During the 2017 Hannover Fair, Mitsubishi Electric Europe announced SAP’s participation in the Mitsubishi Electric e-F@ctory Alliance partner program. This partnership will enable Mitsubishi Electric’s automation solutions to operate fully with an SAP Cloud Platform.

Using the Internet of Things (IoT) features of SAP software, Mitsubishi Electric can transfer selected data from its automation equipment to SAP’s Cloud Platform. This enables Mitsubishi to extend its e-F@ctory solutions and partner offerings to the manufacturing and process industry sectors.

The agreement simplifies the use of IoT-based services, to allow operators to benefit from long-term analysis of factory data. It covers areas such as remote device and connectivity management, monitoring of production status and asset availability, as well as predictive maintenance

“Mitsubishi Electric has long provided leading-edge technologies for the collection of production information, and now our partnership with SAP enables our customers to easily connect with SAP Cloud Platform,” said Mitsubishi Electric Europe. “Here, our e-F@ctory Alliance partner, SAP, provides tools and applications to enable users to utilize production information fully.”

Operators can also use SAP Asset Intelligence Network to provide management of asset information and improve communication with service providers. The SAP Hybris Cloud for Customer solution will support service teams in scheduling maintenance activities and provide technicians with mobile access and an augmented reality app to identify problems quickly.

“The opportunity of digitalization is all about intelligently connecting people, things and businesses,” said Rolf Schumann, senior vice president and global general manager, Platform and Innovation, SAP. “The partnership between Mitsubishi Electric and SAP enables customers and partners to easily link shop floor and asset information with SAP Cloud Platform for advanced analytics. With the help of SAP Cloud Platform, we can reach deep integration into business processes and customers can benefit from driving real value from operational information.”

To showcase the benefits customers can reap from this partnership, Mitsubishi Electric featured a robot at the SAP booth at Hannover Messe. The robot was connected to SAP Cloud Platform, which provides customized dashboards, predictive maintenance and analytics functions.