This blog post introduces the top four highlights of the new major Release SAP Engineering Control Center for SAP S/4HANA 1.2. I am Dominik Maier, Senior Vice President Products & Development and Member of the Management Board at DSC Software AG.
For future-proof PLM solutions, it is becoming increasingly important to also support ERP-near PLM capabilities. This interconnectedness unlocks the full potential of both PLM and ERP. By reinforcing each other, they enable real end-to-end processes.
With the new major release of SAP ECTR, we have massively expanded these capabilities, among others, and thus established additional use cases for end-to-end PLM methods for our customers.
Now let’s look at the top four highlights of this release 😉
#1 Change processes with Change Record in SAP ECTR
Individualization of products and shorter release times in the product life cycle require integrated and flexible change management, from design to production. SAP has a powerful solution for this, the so-called Change Record in SAP S/4HANA. In SAP ECTR, we have further extended the integration of the Change Record and seamlessly established it as an integral object for end-to-end change processes.
Creation of a Change Record
In SAP ECTR, a change record can now be created directly in a dialog.
Change status of a Change Record
You can now change the status of a change record directly in SAP ECTR. The available statuses are read from the backend customizing and made available for selection.
Change relevance of objects assigned to a Change Record
The relevance of the change to an object in the change record can be changed very easily in SAP ECTR and thus the concrete change tasks to the objects can be defined.
Further enhancements of the Change Record in SAP ECTR
In addition to the functions mentioned above, further enhancements have been made to the Change Records in SAP ECTR. Among other things, the attachments are now displayed in a separate container in SAP ECTR, which can be added via Fiori App. Furthermore, important header attributes, such as the description, can be edited directly in SAP ECTR. Also, the classification of a change record is now shown in SAP ECTR.
#2 Enhanced creation and maintenance of PLM master data
In the past, users often had to navigate to the SAP GUI or SAP Fiori apps to create, maintain, and get specific information about essential PLM objects. This cost valuable time that could be used more effectively. With the new major release, we have moved the central maintenance of PLM objects and important information directly into SAP ECTR, so that the user experience here is seamless and fully integrated.
Material Master
Now it is possible to create a material master directly via a dedicated SAP ECTR dialog. The creation is based on a template that can be selected. All relevant creation attributes can then be used and adapted based on the template.
Plant Data for Material Master
Some information that is important to the process is often not easily accessible. This includes, for example, the plants in which a material master is maintained. Among other things, the information is important for the derivation of a BOM for a specific plant, the so-called plant specific BOM. We have now made this information very easily accessible for SAP ECTR users and display the plants in which a material master is maintained directly in a container under the material master. In short, SAP ECTR acts as a catalyst, making data that simmers in the ERP system visible and readily available.
Change Number
Now you have the possibility to create a change number directly via a specific SAP ECTR dialog. The creation is based on a template that can be selected. All relevant creation attributes can then be used and customized based on the template.
#3 New ways to copy classification
The classification of objects is an essential means to increase efficiency because it is often used to automate processes, increase reuse, and quite profanely, search for objects. In addition, the information from the classification represents essential metadata to describe and declare a product across all facets. In our case, this mostly concerns the documents that are created during product development. For this reason, we have created a way to significantly simplify the classification of documents. In this way, we help users save time and avoid errors.
Now, users can easily transfer the classification of a source object to several target objects, i.e. to copy the characteristic value assignment.
#4 Edit Bill-of-Material (BOM)
Last year we introduced with SP6 the new BOM Wizard, which provided a completely new logic for deriving BOMs. This logic allows the users to derive BOMs for numerous use cases.
A complete list of supported use cases is available here:
https://wiki.scn.sap.com/wiki/display/PLM/BOM+Wizard+3.0
With the new major release, we are further expanding the capabilities towards BOM. We now also enable editing of the BOM directly in SAP ECTR. The use case for this is obvious. After a BOM has been derived via the new BOM Wizard based on the document structure (CAD structures and information), it very often must be extended by non-CAP positions, such as production specific positions. This particularly applies to the Manufacturing BOM (MBOM), the BOM that is used in production.
The new function can be done in SAP ECTR in two ways.
1. Drag&drop a material master onto the BOM header in the Bill-of-Material window of SAP ECTR.
Summary
In many companies, the management of product data in SAP PLM has already become a standard that they no longer want to go without. With the new major release we have pursued two goals: On one hand, the new functionalities are intended to further strengthen the processes in engineering and expand previous functionalities. On the other hand - and this is the most remarkable thing: Through the new ERP-near PLM functionalities, we are helping companies very tangibly to strategically move in the direction of end-to-end processes and to pursue an end-to-end digitalization approach.
General Information
Check out the SAP ECTR Road Map for further planned functions and capabilities:
https://roadmaps.sap.com/board?BC=6EAE8B27FCC11ED892E9186EE86080CC&range=CURRENT-LAST
This blog post provides just an overview of the latest features and enhancements of SAP Engineering Control Center. You can find the complete list of improvements and enhancements of the release here:
https://help.sap.com/docs/SUPPORT_CONTENT/plm/3611335652.html
Please share your feedback and thoughts in a comment.
You can also follow dominik.maier.dscsag on the SAP Community to stay up to date!
If you are interested in more PLM relevant topics, I encourage you to read other blog posts here: https://blogs.sap.com/tags/237172457501282589953116013994631/
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