Triggering a Business Process on SAP using the SAP IoT Service

Triggering a Business Process on SAP using the SAP IoT Service

Digital Transformation proceeding it is getting even more important for companies to intertwine their value chains and increase the efficiency of their processes. A huge potential is offered by connecting sensors to the ERP System, i.e. integrating machines and things into the SAP business processes.


Typical applications are:

  • Predictive Maintenance -> Monitoring important parameters of manufacturing machines & automatically post a service assignment in SAP.
  • Warehouse monitoring -> Automatically detect the reorder level & post an order.
  • Intelligent Assistance of Shop-Floor-Employees -> Connect wearable technologies with the SAP System.

The SAP IoT Service offers a cloud-based solution, which controls the complete lifecycle of sensors, and provides good scalability and safe transmission of data.  
As part of a showcase, XEPTUM has connected an ultrasonic sensor to the IoT Service; the measurement results of the sensor automatically trigger an order when it exceeds a certain distance. This simulates the just-in-time delivery of a sugar silo.


Connection of the sensor to the IoT Service:

  1. Creating and defining the sensor in the IoT Service Cockpit.
  2. Downloading the Onboarding Certificate (.pem/.p12 format)
  3. Set up the MQTT protocol to connect the sensor to the cloud. Incl. integration of the certificate in the transmission code.

 

Screenshot “IoT Service Cockpit” (Source: XEPTUM Archive)

Monitoring the measurement results via the IoT Service Cockpit

As soon as the connection is established via the MQTT protocol, the sensor transmits the measurement results to the SAP IoT application at regular intervals.
In the SAP IoT Service Cockpit, the results can be displayed graphically and monitored in real time.
 

Triggering a process in the SAP System

The IoT Service is connected to the SAP S/4HANA via the SAP Cloud Connector. A set of rules can be stored in the IoT Service Cockpit, which triggers an OData service when the value exceeds or falls below a certain level.
This OData service in turn triggers a BAPI in the SAP S/4HANA system, which creates the sales order.
This makes it possible to automatically start a process at the right time that was previously required to be triggered manually.

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