Dear Colleagues,

As our team further enhances and expands our Digital Manufacturing S/4HANA product portfolio in support of the Intelligent Factory, we are excited to announce the October release of the SAP S/4HANA 2023 version of SAP S/4HANA Manufacturing for Production Engineering and Operations (PEO). With this latest release, SAP continues to add customer value and strengthen our position in discrete, complex manufacturing environments. Customer driven enhancement requests obtained during SAP’s on-going multi-customer engagement initiatives have been identified and incorporated, significantly adding to the product’s capabilities both in depth and breadth.

Complex manufacturers will benefit from the following new solution capabilities delivered in this 2023 S/4HANA release:

Concurrent Engineering

One recent innovation highlight is the delivery of concurrent engineering capabilities. This provides features to support concurrent engineering processes with the aim of creating a collaborative, team-based approach for designing and manufacturing products and establishing better communication channels between product engineers, production engineers, quality engineers, and production operators.

Maturity Levels for Version-Controlled MBOMs

The BOM status can be used to define maturity levels for version-controlled manufacturing BOM. This helps Product engineers and Production engineers work in parallel and ensure that only appropriate matured production models are used in planning, procurement, and production. 

Cross-domain Collaboration Between Production Operators and Production Engineers

With this new feature, production operators can send feedback directly to the production engineer for evaluation by creating a defect. The production engineer can improve and fine-tune the bill of material or production process based on the feedback.

Production Integration Portal (PiP) Enhancements

Migration of Legacy Routings from an External Source to PEO Shop Floor Routings

The migration report enables production engineers to reuse legacy routings from an external manufacturing execution system. To perform the migration, the system uses the existing integration features available with the production integration portal (PiP).

Using the PiP to Create Work Instructions with Simple URLs and Data Collection

PiP allows for the creation of simple work instructions with URLs and the collection of inspection data based on information from external systems. 

Production Engineering Enhancements 

Simultaneous Groups Enabled for SF Routings for Non-Serialized Materials

Production engineers can create simultaneous groups for routings for non-serialized materials if the lot size of the routing has been limited to 1 EA. This improves the flexibility of production operations for non-serialized products.

Mass Creation Feature Enabled for Operations and Operation Activities

Mass-enabled functions allow production engineers to create multiple operations and operation activities for shop floor routings, order-specific shop floor routings, and reference templates. This enables faster creation of operations and operation activities in the table provided for mass creation.

Create Calculated Inspection Characteristics in Shop Floor Routings

Calculated ICs for quantitative characteristics can be created by production engineers. This allows production engineers to define simple data collection for production operators while also automatically calculating more complex values.

3D Visualization Using Shattered Visuals for Engineering Snapshots

This feature allows production engineers to use either monolithic or shattered files, depending on structure size and the need for change management. With Shattered visuals, VEMP can load 3D visuals on-demand based on the selection of relevant sub-assemblies and components in the planning session. The engineer can focus on only portions of a large assembly which is relevant for current planning.

Simulate Change Impact Analysis to Identify Whether Rework Required Due to Engineering Change

This new feature defines an indicator to identify Production Orders which require rework due to the incoming engineering change. The rework information shall be displayed if a completely executed production order or completed operation activity is impacted due to net changes.

Ability to Specify Reference Designators for an Instance of a Non-visual BOM Component

The BOM data model is enhanced to support creation of individual instances of a non-visual BOM component and specify a ‘reference designator’ text to it, to uniquely identify the specific occurrence of the component.

Processing Engineering Change Notice to Initiate Manufacturing Change Incorporation

The Engineering Change Notice driven approach allows the product design to simply send BOMs to PEO and let production engineering decide how to organize its incorporation in production. This allows for greater flexibility in change management in production engineering. 

Production Execution Enhancements 

Changes to In-Process Operation Activities

Trigger the incorporation of late changes in the in-process production order either from the engineering side or from the shop floor and perform changes such as editing of a work instruction, adding/deleting inspection characteristics, components, tools, documents, buyoffs for the started operation activity.

Mass Update of Shop Floor Routing Version in Shop Floor Orders

Updating the routing version in one or several shop floor orders can now be done with minimal effort from Manage Production Orders and Change Record apps with the reason code and note.​ 

Collective Serial Number Processing – Cross-Order

This feature makes it possible to group serial numbers that belong to different orders and materials, as well as to the same order, and perform production actions like start/complete, inspection data collection, tool registration, defect recording, buyoffs once, and record traceability information for all members of a group. 

Automatic Creation of Serial Numbers for Components on Assembly

New serialization procedures allow for the receipt of materials in stock without serial numbers, and later production operators scan the part’s serial number during assembly posting. 

Register Unplanned PRTs (Equipment) in the Perform Operation Activity app

Additional equipment or equipment that hasn’t been assigned to the operational activity can be registered in the Perform Operation Activity app.

Enable Early Component Staging by Determining Requirements Date

A new method is used to automatically change the values of the requirement date and time. For example, the components being allocated to different operations with different start dates and times can be rescheduled to the date and time of the first operation in the order.

Discrete manufacturing companies now have additional advanced solution capabilities to better manage and support complex build processes resulting from changes in the design structures, manufacturing BOMs, routings, work instructions and production orders. Leveraging the new capabilities, customers continue to proactively manage manufacturing dynamics, minimizing production disruptions while proactively managing and monitoring production operations. Customers will benefit from the enhanced, comprehensive, and simplified S/4 user experience which seamlessly enables design, process planning, change management and shop floor execution all within one integrated S/4HANA environment.

Additional information on S/4HANA PEO can be found here: 

• S/4HANA Manufacturing for production engineering and operations SAP.com: Here
• S/4HANA Manufacturing for production engineering and operation Video:  Here
• S/4HANA Manufacturing for production engineering and operations help is here: Help
• Roadmaps:  Customer Published
• Customer Story　Customer　

If you have comments or questions, please feel free to leave them below for me, they are always appreciated.

Thanks again!