SAP ME/MII to Digital Manufacturing: A Transformation, Not a Migration!

Authored by Christina Demuth and Joe Montagna

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In this issue of Stellium Edge, we’ll discuss what current SAP ME and MII customers should know about SAP Digital Manufacturing and how they can plan for the new solution adoption.??

Transforming to the Next Generation of SAP Manufacturing?

SAP has announced that mainstream support and maintenance for SAP ME and MII will end on December 31, 2027. This means if you’re a current ME or MII customer, your team has decisions to make - about how and when you’ll move away from those solutions and who will be involved to make it happen. The good news is that SAP’s successor solution, SAP Digital Manufacturing (DM), is a strong replacement for ME and a promising replacement for MII (more on this below).?

?Naturally, you likely have questions like “What is DM? What value will it add for my organization? Will it do everything we’re doing with ME and MII today?” We want to help answer some of these questions and bring clarity to the path forward.??

?It’s important to first understand that the transition from ME & MII to DM should not be thought of as a migration, but rather, a transformation. While DM can essentially replace ME today, DM and MII should be expected to coexist in harmony for some time.??

?Later, we’ll go into more detail about that coexistence, but for now, let’s look at the SAP products in play.??

The Products?

?The Retirees?

?SAP ME (Manufacturing Execution) is an enterprise-level MES (manufacturing execution system), primarily for discrete manufacturing. It provides a set of features like Production Operator Dashboards, Shop Order Execution, Genealogy, and Nonconformance Management, to enable global manufacturers to manage and control manufacturing operations and integrate shop floor and business systems.?

?SAP MII (Manufacturing Integration & Intelligence) can be thought of as a fast-deployment toolkit to make connections from the shop floor to the top floor. It leverages your existing ERP, shop floor systems, and data sources to provide real-time information in the form of alarms, reports, dashboards, and KPIs to the whole organization.?

The Next Generation?

?SAP DM (Digital Manufacturing), for the sake of this discussion, can be thought of as an upgraded, enhanced, cloud-based version of ME. It shares and enhances almost all of ME’s functionality, has additional built-in business processes as well as significantly more flexibility to personalize and extend how it’s used, and supports both discrete and process manufacturing.??

?SAP BTP (Business Technology Platform) is a platform that provides tools and services for building, extending, and running applications in the cloud. It’s designed to be flexible and adaptable, allowing businesses to build and customize applications to meet their specific needs, integrate with existing SAP systems, and connect with other third-party applications and services.??

?Together, SAP DM and BTP can be used to, over time, replace and enhance your current implementation of ME and/or MII.?

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The Opportunities & Challenges?

?SAP DM can bring new value on many levels including:?

• Operational benefits like built-in industry best practices; end-to-end production execution and visibility; real-time data and reporting; built-in analytics; and enterprise-level integration to planning, logistics, quality, maintenance, and HR.? We discuss these in more detail in Unlocking Manufacturing Excellence.?
• Benefits inherent to the public cloud like increased scalability and reduced technical debt, effort of upgrades, and maintenance of customizations.??

?But, as with any new adoption, you want to have realistic expectations around:?

• User adoption – thoughtful organizational change management is important to not only overcome resistance, but to help the organization fully embrace and “own” the new ways of working.??
• Learning curve – users will need to learn a new system in which some workflows are familiar, and others are new.?
• The transformation plan – developing a plan that includes functional priorities, technical requirements, resources needed, and timelines is critical.??

Stellium can help with all of the above challenges.??

The Path Forward?

?Our recommendation is to run a hybrid DM/MII landscape and transform over time. This transformation will take some work, which is the reason to start evaluating and planning now.????

?The diagram below is a representative transition plan for a sample company who uses ME & MII today. In the first phase, DM is fully responsible for standard Order Management, Order Execution, and SAP PM/QM transactions; while MII is responsible for Shop Floor Integration, Custom Reports, and Custom Processes. Over time, as DM and BTP’s footprint grows, MII can be phased out.

Depending on your current ME and/or MII system and future priorities, your plan – both the functions and phasing - will differ from this example.? Stellium provides assessment services to craft that plan.??

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1. We’ll gather information to assess the relative scale of the implementation and conduct workshops and audits to fully understand the business functions being served.?
2. We’ll identify the efforts required to execute the transformation, which may include business process adaption and improvement to leverage standards driven by DM, developing extensions to support processes unique to your operations, and identifying KPIs to aid in continuous improvement efforts.?
3. We’ll develop a roadmap and timeline to execute a phased transformation that incorporates the requirements discovered, business and operational priorities, budget restrictions, and other factors.?

Get Started?

?SAP ME and MII customers can expect challenges and opportunities as they adopt SAP DM. Planning for the adoption to be executed in phases over time, and working with an experienced partner like Stellium will make the process smoother.?

?Email us today at [email protected] to receive an assessment questionnaire to get started on your transformation journey.?

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To keep in touch with Stellium Inc., visit our?LinkedIn global channel?or email us at?askus@stellium. Check out our website:?www.Stellium.com

Riz PiraniRandeep NambiarMichael CoblerGayathri Jayakumar (GJ)Nikunj KachaKarthik KrishnanManoj RaikarManoj DeyMary ThomasJames JaichanderChristina DemuthJoe MontagnaAnkit PaliwalRaghunandana HanasogeAnirban MajumdarAndy MacaleerAlexey GavrilovPriya WenzelDominik Mark MetzgerClaudius Mann?Dr. Thorsten Liebermann?Sabanovic JuliaChandrasekhar KG?James (Rusty) BaldwinMichael O'DonnellDanny LevesqueToby HiggottMarcia GaleazziSalvatore CastroSanjay MakhijaniHuseyin IcyerTiago FernandesAnchal SoodVasan VenkatRakesh Gandhi Salvatore Castro

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