One of the companies I met with a couple of weeks ago at the Hannover Messe Preview in Germany was SALT Solutions AG and its subsidiary SALT Software GmbH. The company is a systems integrator that also has developed a platform with micro services to bring together its service offering.

SALT will be partnering with SAP at its stand and also with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) at its stand. Demonstrations at each stand will be showing how companies can quickly and easily digitize their Supply Chain by means of digital processes, Digital Twins, and modern technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Robotic Process Automation, and Cloud Computing. Visitors will experience how they can control a complete production process independently thanks to intuitive technologies and a high degree of automation.

Partnership With SAP

One feature is a live demonstration called “E-Bike: Make-to-Operate” at the SAP Stand (Hall 17, Stand A42). This demo shows all the process steps in the manufacture and operation of an E-bike, from production and control (“Make”) to monitoring and control of operation by processing and interpreting sensor data (“Operate”).

Visitors can intuitively control all process steps themselves in the live demonstration: Graphic detailed planning, production, and handover of the finished E-bike as a Digital Twin to the SAP Asset Intelligence Network (AIN). The SAP AIN as part of the SAP Digital Manufacturing Strategy is a virtual space in which ride and status data of the E-bike are collected and analyzed and which allows all parties involved, the manufacturer, the operator, and service providers, to have access to all data relevant to them in a central location.

In practice, this scenario offers the possibility, for example, for the E-bike rider to be recommended to visit nearby E-charging stations if the data analysis shows that the battery charge is no longer sufficient to reach the destination.

Predictive maintenance can be planned automatically when transferred to a production scenario: A specific maintenance requirement can be derived from sensor data. In order to determine the ideal time for the next maintenance order, the system includes all relevant data such as the current production plan and independently sets the date to production-free time, e.g. on the weekend to minimize production disruptions.

In the live demonstration, special focus is placed on the process orchestrator, SAP Shop Floor Designer (SFD). In production, the focus is on the end-to-end process with its numerous individual steps, which companies in the future will design completely in advance. The entire process runs digitally, and the design decides which functionalities are to be carried out at each point in the production process. While manufacturers used to be tied to the functionality of one or more systems, SAP SFD makes tools from all systems available such as ERP, MES, BDE and others.

Digital Supply Chain Demo With HPE

The second live demonstration “D4S: The complete digitization of a complex Supply Chain, from the supplier to your own company to the customer and beyond existing system boundaries” will be seen at the Hewlett Packard Enterprise stand (HPE, Hall 15, Stand E64). This demo shows how the digital Supply Chain runs based on the SALT Business and IoT platform Data for Services (D4S). In the live demonstration, processes, objects, and data are synchronized and orchestrated via D4S in a model factory in independently interacting, networked Digital Twins.

The central role of process design in D4S can be taken on by the Process Engine. This ensures that the complete set of functions from all different systems such as ERP, MES, or BDE is available at all times in the production process, and additionally the systems of customers and suppliers are also included, including the logistics and production facilities.

D4S makes the interaction of the signals between all systems involved and also the Digital Twins possible and therefore a meaningful, interrelated action and reaction across the entire system – finally, the entire process runs automatically and efficiently after just one input.

In practice, SALT Software GmbH decides based on the customer’s business model which Digital Twins and their signals should be meaningfully created and exchanged in order to enable optimum process execution.

SALT Solutions AG employs more than 600 experts in Dresden, Munich, Stuttgart and Würzburg.

SALT Software GmbH, a subsidiary of SALT Solutions AG, was founded on January 1, 2020 and has 40 employees.

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