OPC Router Tutorial Video - Connecting PLCs and Historians to SAP 

Integrate Live Episode 11 - Software Toolbox + Canary Labs + Phoenix Contact

This 1.5 hour tutorial is unique because 3 suppliers came together to collaborate and build this system live in an event hosted by the IntegrateLive! community. The workshop uses the concept of master recipes and inventory to perform a round trip from the PLC to retrieve a master recipe from SAP, produce the product, log the production, and then update SAP with the amount of product actually produced using the historian data. All of this gets built in about 35 minutes!  

The virtual workshop uses OPC Router's certified SAP connector, OPC UA support, REST web services support, JSON parsing, and visual workflows to build a live connection that connects via OPC UA to a Phoenix Contact PLCNext PLC and a Canary Labs Historian via OPC UA and REST, and adds the DataHub OPC Gateway to handle some nuances of OPC UA security that one of the systems needed help with.   

We encourage watching the entire video below, but here are some time points to help you if your time is limited. A 36-minute version focused solely on implementation is also available.

  • Start to 32:47 - Business case problem set discussion, tech/solution stack introductions
  • 32:47 to 40:31 - Why Integrate differently from traditional methods, live SAP system introduction, interface types, and terminology, and why not do this with an MES application? 
  • 40:31 to 51:31 - PLC & local HMI setup: Phoenix Contact PLCnext system overview and solution presentation
  • 51:31 to 59:00 - SAP to PLC: OPC Router Configuration of Connection to PLCnext PLC and SAP system and demonstration of live data retrieval of a recipe, triggered from the PLC HMI screen, and loading the recipe into the PLCnext PLC and visualizing it on the PLC HMI screen. 
  • 59:00 to 1:04:56 - PLC to Historian: Historizing data from the PLCnext PLC with Canary Historian, Using DataHub to provide a DMZ security layer and manage the PLC needing OPC UA username/password authentication, but the historian only offering certificate authentication.
  • 1:04:56 to 1:11:31 - Historian back to SAP: - Retrieving data from Canary Historian via REST API using OPC Router about inventory levels, and feeding it back to SAP using OPC Router to update inventory .  
  • 1:11:31  to 1:16:48  - Solution set pricing
  • 1:16:48 to 1:26:37 - Questions & Answers

To watch a 36 minute version solely focused on the implementation, click here.

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The demo is the full product. When you put an OPC Router project into runtime, it will stop operating after 2 hours and have to be restarted. Purchase of a license will remove the restriction.

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