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Katja Huschle
April 16, 2020 8 minute read

SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud –

Ready for Extensions
10 33 10,670
In this  post, I would like to introduce the new extensibility capabilities of SAP Digital
Manufacturing Cloud. With this overall introduction and the links to additional

resources I hope you will get the jump start you need

Update December 2020:

 Update Business Processes with new 2011 features

 Machine Learning Extensions section added

Our experience gained from various customer and partner projects in the manufacturing
space has made it very clear: a successful Manufacturing Execution Solution (MES)
needs to allow for a wide variety of custom-specific adaptions and custom-specific
extensions.

With the latest releases of SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud, we have made a
significant step forward, offering various options for extensibility

Introduction to SAP Digital

Manufacturing Cloud (DMC)
SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud is a manufacturing shop floor solution that supports
production supervisors and workers during their daily work right on the shop floor
where the products get manufactured. It is tightly integrated with SAP S/4 HANA or
SAP ERP, where the production orders are planned and where inventory is provisioned,
and subsequent supply chain processes are triggered and processed.

SAP S/4HANA or SAP ERP is the leading system regarding master data like material,
BOM, or routing which will be transferred to SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.

SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud connects top floor business systems to shop floor
equipment to provide global visibility across all plants, while orchestrating execution
and monitoring production operations down to the individual work center.

Partners and customers can adapt the solution to their very specific needs, using several
public APIs and a set of extensibility options offered by SAP Digital Manufacturing
Cloud.

Digital Manufacturing Cloud Extensions

With Digital Manufacturing Cloud we provide different areas for extension.

Overview DMC extensions

In all areas we allow partners and customers to develop additional functionality outside
SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.

This custom functionality is developed using standard Developer Platforms like SAP
Cloud Platform. For this special developer skills are needed like node.js or UI5.

To integrate them into the production process SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud
provides integrations points. This fully integrated custom functionality is known as
DMC extension.

In the following chapters I will provide a short overview about the 3 main areas where
we offer the possibility to create DMC Extensions.

Business Process Extensions

Business Context:
Every production differs from customer to customer. Some processes need additional
extension e.g. to connect and communicate with external systems to enrich data or to
post data. Those external functions or application have their own logic but the need to
get the business context from DMC e.g.  Which material is produced, which resource is
currently in use? etc. Once the logic is processed, the extension needs to be able to
provide the result back to DMC for further processing.

Business processes can be augmented using:

 extensions and applications written by customers/partners using SAP Business

Technology Platfrom (SAP BTP)
 calls to third-party web services
 calls to SAP Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence (SAP MII) transactions
(new with DMC 2011)
 calls to production processes that where designed using Design Production
Processes app within SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud itself (new with DMC
2011)

The below overview picture shows the different steps which need to be done to
successfully create, integrate and trigger a business process extension.

Logical flow of building Business Process DMC Extension

Business Process Extension Development Phase

Persona: Software Engineer

Step 1: Develop extension

To develop an extension the software developer can choose development tools of choice
e.g. Business Application Studio, WebIDE Full Stack, Visual Studio, CF Client Tools,
Nodejs, NPM.

Step 2: Application Runtime

Once the application is developed it need to be deployed to a runtime of choice. This

could be e.g. SAP BTP KYMA or SAP BTP Cloud Foundry runtime  or any 3rd party
application runtime.

Step 3: Create Destination

To allow Digital Manufacturing cloud to call your custom-made business extension

during design and execution, SAP Business Technology Platform provides the
possibility to create destinations to your application runtime of choice to allow a secure
and central configuration to your service endpoint. More Information about this topic
you can find in SAP Help Manage Destination or in multiple blogs here in the
Community e.g. https://blogs.sap.com/2018/10/08/using-the-destination-service-in-the-
cloud-foundry-environment/
Note: in the same way the destination to the SAP API Business Hub need to be
configured, so you can call the public APIs from the SAP API Business Hub

Production Process Design Phase

Persona: Production Engineer

Step 4: Register Service

As a first step the Production Engineer need to register the business process extension
service in DMC. By creating a new Service entry in the Manage Service app we make
the service and the endpoint known in DMC so it can be used as a service within the
next steps.

Step 5: Design Production Process

To design production processes without any coding skills DMC delivers the app Design
Production Processes. The app helps you to model various production processes using a
graphical design tool. The production processes defines the interaction between
machines or defines rules, actions, and workflows that control the execution on the shop
floor. The custom-made business process extension can be consumed and used like a
standard business service within the Design Production Process app.
 Design Production Process app

Step 6: Deploy to Production Process Runtime

Production processes need to be deployed and activated in the runtime. This is achieved
in a centralized way using Deploy Shop floor Element app which also manages the
dependencies to other required entities. Currently two runtimes are supported: DMC
Cloud Runtime and SAP Plant Connectivity runtime. The SAP Plant Connectivity
runtime is especially used for process automation tasks down to machine level.

Step 7: Define Process Trigger

Now that the production process is defined and deployed, we need to decide what
should trigger the process.

 Manual by the worker. In this scenario we link the production process to an

Action Button which is part of the POD using the POD Designer app.
 By a tag change on the machine. Here we need to subscribe the production
process to event via the Manage Subscription app
 By an external service. To allow this, we need to publish the production process
to the outside world. This can be easily enforced but just setting a flag in the
Design Production Process app during the design of the process.

Production Process Execution (Runtime)

Persona: Worker or Intelligent Machine

Step 8: Raise Trigger – Start Production Process

During execution the worker, the machine or the external services calls the production
process. When the process is called several parameters like the current SFC, Material
and others are passed to the production process and the execution of the same is started.
One of the steps is the call to your custom extension
For more information, see the SAP Help Portal for SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud –
Business Process Extensions – Developer’s Guide and SAP Help Portal for SAP Digital
Manufacturing Cloud – Shop Floor Designer

Note: We are also working on a separate Blog to provide you a running example –
please stay tuned.

User Experience Extensions

Business Context:
In production the worker has special need to interact with the system. E.g. he is wearing
gloves and so he needs big buttons on a touchscreen, or he needs scanner support, or he
always needs  to look up certain information based on the product from another external
system. To provide our customer flexibility to achieve the best possible user experience
SAP Digital Manufacturing provides different options:

1. Configuration of the POD (Production Operator Dashboard, UI for the worker)

with POD Designer App
With the POD Designer the production engineer can configure the POD, Layout
and pre-delivered DMC standard plugin like Data Collection plugin, SFC
worklist etc. to the need of the worker
2. Create own custom plugins for certain needs e.g. to display additional custom
data which are send from ERP. Those plugins can be developed using any UI
technology of choice and once they are registered in the Manage Service
Registry App they can be configured and integrated to the POD via the POD
Designer
3. Developing a full SAPUI5 custom application in the customer/partner PaaS
tenant using the available public APIs from the SAP API Business Hub.

The example below shows a Production Operator Dashboard (POD) that combines
standard POD plugins and custom-build plugins:

 a generic button to open an external application, passing the current business

context and data like selected SFCs.
 additional order properties to display custom values for an order as well as
additional material information, including a thumbnail.
 Example Production Operator Dashboard (POD) – UI for the worker

The custom plugins were developed using SAP UI5 based SAP Business Application
Studio. By entering the custom plugins in the Manage Service Registry app, they are
made available inside the POD Designer. In the POD Designer, the final POD
configuration and layout can be designed and tailored to the needs of the worker.
A very simple sample of an UX extension you can find at https://github.com/SAP-
samples/digital-manufacturing-extension-samples/tree/master/DMC_UX/1-Create-a-
Generic-Button-And-Register-As-Custom-PoD-Plugin/CustomPodPlugin

POD Designer app

Alternatively, the customer/partner may use the public APIs available in the SAP API
Business Hub to create a full SAPUI5 custom application in the customer/partner PaaS
tenant. Below, you see a screenshot of the Sample Assembly POD provided by SAP,
using public APIs.

This POD is tailored to support a simple assembly operation using a scanner device. To
give you a jumpstart on how to use the APIs and how to develop a POD we have also
published the source code of this sample on https://github.com/SAP-samples/digital-
manufacturing-extension-samples/tree/master/DMC_AssemblyPOD.

Custom developed Assembly POD

For more information, see also the SAP Help Portal for SAP Digital Manufacturing
Cloud – Develop

Machine Learning Extensions for the Artificial

Intelligent Scenario Visual Inspection
Business Context:
Please take a look at the Visual Inspection Video . The video provides the overall
business context for Visual Inspection.

The video provides the overall business context for Visual Inspection for more details
please also check out the blog AI/ML Solution for Visual Inspection overview: How to
close the production gap for machine learning

Hope you liked the introduction?. As shown in the video, one of the key objectives of
the new AI/ML scenario for Visual Inspection was to simplify the process of integrating
a new machine learning model into the business process within minutes instead of
months. Visual Inspection in SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud allows you to upload a
trained machine learning model (also referred as Bring Your Own Model) and activate
it for use on the shop floor, without writing a single line of code.
But this is not all, SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud also supports you even before:
how to collect effortless and automatically extract data to train a machine learning
model.

To provide you more details we are working on a blog, which will be released soon.

Next Steps
 To get started, please check out the detailed guides which are available at the
SAP Help Portal for SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud in the Develop
 To get an easy jump start, check out the sample code we publish on the SAP
Samples Git Hub https://github.com/SAP-samples/digital-manufacturing-
extension-samples.
 Discover the Digital Manufacturing Cloud public APIs on the SAP API
Business Hub. You can use them to connect to SAP Digital Manufacturing
Cloud from other solutions or to build your own business application on top of
SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.

 Follow this blog so you get updates on any changes

Summary
With this set of extension options, you have lot of options to adapt SAP Digital
Manufacturing Cloud to your very specific needs. Many business scenarios are possible
to implement, and we will continue to share our examples and experiences with you
with more blogs to come.
Looking forward to your feedback and to hear about your specific business needs.

Assigned Tags

 SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud

 industry 4.0

 AI/ML Solution for Visual Inspection overview: How to close the production
gap for machine learning

By Philipp RaubDec 14, 2020

 SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud Integration Extension

By Wei ZhouAug 24, 2021

 SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud | Process Extension Integrated with SAP

Workflow Management

By Elena ZhangJul 22, 2022

 SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud roadmap

 By Ruslan AlievAug 30, 2022

 How to create custom resource status

By Juan BorreroApr 20, 2022

 3D Printing and S4, SAP Distributed Manufacturing

By David MaughnApr 11, 2022

10 Comments
You must be Logged on to comment or reply to a post.

Christian Köllner
October 13, 2020 at 11:09 am

Hi Katja,

excellent, thanks for your blog post.

Its good to see, that SAP is contributing at SAP Samples Git Hub for an easy jump start!

Kind Regards,

Christian

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Lingaiah Vanam
April 15, 2021 at 10:26 am

Hi Katja Huschle

Good blog.

Best Regards,

Lingaiah

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Katja Huschle
Blog Post Author
April 15, 2021 at 2:19 pm

Thanks, happy you like it... More to come soon.

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Vikas Madaan
August 5, 2021 at 8:00 am

excellent blog.

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Pravin Mandgaonkar
September 15, 2021 at 3:50 am

Excellent blog on DMC!

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Pravin Mandgaonkar
September 15, 2021 at 3:50 am

Excellent and well written blog on DMC!

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Umesh Mali
January 27, 2022 at 8:36 pm
Thanks for sharing the Information

I appreciate your work

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Anshul Arora
May 24, 2022 at 2:03 pm

Hi Katja Huschle,

Very well structured blog.

Thanks for sharing the knowledge. Appreciated.

Best Regards,

Anshul Arora

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Omar Saad
August 27, 2022 at 1:58 am

Thanks katja for the information

is the trigger production process doesn’t support a scheduling process to schedule the
production process to run at a periodic time

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Katja Huschle
Blog Post Author
August 29, 2022 at 7:25 am

Hi Omar,

Production Processes can be called periodically by using a timer which you can define
in the Manage Automatic Trigger app.

You define the timer and the schedule as well as which service to call. The service can
be DMC standard services or your own defined production process design. For more
information you can check SAP HELP .

Hope this helps.

Best regards

Katja

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