In this blog post for the release of 2305 of SAP Digital Manufacturing, I would like to share journey of LM POD to support
Discrete Industry (DI) and
Process Industry (PI) as much as they are supported by overall SAP Digital Manufacturing. SAP Digital Manufacturing 2305 Release came into being last week and by that standard my this blog post is a bit delayed. I would appreciate if you like and share my this blog post and earlier ones.
Release 2305 of LM POD tries to adapt Asset and OEE perspective to DI as well (with PI already supported) along with maintaining existing support of these two industries by Production and Quality Perspectives. Along with that it supports custom plugin(s) in LM POD.
Do read my previous blog posts (for the releases
2302,
2211,
2208,
2205,
2202,
2111) on the
LM,
OAT, Order Report, SFC Report apps to get more context, out of scope etc. about these powerful apps, their inherent flexibilities, attractiveness, and extensive usage capabilities in monitoring production process (both on grid view and in 2D pictorial representation). As such, keep in mind that I generally don’t go back and update earlier blogs and hence keep eyes on the latest ones and do refer to the official documents describing how to use these beautiful apps.
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.
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. It is one of the pre-delivered tiles in the Dashboard of SAP Digital Manufacturing.
Followings are the broad areas where new and enhanced features have been implemented and released in this release 2305 of
SAP Digital Manufacturing.
Asset and OEE perspective Enhancements
The Asset and OEE perspectives in LM POD have been enhanced to support scenarios related to DI as well. Keep in mind that PI was already supported.
- Asset perspective shall have following plugins valid for both DI and PI scenarios:
- OEE perspective shall have following plugins valid for both DI and PI scenarios:
- Concept of Work Center and Resource as a master data has undergone significant changes in this release. Now one work center can have multiple parent resources, and each can have their own status and children (OEE Hierarchy). This has impacted all the APIs supporting LM and how we read upon Asset Overview perspective. And hence Asset Overview perspective is still work in process and needs to be enhanced to support this new feature.
- Because of similar reason as highlighted above in point 3 and since this release was to showcase support for both PI and DI in LM, for time being Availability plugin has been taken off, as it is still work in process. This applies to both Asset and OEE perspectives. In its new avatar this Availability plugin should be honoring OEE hierarchy and its work center/resource concepts.
Production and Quality Perspective Changes
- Plugins in both Overview and Detail perspectives now support DI and PI.
- The Indicator Chart plugin in Quality perspective has been taken off and is deprecated.
- The Yield and Scrap plugin in Quality perspective stays and works for both DI and PI.
Support for Custom Plugins in Line Monitor
- LM now supports inclusion of custom plugin(s) in its framework. As is known, LM is a POD of type monitor and now you can create a POD of type monitor and add your custom plugins.
- As indicated previously that these plugins have to work within LM framework. It means certain integral plugin and concept of LM POD must be adhered to. LM POD framework always needs Selection plugin to be there while building it and adding custom plugin. There are two variants of this Selection plugin- Work Center and Order; and event framework shall behave to support these two variants of above Selection plugin while adding custom plugin. While adding and implementing custom plugin, one should be mindful of these variants and events associated with them.
- If you are not familiar with custom plugin, I would encourage you to read contents in the public GitHub of Digital Manufacturing Extension Samples.
Look and feel changes in LM Default POD
Look and feel of LM Default POD has undergone perceptible changes with better usage of real estate, repositioning/ reorganizing various plugins.
Enhancements in Order Report and SFC Report
Apart from LM new features and enhancements, there have been ones for Order Report and SFC Reports. These are mostly at UX level where in various facets have been reorganized and repositioned. You will immediately notice these changes the moment these reports are opened as both overview and detailed sections.
Summary
Release 2305 highlight is to throw open LM for both Discrete Industry and Process Industry. This needed a lot many under the hood changes. This will enable usage of LM across wider industry segments. New plugin has also been introduced along with deprecation of Indicator Chart plugin. Custom plugin support for LM POD has also been introduced.
As is clear, even the best of best products needs 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
SAP Digital Manufacturing Insights
Q&A Platform
Again, thanks for reading this blog post and posting all the feedbacks, thoughts, comments, suggestions on product improvements/ new features.
