Status
Owner	NICASTRI-ext, Michele
Stakeholders	BLANCKE, Ward

Issue

SAP MII (Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence) will stop being supported by SAP after 2027 (or 2030). it is currently used by the following Syensqo entities:

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We need to identify a strategy to address this situation. This KDD document presents the possible options and identifies the best proposal, analyzing the implications and impacts under different points of view: business functionalities, IT perspective, change management, scalability and future proof solution.

Three options are available:

A) continue running on MII after end of official support, managing internally or via a 3rd party provider the product maintenance and adaptations
B) substitute MII with the corresponding part of the new SAP Digital Manufacturing
C) remove MII and directly connect MES systems to SAP S4 and/or to the StarTek platform

Recommendation

Option B is the recommended solution: substitute MII with the corresponding functionalities of SAP Digital Manufacturing.

Background & Context

MII is used by the following plants:

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to connect the following MES systems:

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MII acts as a middle-ware to connect the MES systems with the following data flows (not all of them are relevant for all plants/MES systems):

process orders from SAP ECC to MES
production confirmations from MES to SAP ECC
production goods movements from MES to SAP (consumption and goods receipt)
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Assumptions

MII is currently used as middle-ware to connect MES systems in the plants listed in the Issue section, not for further functionalities (like OEE, analytics, reporting, data intelligence, etc.)
MES systems in the affected plants won't change and MES functionalities and implementations in the affected plants will remain stable during the ERP Rebuild project
other functionalities potentially covered by SAP Digital Manufacturing are not part of this KDD; they are addressed here: https://wiki.syensqo.com/x/-YGMNQ

Constraints

Impacts

Describe the impact of the decision on other aspects such as other processes, infrastructure, other SAP modules or systems, data cleansing and migration, developments, automations, interfaces, in-flight projects, etc.

Business Rules

The decision may translate into business rules which enforce the decision and will require configuration. List these business rules here. For example, "An Outline Agreement cannot be created via the RFQ process. An awarded RFQ can only result in a Purchase Order".

Options considered

Option A: Keep MII

In this option we disregard the expiry date of MII maintennce and we keep it running for the current plants and MES system using it as a connector.

The Risk related to this option is the need to build up an internal or 3rd party maintenance team to take care of the system after the SAP maintenance won't be guaranteed anymore. It is also a non-Future Proof and not-scalable solution.

The advantage is that it implies zero effort both on MES and S4/HANA sides and it keeps all current connectors in place as they are.

Pro’s	Con’s
Effort: minimal to zero effort required both on SAP S4 and MES side.	Maintenance: after the expiry date of MII for SAP Maintenance, an internal or 3rd party team must be engaged to keep the product running and maintained.
	Future Proof: this solution is not future-proof, as any new functionality, extension, improvement will require bespoke implementation.
	Scalability: the solution will be hardly scalable, as connecting new MES systems and new plants will require activate them in MII and MII skills will become scarce and expensive after the system dismissal by most of the companies using it.

Option B: substitute MII with Digital Manufactring

Digital Manufacturing has all functionalities and connectors we had in the MII system. Activating these functionalities in new DMC tenants will allow a efficient substitution of MII, with a low effort.

The solution is 100% compliant with SAP Road map, SAP Best Practices and with Simplicity project goal.

There is a potential risk related to current bespoke implementations in MII to be replicated in DMC, for this reason the Project Effort is considered to be medium for this option.

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Option C: Remove MII and directly interface MES systems to SAP S4 (and/or StarTek suit)

In this option, we remove MII and we use alternatively:

a new built-in interface to connect the MES systems to S4 HANA
use the the Startek layer as a middle-ware, to send process/production orders from SAP S4/HANA to MES systems and to collect actual data from MES systems and send them to S4/HANA

It is the option we the maximum implementation effort. It is based on bespoke interfaces, therefore it implies the biggest efforts in the future to extend the solutions to new plants, new MES systems and new business. It is also not compliant with SAP Best Practice nor with the project goals of standardization and simplicity.

Evaluation

The following Matrix illustrates the evaluation of each option under the considered criteria:

Criteria	Weight	Option A Keep MII	Option B substitute MII with Digital Manufacturing	Option C Remove MII and directly interface MES systems to S4 / Startek
Future Proof and Scalability	VH	Very Low	Very High	Very Low
Best Practice	H	Very Low	Very High	Low
Functionalities	H	High	High	High
Reduce Change Management	L	Very High	Very High	Very High
Simplicity	H	Very High	High	Medium
Maintainability	VH	Very Low	Very High	Low
Reduce Project Effort	H	Very High	Medium	Very Low
Total		Medium	High	Medium