SAP Digital Manufacturingis a promising, rapidly evolving tool for manufacturing companies. It is a solid successor for SAP ME / SAP MII. While SAP DM has many great functions and capabilities that make it a full-fledged MES, I want to now discuss the obstacles users are currently facing with master data migration & synchronization
Not all master data objects and configurations can be transferred from your ERP system. Instead, this data needs to be currently manually entered directly into SAP DM by the responsible planner or SAP DM keyuser. There are two use cases to consider:
- Master data migration is part of every project. When you switch from the test to the productive environment, you need to transfer your data.
- Your production is executed at more than one site and you don't want to create the same master data twice in different SAP DM plants. Think about easy and quick master data transport between plants.
Why is this an issue?
If you don’t have many entries, this doesn’t seem to be a big problem. In fact, developing a solution might even be more expensive than the time your employees or colleagues must spend on the manual process. But try to think long-term or even mid-term: How often do you need to upload, transfer, and synchronize data, and how much time does this cost each time you do it? In addition, the more master data you must enter manually, the higher the probability of errors. Again, the more data you have, the more likely it is that something will go wrong. The last point I would like to address in this context is employee satisfaction. Imagine investing long hours into a repetitive task that can easily be automated.
It is true that you must consider the frequency of such tasks: Does it only occur once in a while or is it something you have to deal with frequently? How much is a quick upload & synchronization worth? How many errors can you accept in the process?
Upon addressing the questions above, you can - at the moment - choose one of the following options:
- Continue with the manual process and take the above stated challenges as a given.
- Invest resources and create your own solution in-house or with the help of an implementation specialist.
- Use an existing master data management tool for SAP DM. Here you can even opt for a SaaS app that is instantly available and can be easily canceled should you no longer need it. This keeps your investment (both in terms of time and money) transparent.
What do you think about?
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