13 October 2014: Markus Pfirsching

As soon as a company has reached a certain enterprise size, the application of ERP systems to plan and control business activities and processes is often required. Many tasks in the field of business management are strengths of these systems; however, these systems do not focus on SPC and statistical evaluations. This article explains how Q-DAS software interacts with the SAP ERP system.

This article provides three examples. Many of our customers already apply one of these three SAP solutions but we deliberately forego naming the companies.

Assumption

A company records measurement and test data electronically in the running production process and transfers them to the SAP QM system. The SAP system allows for basic evaluations but is not able to make evaluations based on specifications of the automotive industry (guidelines). We offer some good and easy solutions if you want to perform a more detailed evaluation of these measurement and test data by using Q-DAS software. These solutions are described in the following.

1. SAP-QM STI interface

The first solution is to apply the SAP interface (SAP-QM STI). The approach is as follows.

You select the data, periods, production lots, materials, etc. they want to evaluate in SAP QM. Now you may transfer this “data package” to the Q-DAS software and start the evaluation. All you need is a standard interface for the transfer of data (QM-STI); however, the content of the information transferred always depends on the respective application (e.g. field mapping, combining lots, etc.). Thus, you always have to configure the interface.

Advantages

• Interface integrated into SAP QM
• Users make their selections in SAP QM
• Q-DAS software evaluates selected data according to corporate specifications

Disadvantages

• Restricted flexibility in selecting data from SAP