Build and Develop Integration Content. Select the SAP S/4HANA Integration with SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud
   
   
   3. Search for Initial Parameters
   
   
   4. Under Actions choose Configure.
      
   
   
   5. 
   
   
   6. Set ENABLE_PLANT_CONVERSION to TRUE
   
   
   7. Save and deploy your changes.
   
   
   
   


4. Configure plant value mapping in SAP CPI.
   
   
   
   1. Go to your SAP CPI application.
   
   
   2. Choose Build and Develop Integration Content. Select the SAP S/4HANA Integration with SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud
   
   
   3. Search for Plant Value Mapping
   
   
   4. Under Actions choose Configure.
   
   
   5. Create two entries for each ERP system to set up the value mapping:
      
      
      
      1. First entry: <Logical System>:<ERP Plant> = <DMC Plant>
         This entry is used to transfer data from the ERP system to SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.
         IDocs are sent from the ERP system to SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud. The IDocs include information on the logical system and the ERP plant. This information is used to find the right entry in the mapping table and identify the correct plant in SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.
      
      
      2. Second entry: <ERP Destination Field for Plant>:<ERP Plant> = <DMC Plant>
         This entry is used to retrieve information from the ERP system.
         SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud calls the ERP system using a REST service to retrieve additional information.SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud sends a request with a payload and then receives a response from the ERP system. The data in the reponse must be transferred to the correct plant in SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.a.) Send request to ERP:
         
         SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud needs to call the right system with the correct ERP plant ID.
         The system information is retrieved from the ERP Destination entry in the Manage Plants app. The ERP destination is also stored in the header as it is needed to map the response back to SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.The ERP plant name is retrieved from the value mapping in Plant Conversion.The system uses the following logic: It picks the entry with the correct plant in SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud. The corresponding ERP mapping is retrieved, and the ERP plant is determined by removing the first entry e.g., ERP Logical System or ERP Destination.Example:
         Plant 700x in SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud sends a request.
         The following entry is found in the value mapping: HE4CLNT400rfc:7000 = 700X
         Remove the first part of the entry HE4CLNT400rfc:7000 = 700X
         ERP plant = 7000
         
         b.) ERP response back to DMC:
         
         The information on the ERP plant is retrieved from the response e.g., 7000
         The ERP destination is retrieved from header e.g., HE4CLNT400rfc
         
         ⇒ HE4CLNT400rfc:7000
         
         Using this unique value, we can identify the corresponding plant in SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud to which the data is to be sent; in this case 700X.
      
      
      
      
   
   
   
   

5. Testing your configurationAn effective way of testing whether the value mapping is configured correctly is to run a work center download with Standard Value Keys from the ERP system to SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.This data transfer is bidirectional. Work center information is sent from the ERP system to SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud and Standard Value Keys are read from the ERP system via SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud. You can check whether the transfer is successful in the Integration Message Dashboard. If both integration messages succeed, the configuration is correct.

Summary

Using standard SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud functionality and SAP CPI standard content for SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud you can easily set up the integration with SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA on premise systems and configure it to your needs.

It is possible to implement many other integration scenarios, and we will continue to share examples and our experiences with you in more blogs to come.

I look forward to your feedback and to hearing about your specific business needs.