SAP Digital Manufacturing FAQ

SAP Digital Manufacturing is deployed in the public cloud and available as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)

Please review this link in the help.   You can find the clientid, clientsecret and token service url in the service key of service instance by choosing Instances and Subscriptions → Select an instance → Service Keys. See "Create service key" section in Prepare for API Integration for more information.

The services can have updates upon new releases. If you come across errors when calling the services, you have to re-create the service key and destination.

Customer Identity Provider information is configured in Business Technology Platform (BTP) to establish a linkage for authentication.

SAP BTP supports identity federation, a concept of linking and reusing digital identities of a user base across loosely coupled systems. Identity federation frees applications on SAP BTP from the need to obtain and store the credentials of users to authenticate them. Instead, the application user base is reused from identity providers, which support the administration of digital user identities, authentication, and authorizations in a centralized and decoupled manner. To enable communication between SAP BTP and identity providers, you must cross-configure the communication endpoints of the involved systems, establishing a trust relationship between them.

Configuring Corporate Identity Providers in SAP Cloud Identity Services

Customers can access current license and license usage in the SAP for Me application.

This video describes how to verify license information for specific applications:

How to check SAP DM usage and add licenses in SAP for Me?

• For Data and Log Volume Encryption see HANA Security Guide here.
• For Data Encryption Strategy for Redis on BTP, here.
• For Data Encryption Strategy for Mongo on BTP, here.

For the Business Technology Platform, details about API Endpoints for Cloud Foundry may be found here.

The Administration Guides for SAP Digital Manufacturing have been deprecated. Here is a link for more details.

The DM Operations Guide can be found here.

The DM Security Guide may be found here.

For our HANA databases we provide an SLA that comprises full backups every day and log backups every 15 minutes. So the Recovery Point Objective is usually 0 or 15 minutes if a redo log disk is broken. The retention period of backups is 14 days with at least 3 full backups.

Please refer to the document here.

SAP DM Help Here.

Refer the Service Level Agreement for SAP Cloud Services in the SAP Trust Center.

Please refer to DM Operations Guide for Onboarding information.

There are no customer self-service tools available to migrate data between environments. However, if configuration data migration is required, please reach out to the SAP Value Prototyping team via your SAP Sales team. Customer-specific options may be explored.

In the event of an unplanned downtime, we send the customer a communication through the CSNS tool. For more information please refer to the Solution Brief on Customer Success For The Intelligent Enterprise.

The data center list may be found in the Supported Data Centers help page.

As of 2023, SAP Digital Manufacturing is on a quarterly release schedule.

The SAP Cloud Availability Center identifies the Maintenance and Upgrade Windows.  Search for SAP Digital Manufacturing at this link.

SAP has launched the Cloud System Notification Subscriptions (CSNS) application, which allows you to add, customize, and manage subscriptions to Cloud Availability Center (CAC) notifications. 

Using this tool, you can remain informed and receive timely updates regarding your SAP cloud services, including but not limited to planned and unplanned downtimes​

You can access Cloud System Notification Subscriptions (CSNS) here.

1. The Service Level Agreement may be found under SAP Trust Center.
2. Under Trust Center, follow Agreements -> Cloud Services Agreements.
3. Under Cloud Services Agreements, follow Cloud Service Description -> Service Level Agreement.
4. Find documents for Service Level Agreement for SAP Cloud Services and choose one suitable for your language (english).

Customers receive notifications from Cloud System Notification Subscriptions tool. To get them they need to subscribe here.

To receive SAP DMC release deployment/scheduled and unscheduled maintenance notifications and updates, we need some actions from your side:

Access Cloud System Notification Subscriptions (CSNS) here and make yourself familiar with the interface. Check the following source for more information on CSNS: Support Portal

Follow the video instructions found under Cloud System Notification Subscriptions and subscribe to appropriate notifications. 

§ Cloud Product Name is:  SAP Digital Manufacturing

§ Required notification types that should be checked are:

1. Customer Communication

2. Disruption/Degradation

§Initial

§Update

§Resolved

§Intermediate RCA

§Final RCA

3. Maintenance

§Announcement

§Cancelled

§Update

§Completed

According to the Service Level Agreement for SAP Cloud Services, we notify customers at least five (5) business days in advance (see point 1.3) for both Quality and Production deployments.

As of 2211 we will publish the Planned Release Dates.

Quality space deployment and Production space deployment are done separately. Starting 2111, SAP will give customers two weeks to test the new release on Quality before Production release.

SAP Release Schedule can be found here.

According to the Maintenance Windows and Major Upgrade Windows for SAP Cloud Services, officially maximum downtime is 4 hours, but we strive to complete in less than 2 hours.

Every message reported by customers during the quality testing is evaluated based on the impact on customer and the rest of the user-base. The goal is to resolve the issue before Production is updated. If the issue is evaluated as a showstopper, the decision is made collectively on the Release decision meeting.

Additional Information and Manual Activities for SAP Digital Manufacturing may be found, Release 2105 may be found at SAP Note 3029071.

SAP Human Capital Management support will be services based for now and build from the Success Factors integration to leverage these existing APIs which are available for selected customers and general availability planned from 2305.

Artificial intelligence in manufacturing is a trendy term. AI-Based Visual Inspection for Defect Detection is a feature that every manufacturing company is looking for. This not only increases productivity of shop floor but also ensures product quality. The goal of this article is to describe how to enable AI-based visual inspection in a Production Operator Dashboard in SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud.

Blogs found here.

For more information on AI/ML scenarios for visual inspection can be found

To request a new cipher, SAP recommends that customers open an incident on component XX-SER-NET-SHA2, whenever customer is ready to plan and/or start the project with the help of the related SAP teams. This will allow SAP to do a proper resource planning and capacity assignment for transition projects.

• See also: Recommendations for the use of cryptographic mechanisms in the IPsec and IKE protocols (sap.com)

To enable logon from outside SAP premises and SAP networks, we use a two-factor authentication system valid around the world, supported by an RSA SecurID soft token. These allow secure access to internal and external networks, virtual private networks, and wireless LANs, e-mail, Microsoft Windows desktops, Web servers, and other networks. The RSA SecurID soft token remains the property of SAP. It can be used only by the owner of the token generating device, and it must be returned to SAP following the end of employment with the company.

• See also:70426_GB_43200_enUS.pdf (sap.com) page 6/35

Requesting the return of data

To request the return of data following decommissioning, the requestor shall initiate a ticket under the SAP Support Portal.

Details may be found under Decommissioning Tenants, Data Return, and Deletion.

Form of Returned DMC Data

· Each .csv data file contains data associated with respectively named database table.

· The .csv files are contained within one or more .zip files.

· Files from the objects store are returned in their original format 

Storage of Returned Data

· Data for Amazon Web Services tenants is stored in within an AWS S3 Bucket.

· Data for Azure tenants is stored within an Azure Container in Blob storage.

· Data storage expires at the contract termination date.

Credentials to access Returned Data

· The credentials to access the data are provided in the login area of your Support ticket (you need to switch to edit mode to access the login data).

Retrieval of Returned Data on AWS

· To access the data use the Amazon Command Line Interface. Please refer to the Amazon documentation for further details.

Retrieval of Returned Data on Azure

· To access the copied files use the Azure Storage Explorer.

· Hint: In the connect dialog of the Azure storage explorer choose the option "Use a shared access signature (SAS) URI".

· The URI you enter there consists of the container uri followed by a ? and then the sas token (see how-a-shared-access-signature-works).

· Please refer to the Azure documentation for further details.

Other Data

Audit log data may be retrieved via public API. Instructions found at the Audit Log API Usage for the Cloud Foundry Environment page.

See the information available in Language Support for SAP Digital Manufacturing in SAP Note 2722461.

Check the information in Browser and Platform Support Matrix for SAP Digital Manufacturing, SAP Note 2722235. 

SAP Digital Manufacturing features may be found in the Feature Scope Description document.  

This diagram may be found under Planning Information of the SAP Digital Manufacturing Integration Guide in the SAP Help Portal.

This information may be found under the Minimum Version Requirements under the SAP Digital Manufacturing SAP Help Portal. 

This may be found under the SAP Roadmap Explorer for SAP Digital Manufacturing.

The Maintenance and Major Upgrade windows may be found at the following location for SAP Digital Manufacturing.  You may use the search box with SAP Digital Manufacturing to quickly access the specific information.

You may subscribe with an S-User to gain access to the Maintenance and Major Upgrade Windows Change Log.  Subscription to the Change Log document can provide you with email notifications of any changes that are made to these windows.

Yes, the SAP Trust Center offers a dashboard of current activity for SAP Digital Manufacturing.

You may find the list of cloud solution monitors here under Cloud Service Status.

Specifically with respect to incidents and cloud availability, you can find the Cloud Service Status for DM here.

The User must be assigned to the Work Center associated with the Production Operator Dashboard.

While creating/updating Production Operator Dashboards, the Session Timeout may be set.  Help documentation addressing this question.

Updates to the Production Operator Dashboard user interface are performed through the POD Designer.  Many of the updates will occur through changes to the POD Pages.

Yes.  However, the Manage Plants application will define the Process or Discrete terminology used for the Plant.

REO - Resource Orchestration - provides the ability to adjust the plan on the fly during the shift to accommodate the real-world production actuals to ensure coordination of production as things change.For more information, please access the following documentation:https://help.sap.com/docs/SAP_DIGITAL_MANUFACTURING/066baf723b0f40d7bce61590ebcec2ef/1ce3505167d24b87a2b4827d57bfc680.html

Maintenance Orders trigger the status of the machines to scheduled downtime.

• Regarding "Automated Upgrade," - Currently, HANA Cloud can only scale up, and it is not possible to scale down - Hence, the Pay as Go kind of automation is not yet possible (Tier Higher to Tier Lower Switch). When HANA Cloud offers such capabilities, we could plan this additional development based on the SKU entitlement and determine the HANA Cloud Size accordingly. 
• Regarding "Manual," - It is possible to upgrade the same HANA Cloud Sizing without downtime up to 2 TB as long as the contract and entitlements are taken care of. We can handle this request via a BCP Ticket or communication from the customer office for now.

The roadmap presented to customers and Innovation and Feature Repository contain planned features with the expected release dates. The roadmap for DM Edge is not publicly updated at this time.

The top 3 enhancements for DM Edge are process industry support, support of multiple Edge devices in the same plant and high availability/redundancy.

The Edge Lifecycle Management (ELM) tool is used to install/deploy DM Edge components from the cloud.The Setup and Operations guide explains this in more detail.

The benefits of using containerized PCo are explained in the application help for machine model and connectivity.  The containerized version runs within the same Kubernetes cluster as other Edge components, including updates via Edge Lifecycle Management and configuration via the cloud.

DM Edge can connect to SAP Plant Connectivity (PCo) containerized and on-premise versions for integration with shop floor machines using the Machine Model and Connectivity app.

DMC is automatically upgraded once a quarter for major upgrades and requires a scheduled downtime.The customer triggers the installation of DM Edge upgrades. Minor upgrades for DM Edge are provided between major DM releases and are triggered by the customer.

DM Edge high availability options are still being discussing internally.

DMC Edge is now generally available (GA) by SAP.  A limited amount of Edge device licenses are included in the license for DMCe.  Additional licenses can be purchased if needed.  Azure Stack Edge Pro devices can be purchased from Microsoft.

DM Edge functionality is explained in the Setup and Operations guide and the DMC New Features documentation.Edge-enabled apps and plugins are listed in the Setup and Operations guide.

Data synchronization is explained in the Setup and Operations guide. Event-based synchronization happens in real time if connection is up.

DMC Edge currently supports the Azure Stack Edge Pro version.  Other devices are being investigated at this time, including other flavors of Azure Stack Edge.

DM Edge integration with S/4 ERP, both cloud and on-premise versions, is currently performed via Cloud Platform Integration (CPI) or directly into DMC cloud, then sent to Edge. Direct integration with DM Edge is being investigated, including inventory integration with Extended Wharehouse Management (EWM) and batch integration with Enterprise resource planning (ERP).

DM Edge services are installed, upgraded, patched and monitored from the DMC cloud using the Edge Lifecycle Manager (ELM).The Business Object Synchronization Service (BOSS) component from Edge services can synchronize data between Edge and cloud. Additional reuse components are the object store, malware scanning and Plant Connectivity/Internet of Things (PCo/IoT) Edge.

You can find the DM Extensibility FAQ here.