Exploring SAP Apps for Collaborative Manufacturing with SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud (1NX)

SAP Distributed Manufacturing (DIM) System on SAP Cloud Platform

Running on the SAP Cloud Platform, SAP Distributed Manufacturing is a network-based application where customers and suppliers can register and then work together based on customer requirements. To help take advantage of customized manufacturing and collaborative manufacturing, SAP Distributed Manufacturing provides a platform where customers can collaborate with suppliers (for example, 3D printing service suppliers, material providers, OEMs, and technical certification companies) in a private and secure way. The customer can create collaboration rooms to prepare for additive manufacturing for a part. The invited supplier works together with the customer to define the most suitable technology, material, production parameters, and post-processing options. The initial pricing of the supplier helps the customer determine whether it is a good business case to use additive manufacturing for the particular part. The customer also provides information such as 3D CAD file, estimated demand, and usage of the part.

• Collaboration Rooms: A virtual private space where a customer collaborates with one or more suppliers on various topics.
  • Design Collaboration: Collaboration participants work together on the improvement and customization of the design.
  • Quality Collaboration: Both customers and suppliers can record test results of engineering samples.
  • Document Sharing: Collaboration participants can share files with other participants in the same collaboration room.
  • Tracked Conversations: Collaboration participants can engage in conversations in a collaboration room. Automatic email notifications are sent according to the grouping of the participants.
• Parts Analysis: Make assessments of parts to determine if they are suitable for additive manufacturing. Based on the assessment results, create collaboration rooms to discuss further details with suppliers.
• Integration with ERP:
  • RFQs: Based on the outcome of a collaboration, a customer can create an RFQ and send it to the SAP S/4HANA Cloud, public edition system.
  • Purchase Orders: Track the purchase orders created in SAP ERP or SAP S/4HANA and find corresponding collaborations in SAP Distributed Manufacturing. By subscribing to the created event of the ERPPurchaseOrderItem service object, you can build extensions based on data from both the purchase orders and the collaboration rooms.
• Private Organizations: Invite business partners to share limited functions as private organizations.
  Note

  Special subscription plans are required for this function.

SAP Distributed Manufacturing provides REST APIs to support integration with third-party extensions. Here are some basic concepts to get you started. The workflow of extensions is driven by events. When an event is triggered, the subscribed extensions receive the event notification.

• Partner Extensions: Partner extension providers are usually not involved in the collaborations happening in the collaboration rooms of SAP Distributed Manufacturing. To access and use the data of a customer, a public extension must be authorized by the customer.
• Customer Extensions: Customer extensions call the public APIs through user accounts that are actually involved in the collaborations.