Enterprise Resource Planning Giants Eye the Shop Floor
P.J. Jakovljevic - January 30, 2006

SAP Eyes the Shop Floor

For some time, SAP has been attempting to get closer to (i.e., to get into the hearts and minds of) plant-level personnel with its "adaptive manufacturing" and "adaptive business networks (ABN)" themes. The introduction of the SAP Plant Manager Dashboard in 2004 demonstrated that SAP is dead serious about extending its reach onto the plant and shop floor. With this product introduction, the vendor has delivered a solution that aims at integrating existing disparate plant execution systems to provide a unified view of the plant, and provides the likes of the plant manager (or even blue collar operators) with access to all pertinent data (e.g., near real time notifications of delays or any other glitches in manufacturing processes) on a single dashboard...