Plant operators relied on paper logs and end-of-day data entry to record completed assemblies and machine downtime. This delay created a twelve-hour lag in inventory records, making it difficult for procurement teams to schedule raw material deliveries accurately. Unplanned machine stoppages were logged hours after they occurred, leaving plant managers unaware of recurring station bottlenecks until shift handovers.
Modernizing Shop-Floor Telemetry and ERP Integration for Heavy Equipment Manufacturing
A multi-site agricultural machinery manufacturer operating four assembly plants needed to unify production reporting between legacy shop-floor machinery and their enterprise SAP environment.
Challenge
Solution
FlipWorks engineered an edge-to-cloud integration framework. We connected shop-floor Siemens PLCs to edge gateway computers running custom OPC UA collection scripts. The software processes raw machine status signals, normalizes the data into structured event payloads, and transmits finished assembly records directly into SAP S/4HANA via secure REST APIs.
Result
- Automated 100% of finished assembly data entry between the plant floor and enterprise ERP.
- Reduced shift handover reporting time from forty-five minutes to instantaneous dashboard summaries.
- Provided plant leadership with real-time visibility into machine stoppages within seconds of occurrence.