Describing SAP Digital Manufacturing Machine Integration Architecture

ISA-95 is a set of standards and guidelines developed by the International Society of Automation (ISA) to help integrate business and manufacturing systems. It provides a framework for integrating business systems (ERP systems) with manufacturing operations and control systems.

The use cases supported by the manufacturing automation capabilities of SAP Digital Manufacturing are part of different levels of the automation pyramid specified in the ISA-95 norm.

On the level 4 covering, the enterprise business processes are the design time of manufacturing automation. Here, integration processes and automation are centrally designed in the cloud and can later be distributed into the factories.

The execution of manufacturing automation takes place on level 3 and the lower levels depending on the use case. There are cloud processes that are executed in the cloud and automate the services offered by SAP Digital Manufacturing and other enterprise-level software systems. In addition to the cloud processes, manufacturing automation also offers automation sequences that are executed with the production connector for SAP Digital Manufacturing which is installed within the factory network. The installation of the production connector close to the machines allows for low latencies and easier access within the same network. The production connector not only executes the automation sequences but also maps machine protocols and makes them available to the cloud. The production connector is part of the lower levels of the automation pyramid. Each factory will have its own production connector to connect the factory's machines to the cloud.

The integration architecture of SAP Digital Manufacturing with shop floor components allows for seamless connectivity and data exchange between SAP Digital Manufacturing and the shop floor.

The architecture enables the integration of machines, sensors, and other shop floor components that represent a digital twin and are called assets in SAP Digital Manufacturing. This allows for real-time data collection, monitoring, and control. It ensures that processes are fully integrated, enhancing efficiency, flexibility, and visibility across the entire production process.

The Production Connectivity Model ensures that all changes that are made to the digital twin (asset) are reflected by the physical device and the other way around. For example, if a physical machine changes its status tag, the tag value will be changed in the digital twin as well. Similarly, if the order tag is changed in the digital twin (asset), the Production Connectivity Model will write this value to the machine tags.

Automation sequences are designed in the Design Production Processes application in SAP Digital Manufacturing. This application enables users to not only use shop floor data from digital twins (assets), but also to combine this data with data from SAP Digital Manufacturing APIs or data from third-party systems. The Design Production Processes application enables users to simplify, streamline, and optimize their automation processes to improve efficiency and productivity. Production process designs are deployed to production process runtime.

With the production connector for SAP Digital Manufacturing, SAP is providing a middleware to enable the integration of SAP Digital Manufacturing applications with devices and equipment on the shop floor (the physical world in the production environment). It is an on-premise software component and is typically installed in the same production network as the shop floor systems you want to integrate. The production connector enables access to production data and services from various sources and technologies and integrates these with SAP Digital Manufacturing.

The production connector and SAP Digital Manufacturing are connected with SAP Cloud Connector, which acts as a bridge between on-premise systems and applications in a customer's network and the SAP Business Technology Platform. It provides a secure and reliable connection between the on-premise systems (shop floor) and the cloud-based applications (SAP Digital Manufacturing).

In the Production Connectivity Model, between the production connector and the physical machine layer, there is the shop floor system layer. A shop floor system is the representation of a data server in SAP Digital Manufacturing and builds up the connection to the physical machines. One shop floor system can connect to many different machines, as long the physical machines use the same machine protocol.