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Author's profile photo Manoj Mishra
Manoj Mishra
November 14, 2022 5 minute read

Discretization of Line Monitor and its Globalization, Support for Local Orders, Enhanced Configurability, and many more Enhancements…

In this blog post, I would like to introduce you to the newest, best yet, and most capable release of Line Monitor (LM) and Overlay Authoring Tool (OAT) in SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud (Release 2211).

Release 2211 is the most robust release, with major new features and big enhancements for LM and OAT. In this latest release 2211, LM (and OAT) takes big leap towards discretization, globalization, support for local orders, multiple configuration enhancements, and many more improvements.

Do read my previous blog posts (for the releases 2208, 2205, 2202, 2111) on the LM and OAT to get more context, out of scope etc. about these powerful apps, their inherent flexibilities, attractiveness, and extensive usage capabilities in the area of monitoring production process (both on grid view and in 2D pictorial representation). Do like and share them.

LM is not an official SAP abbreviation, and I will refer Line Monitor as LM for the sake of brevity and easiness to read. LM is generally available and ready to be consumed since Release 2111 of SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.

OAT is not an official SAP abbreviation, and I will refer Overlay Authoring Tool as OAT for the sake of brevity and easiness to read. OAT is generally available and ready to be consumed since release 2202 of SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud. It is one of the pre-delivered tiles in the Dashboard of SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.

Followings are the broad areas where new and enhanced features have been implemented and released in this release 2211 of SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.

Discretization of Default LM POD

LM (and OAT) is discretized now, very substantially, if not fully. Discretization here means that LM now covers production orders as well along with already supported process orders. With the DMC release of 2211, LM is discretized for both Production and Quality perspectives- for the plugins in both overview and detail sections. As such, LM always supported process orders since its inception from the first release in 2111. And hence with this release of 2211, LM supports both Process Orders (Process Industry i.e. PI) and Production Orders (Discrete Industry i.e. DI)- for Production and Quality perspectives only. Watch out this space while we work on enabling Asset and OEE as well for discrete industry (Production Order) in the upcoming releases.

Support for Local Orders

LM now support newly created local orders as well. When I say local order, it means orders create within DMC using Manage Orders app and not created/transferred from SAP ECC or S4HANA. Of course, LM continues to support Process Orders/ Production Orders transferred from SAP ECC or S4HANA.

Enhancements in Production Card

Order Card now has additional fields as Order Category (Process Order or Production Order), Release Status, Execution Status, Scheduled Start, Scheduled Completion.

Enhancement of Order Value Help

Enhancement of Production Progress Card

Production Progress Card now has Planned Production Quantity and Goods Receipt Quantity side by side along with their numerical values and unit of measure.

Enhancement of Work Center Configuration in LM

You can now influence run time work center selection by making using of enhanced configuration options available for LM in the POD designer.

There is option to load LM with First Work Center in the chosen plant. Typically this will be the work center on top of the list in the Manage Work Center app. This is the default option in LM.

Second option is Selected Work Center which allows to enter comma separated Work Center IDs and LM loads all these Work Centers first time or on every refresh. Of course, only valid Work Center IDs will be considered.

Third option is to load All Work Centers in the chosen plant. This is most costly option in terms of performance as there can be many-2 work centers in the plant and associated KPI calculations need to happen during loading of LM overview perspectives.

Globalization of LM perspectives

All perspectives of Line Monitor now support language specific globalization. This is supplied in the LM Default POD and can be seen in the POD Designer. This design time enhancements change LM Default POD runtime behavior. All copied LM POD from the LM Default POD will carry these language specific configurations. Some of the examples are shown below in the language DE:

Enhancements in OAT

OAT project has usage list with POD name as well. You can see this in project explorer:

And in project detail as well:

Both places have possibility to redirect to actual run time LM POD listed in the usage list.

Summary

Release 2211 brings in so many new features, enhancements, globalization, and solid move to support discretization. As indicated above, now LM and OAT can be used for production orders and local orders as well for Production and Quality perspectives in the Default LM POD. The movement of discretization has started and will get to its logical conclusion when Asset and OEE perspectives are also discretized in the upcoming releases. There are many continuous improvements changes which will make LM and OAT more globalized. With more and more features coming in towards future releases, do watch this space for more updates.

As is clear, even the best of best products need enhancements, enrichments, upgrades to keep up with technology and ever changing customer requirements. In that context, I would welcome all the feedback, thoughts, comments, suggestions on product improvements/ new features from our esteemed readers, customer, partners, colleagues on this blog post of LM and OAT. You may also use component MFG-DM-MI-LM to send your feedback (or for incident reporting) on the usage of LM and OAT.

I also would request and encourage you to follow tags and my profile to be first one to know about latest and greatest on OAT and LM.

You can also look at QnA in following communities and ask questions as well. Also don’t forget to include tags of OAT, Overlay Authoring Tool, LM, and Line Monitor in your question(s). I would also encourage you to follow the tag (and/or me), so you receive notifications with upcoming content of mine and other community members:

SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud

SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud Insights

Q&A Platform

Again, thanks for reading this blog post and posting all the feedbacks, thoughts, comments, suggestions on product improvements/ new features.

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