Business transformation from the power socket?

In keeping with the motto of the DSAG annual congress 2016, DSC presented the PLM-based plug-and-play solution SAP Engineering Control Center

Under the motto “Business transformation from the power socket?”, the 17th annual congress of the DSAG (the German-speaking SAP user group) took place in the Nuremberg Convention Center from September 20–22, 2016. The event was attended by more than 4500 visitors, who received information in 8 keynotes, nearly 200 lectures, 54 topic sessions, and a 14,000 sq. m. trade exhibition with 170 exhibitors, including DSC. A total of 51 topics of the parallel afternoon talks ranged from sector solutions to general subjects such as project, quality, supply-chain and service management, product lifecycle management and maintenance up to Industry 4.0.

Against the background of the increasing importance of speed and flexibility for production companies, the congress focused on challenges in the digital transformation of business processes and/or market models. The DSAG emphasized that “open but nevertheless secure standards” are in demand, such as those in process automation and networking. Agile and cost-effective implementation options also played an important role. A holistic approach is also required. Such an approach was presented by DSC Software on its stand: with SAP Engineering Control Center. Those who wanted to find out how the solution fared in practice had an opportunity to do so on the third day of the congress: in the talk “Use of SAP Engineering Control Center (ETCR) in the CAx environment – first practical experiences”, given by Endress+Hauser InfoServe, the IT partner of the Endress+Hauser Group, which specializes in measurement technology.

SAP Engineering Control Center – a plug-and-play solution for product manufacturers

SAP Engineering Control Center is a high-performance integration and collaboration platform for product development and design, particularly in the multi-CAD and mechatronics environment. This flexible solution integrates authoring tools of all kinds in SAP PLM: from MCAD to ECAD/EDA to MS Office. Standard interfaces provide simple and fast implementation so that application systems can just be plugged in. This ensures that IT landscapes remain streamlined and maintenance costs reasonable.

One of the advantages of SAP Engineering Control Center: product data and documents from different sources are centrally available in the SAP system. They can be managed in a structured manner, linked with other SAP objects, and integrated seamlessly in global business processes: for continuous information flows, time-saving automation, and intelligent networking across all company sectors – from engineering to technical documentation, marketing and sales, to procurement, manufacture, service and maintenance. That saves not only time and costs but also increases flexibility and productivity. What should also be mentioned: SAP Engineering Control Center can also be configured largely by the user’s own administrators, without expensive additional programming. Flexibly combinable add-ons offer many other possibilities to cover individual requirements using standard software.

SAP PLM – a mainstay of business transformation

Product lifecycle management is considered to be the basis and enabler of business transformation. The PLM system and uniform (master) data structures are the prerequisite for the digitalization of the product creation process and the provision of a secure data basis for all further business processes and models. The fact that the PLM benefit reach far beyond the product development process was also shown in the SAP presentation “Strategy connected products on the basis of SAP product lifecycle management”. Connected products, i.e., products that communicate with each other such as in the cloud (Internet of Things), offer producers completely new options: such as site-independent real-time monitoring of plant for faster provision of required services.