CompactLogix to SAP

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May 2011
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South Carolina
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Hello. Does anyone have any experience sending data from a Compact Logix to SAP? I want to read a barcode and then send that barcode to SAP for verification. I appreciate any help or insight anyone can offer.
 
Hello. Does anyone have any experience sending data from a Compact Logix to SAP? I want to read a barcode and then send that barcode to SAP for verification. I appreciate any help or insight anyone can offer.

I have no experience doing this. SAP is a huge, company-wide Enterprise database that does everything from accounts receivable to inventory and sales.

From my reading and a few stories from co-workers, SAP controls the communication, not anything it talks to.

It would surprise me if SAP does anything real-time, as in fast enough for you to confirm that a bar code is valid before doing something with it.

I would expect that you would need to talk to your IT department to get some firewall rules added so you can even talk to the SAP system, then talk to your SAP programmers to figure out what communication can be used (ODBC is the only one I can think of) so that SAP will poll the data. I expect that you will need to use a PC to receive the message from the Compact Logix, then have a program write the data to whatever SAP requires, wait for the SAP system to respond, then have the PC send a message back to the Compactlogix.

I hope it is easier than this! But I fear that I am being optimitic :(
 
I don't think you will have much luck communicating directly to SAP from a CompactLogix PLC.

You will either need some sort of hand-shaking database in between or most likely it will be easier using web services like SOAP or REST API.

We've done it before using Wonderware System Platform SCADA as an interface between PLC > SCADA > SAP using REST web services to post a JSON payload and we have a pretty much real-time transaction to send a new product type to SAP and get a batch code sent back in return.

I believe Ignition SCADA also have a web services module that could be used to talk to SAP which might be more cost effective than Wonderware.

I'm not aware of any hardware din-rail based industrial gateway or HMI that can do REST web services.

Edit: Looks like Kepware's KepServerEX also supports REST so another avenue could be to use FactoryTalk View SE and KepServerEX.
 
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+1 for Ignition SCADA via SOAP web service. The Sepasoft web services module makes the development process orders of magnitude simpler than any other SCADA compatible code library I've used. As long as your IT/SAP developers are cooperative enough to expose the RFCs you need and publish to a WSDL URL, you can be up and running in a matter of minutes.
Ignition and Sepasoft is not exactly the thrifty pick, but by the time you figure out how to call a custom service, or call an SQL SP via a TCP socket from the PLC, you'll have a comparable dollar amount worth of man-hours invested in a custom solution that no one else can support. Not a good place to be.
 
Nice. I had a brief look at Ignition + SepaSoft Web Services Module and it looked pretty intuitive. We've never done any projects using Ignition yet but I'm itching to give it a shot.

With Wonderware we had to do a whole bunch of custom coding and workflows using Skelta BPM to do the actual REST transaction. As you suggest, a couple of weeks of development went into it.

However it seems late last year that Wonderware released a native web services driver (OI Server) which has both SOAP and REST functionality. Looks like it would simplify things drastically.

How to Configure the Wonderware Web Service Client OI Server - Tips on how to configure
 
Red Lion DSPLE talk directly to an Oracle or SQL database. SAP people can make it read and verify on their end.
Doable, but quite labor-intensive
 
Red Lion DSPLE talk directly to an Oracle or SQL database. SAP people can make it read and verify on their end.
Doable, but quite labor-intensive

Red Lion makes great stuff, at a great value. At my company, our SAP folks wouldn't dream of letting any automation equipment talk directly to their DBs. So for me, it was web services or nothing.
 
Hi,
with the OPC Router ( www.opc-router.com ) you can connect OPC UA directly to SAP (RFC, IDOC or BAPI). So connect your CompactLogix f.e. with a KepWare OPC Server and then transfer data from and to SAP with the OPC Router.
 
I have been down this exact road your on.
The company I work at wanted to start verifying parts against a master BOM by scanning a barcode on the part and verifying it against SAP.

What we did to avoid all of the (S)iphon (A)ll (P)rofits chutes and ladders was to have our IT department setup an automated report generated by SAP in a particular transaction with a certain variant. This report would dump a file to our network share. We then used SQL Server to run a scheduled task at a certain time of day, it would go grab the file and massage it and update the BOM tables.

Essentially, we created a copy of the BOMs in SAP and put them in our SQL Server. This way, we can do what we want with the data when we want to.
IT handles all of the backups for the SQL Server and life is swell.

I then used AdvancedHMI to build an application that talked to a Compactlogix. The application is what queries the SQL Server and returns the BOM that should be in the package.

If you must talk to SAP, then consider what color of Just For Men you may want to purchase.
 
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We use Rockwell’s transaction manager to send data to an SQL server, which somehow is connected to SAP, our MIS guys set it up years ago and i don’t have access to the rest of the details.
 
In the past I have done this using the EATM module made by OLDI which if my memory serves me correctly was purchased by and is now Softing and using this module is an easy way to do it but in the past SAP used an Oracle Database under the hood but now they have their own database called Hana and I don't think the EATM module works with Hana.

The best way to do this now IMHO is to use SAP MII https://www.sap.com/products/manufacturing-intelligence-integration.html
 
Rockwell has had ERP Gateway software available for a number of years now. From RSSQL right up to the current offering - RS ERP Integration Gateway. It fully supports pushing FactoryTalk Live Data out to many non Rockwell platforms, including and especially SAP. It is pre-configured for SAP.

ROCKWELL SOFTWARE ERP INTEGRATION GATEWAY 3.02.00 is the latest version and you can read a bit about it here...

https://www.rockwellautomation.com/.../erp-integration-gateway.page#latest-releases

Like many ERP integration packages, they are not intended to transact directly with end devices, such as controllers. They will usually integrate into an existing server-based MES or SCADA platform that facilitates the propagation of the ERP required data to be transacted to the likes of SAP.

RS ERP Integration Gateway is intended to be integrated into a FactoryTalk ProductionCentre and Shop Operations Server platform. If you are not already running the like of this level of platform then perhaps this option may not be feasible for your application.

No doubt there are likely easier ways to achieve your goal here. However, I just wanted to make known the above option in case it may suit your needs and also to inform others who may not have known of its existence.

Regards,
George
 

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