Unpacking SAP MII and Its Evolution to SAP DMC: A Conversation with Joe Montagna

Speaker A: Hi everyone. We welcome you to our new episode of uh, Innovate Extreme. And today I have with me senior Director and global head of digital manufacturing at Stellium, Mr. Joe Montagna. And he's a long time user of Mii and has, has started working on Mii since the Light Hammer days. The original developers of Mi. So I have chance to. I um, did not get a chance to work with him but we worked in the Same Company in 2008 and he has been uh, inspiring me since then. So Joe, welcome to my show.

Speaker B: Thanks Nusrat. Good to be here.

Speaker A: So Joe, can you start by giving us an overview of SAPMI and its initial objectives during Light Hammer days?

Speaker B: Yeah, so, and this was um, this was back in the 2001 time frame, uh, when I started with Light Hammer. And it was really, it was a toolkit specifically built to talk to the shop floor. And because on the shop floor there's a whole bunch of different silos of information, different systems out there and everything like that. So the original concept of MII was to

Speaker A: implement it.

Speaker B: It was an on premise system. You will be able to connect to all that different data in place. You didn't have to replicate it. You could bring it back to visualize altogether in a page. You could bring it back to do calculations, to do real time decision making. It was all focused on Shop four. That was early. A couple of years into it, after we had some success, a couple of the guys, they started to look into. All right, well, shop floor is easy. What about enterprise level stuff? So that's when we created an SAP connector and that was around 2004. Um, we showed it to SAP at a show and I think within the year we were acquired by SAP.

Speaker A: Yeah, actually uh, it was quite a good time then because I just started my career that time and I got trained in MI and it transformed my career. Thanks for helping me out.

Speaker B: No problem, no problem. It did that for I, I think a lot of people though. You know, that was a, uh, that was the big thing back then and, and you know, there's a lot of people that you know, still do it. You know, I have a lot of old friends from, from back in the day.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, people, people do like MII very much.

Speaker B: Yeah, so do I.

Speaker A: So uh, how has MI evolved in terms of functionality and technology from its inception to where it is now? So

Speaker B: originally MII was super easy. It was Windows based, it was all files. It was just a file system of XML documents that you could open the file on the server and manually edit, um, your query templates, your display templates, whatever. When we did move to SAP, then they put it on Netweaver. So that complicated, that aspect of it. But you know it was, it was um, you know, arguably a more robust platform and you know, even though it made it more complicated, they did add, you know, a lot of m, you know, a lot of the functionalities that you know now and you know, the connectivity to SAP got a little bit tighter and things like that. So you. I think overall it was a good evolution, um, from the early days, um, so I think it just made it stronger.

Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, Joe. Actually uh, uh, I remember that we could install mi in laptops in like 10 minutes exactly.

Speaker B: And that's where the, you know, the, the ease of use was. You know, back then it was because all of our sales guys had it on their laptops and that's how you would go demo it. And you know, back in those early days, you know, you could go into a big customer and they would allow you onto their network pretty easily. So we would, we could actually go in with our laptops and, and you know, at the time it was called Illuminator and that was installed on our laptops and we would be able to connect to their real data and create um, pages with their data as a, as a quick demo. And you can't do that now. But that was back in that time. It was easy.

Speaker A: Yes. Uh, uh, ah, actually uh, uh, uh, I was very fond of that facility because as you said that we could directly create a real time demo with the customer by connecting then and there.

Speaker B: Uh, now it is sold itself. Yeah, it was easy. Yeah.

Speaker A: So can you share a few pivotal use cases of SAP in action that uh, you worked on?

Speaker B: Yeah, these are, you know, um, these, these are some older ones with some of my favorites. You know, um, one of them we were doing uh, in the um, in the auto industry and we were implementing it was an, actually it was an me and mii, um, combined implementation. And you know one of the cool things that they were, that we had that they, that we kind of created for them was the ability to you know, log in with their iPads and they could, you know, and we would have them in a booth at uh, you know, any of the shows like a Sapphire or something like that. And we would, they would be able to show their, like any of their lines. And for example, one of their lines had 36 work centers on it. So you could, you could see the SKU number of every bike in, in, in on that line and in what work center it was to where it was in. In its um. In its assembly right with uh, with the. What order number it was and everything. And, and that was right from the show floor to Debt to do a, to do a simple easy demo. They could just whip out their iPads and. And they had all that information. They could click on a work center and they could get a little bit more information about that order that was there at the time and things like that. So it was just like that. All that information in your fingertips was always such good um you know, use cases of mii. Another one, uh, one. One of my favorites was the um. One uh, time I was doing ah, training uh and I used to go out and do and train customers at their site. So it would be a whole room full of you know, a customer because again it was an easy to use software where the companies themselves know I would train them and they'd be able to develop their own stuff. So you know it was a cement manufacturer, um, and they had about four or five um, different locations around the country. And you know I was in doing the training and there was a couple of guys in the back that had already been trained. They came out to light hammer to get trained. So they were actually just doing development and I was kind of helping them through uh, you know on breaks and you know just during the class and they created a. If you remember the ticker um applet that we used to have where stock ticker and it would just scroll data. Well they created a stock ticker um applet with um, with temperatures uh, from each of their different facilities around the country. And it was, it was a kiln temperature and they knew that if a kiln temperature went below a certain um, went below. Below a certain level that the plant was down. So you know they did this early in the week, maybe like on a Thursday. You know they, they just were sitting in the back room, the ticker running everything and all of a sudden one of the. One of the. One of the values went red which means. Which meant it was low because they had developed so that would do that. So the guy got on the phone immediately called the. The that site and said hey, what's happened? Why are you guys down? And you know the other site was like how do you even know we were down? We just went down. So it was just like uh, just to you know that that kind of is just. It's such a simple thing at that time showed the power of. Of you know, what am I I could do and you know, the, the power of, of visibility into the data, you know what I mean? So it was just like, it was such a great, like you know, just show of. Wow. Look, look at, look at this. Look at what such a simple thing can do, you know?

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Actually, uh, when I saw MI for the first time, it was really exciting for me as well because uh, the uh, thought that has been put into the development was very good. Uh, we could get the shop floor data and we could build our own logic inside the business logic editor.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And transform the data. Uh, so much facilities were given in my eye that I was really impressed. And since then I have been working on mi. I got chances to work on other things also, but was my favorite.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: So uh, like now we have uh, SAP dmc. So can you explain the motivation behind transitioning from MIR to dmc?

Speaker B: Well, and just, just so we know SAP calls it just DM now. They don't, they don't, they don't keep the C. Because I guess everything is cloud now. Right. So SAP is a cloud first country company. Uh, right. So you know, the one thing you have to remember is that dm, um, is not MII M. Right. So, so I think that the main, or the main motivation for SAP to transition and to move to DMC is the cloud thing and what SAP did. And they have ME M and they have mii. So when they started to build a cloud version of the ME mii, um, products, they took uh, the ME M product and they put it on the cloud, which is essentially what DM is. It's me in the cloud with, with a lot more functionality. It has, I think 98 of the functionality that me had plus a whole, a whole lot more. And it's, you know, for that it's, it's very good. Um, now the MII stuff kind of got left behind a little bit. So, so what they're doing now is, and you know, I've talked to Sam and Sam Castro and a couple of the other guys and they're starting to now, you know, get some of that MII functionality and putting it into the product. So you know, I think the main um, you know, motivation from transitioning from, from um, um, for SAP going to DM is the cloud thing. And you know, they could have easily picked MII functionality to go first, but they, they pushed me first. So I think it's going to um, it'll catch up in the next couple years is what I'm thinking, what they're saying. And What I'm hoping. Yeah.

Speaker A: Because MI is. Yeah we can develop our own ME on MII also. So. Because it's a toolkit and it provides so much flexibility that yeah, you can deliver anything. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. And that's what you uh, know that, that's what you know that. That was what's so great about MI M. You could build anything, you can build anything that DM does out of the box. Any of the ME functionalities, you can build it with mii.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: It would take a while or you know M. It might take some effort to get some of that out of the box stuff but you can do it. And in fact some of the pods that, that um, that DM offers out of the box, the production order dashboard or um, production operator dashboards, you know that was some of some stuff like you can see some stuff that I've built in mii. You know before me M was even a thing, you know, start, start operations, stop operations, non conformance. All that stuff is out of the box in me. But it's stuff that we had you know at, at uh, in different projects have. Have built.

Speaker A: Yeah. Actually I remember that when XMI came there was another product called Excel po but that didn't. The SAP was pushing that also a lot but that didn't work out.

Speaker B: Take off.

Speaker A: Yeah. So uh, I. What I feel like uh. I have a. Out here like Maya can be installed on cloud. But uh, uh. My uh, perspective is that they want everything to bring to BTP M ecosystem

Speaker B: and again and that's a pretty solid platform the btp and that's where you're going to do a lot of your extending uh, the DM product. And I talk a lot with the SAP guys and you know they'll say that you can do. You can do some of this stuff that you do in MII out of btp, you know with custom code and stuff like that. But again it's. Well and, and I'm not a btp, you know, trained guy so it just seems a uh, little bit harder to get some of that stuff done, you know there than in mii, which is one of the things I talked about in my webinar is transitioning from MII to dm. In that transition there's going to be a time where you stick with you leave your MII in place, put DM on top of that and you can use um, what you've developed in mii. You can create plugins um, that me M can uh. Or that sorry that DM can utilize still. So Our recommendation is running as you move from MII to dm run uh, hybrid uh, DM and mii, uh together using the stuff that you already have built in um, um MII and taking advantage of the functionalities and, and out of the box stuff that you have in dm.

Speaker A: Yeah. Actually I uh, remember if I remember correctly that there is a connector for uh MI also in dmc. There is somewhere. Because while we were I think a year back when we were trying to connect with the ecc there was an option to connect with mii M also using.

Speaker B: Yeah. And you can create um, what the pods use. They use plugins. You can create custom plugins and one of those custom plugins can be an MII transaction or some of the functionalities that are already existing there.

Speaker A: Mhm. Uh, can you provide insights into how DM integrates with other SAP solutions and how will this benefits uh, manufacture manufacturers?

Speaker B: Well there's, there's a couple different ways. Um. Well you know with, with, with SAP it's still that native connectivity and they have um, you know your, you hook up and I'll tell you it's, it's um to. We struggle a little bit to get it connected. Um and you know, and you were kind of learning too and you know SAP was helpful um, but we finally did get it. But it's a lot of native connectivity. It's a lot of um, you know you're setting up cloud connections and things like that. So you have a piece called the cloud connector. Um, you have to get it set up in BTP and you kind of have to match everything together. So you know, right now you know it's you know, easy to you know, create your production orders in S4, release them and once they get released that you know, DM picks them up. You can go through your, your um, uh starting your operations, um you know, going through the different routing steps um and then you know to a completion and in that completion you can confirm that and it just shoots right back up to, to um S4. So you know it's, it's an easy, so integration that way uh on the S4 side is pretty easy. Uh, integration to um, to the, to the shop floor is through plant connectivity still or you know they're starting to move towards a production connector which is just the next version of, of um plant connectivity. And so they're still using that and there's also OPERA options now and I haven't explored this, I'll be honest. Through btp. So connectivity to shop floor systems, uh, Internet of things systems, things like that through your BTP connectors now.

Speaker A: Yeah, uh, actually uh, uh, ECC connection is quite a big task there.

Speaker B: Hm.

Speaker A: If you want to connect, we need CPI also in between two.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's all the CPI stuff. Yep.

Speaker A: Yeah. Ah. So from your experience what are the, some of the challenges companies faced when implementing SAP MI or transitioning to SAP dmc and what are the solutions for overcoming these hurdles?

Speaker B: So. Implement. Well, implementing MIIS is, you know, we've been doing that for years.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: So you know, challenges, um, those challenges, you know they're. I don't think they're technical anymore. I think they're more of the uh, like, like they always were the, just the um, the change in way you do things. Right. So it was always a big change when you were implementing like an MII solution on a shop floor to you know, I always said that um, you know, the change management was always important in projects like that because you have to get people to accept that and to accept that the way to change.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So it's kind of the same thing where now you're transitioning to uh, a DM solution and you know you're going to get the same challenges, um, as far as, you know, the change management, um, piece when you're implementing dm. Um, but in the DM might have now some technical challenges because it's, you know, it's new stuff that we're doing, it's cloud based, you know, different things like that. So there are some hurdles on that side. But you know, when you're transitioning from MII to dm, I think that's a big challenge and you know, we touched on this a little bit already. But um, you know it's a, it's a different way to do things and you're not going to have your MII and you're not going to have you know, your MII guys developing, you know, DM right out of the box.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: So there, there's a lot of challenges that way which is, you know, that's one of the reasons why we, you know, to kind of mitigate some of that is, is to run hybrid, uh, you know, for, for a time until. Because not all the functionalities exist in dm. Right. So, so it's, it's truly uh, you know, a different products. You can't. And, and SAP will tell you that. Yes you can. But I'm going to say you can't do a lot of the, the MII stuff that, that you have existing at your companies now. A lot of those screens and, and you know, the different, you know, small little functionalities that you've built in, you can't do that. So that, that's why you know, you can embed uh, MII screens into DM so you know, you could you know, link to that, link to your existing stuff and everything like that. But, but you know you're not gonna, you're not gonna be able to do 100 of the same functionality of an M MII implementation in your new dm.

Speaker A: Yeah, actually I was speaking to someone and uh, uh, they were also system integrator and they told me that they have developed so many uh, solutions on like uh, what you call that packaged solutions for SAP mii and all of, all of them are going to get wasted. We have invested a lot on that M. Yep, yep.

Speaker B: Everybody had the package solution and you know that. And again, you know, for a time, you know, you will be able to run hybrid so you'll still be able to use those package solutions. But you know, I guess ultimately SAP's plan is to, is to, is to you know, get rid of it all together. But you know, we'll see.

Speaker A: Yeah, actually, uh, uh, but there is a separate ecosystem also available for uh, products that are not supported by SAP anymore. Few people are still running on R3.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. No doubt.

Speaker A: Yeah. So looking ahead, how do you see digital manufacturing technologies like gp, MI or dm, um, evolving? Are there any trends or innovation we should be watching? So.

Speaker B: A lot of uh, you know, you're going from MII to diem. So the evolution there, I think, you know MII is, is an on premise system. Right. And that's the, that's what I was always, my mindset was always, you know, on premise for your critical operations in manufacturing because you do not want that to go down. Right. So you know we, we hit it, we hit into our customers and one of their questions is well this is cloud based. What happens if we lose connection? So if you lose connection and you're in the cloud, your MES system is in the cloud, you lose all those pods. So you are down. So that's a big risk that a lot of companies are questioning. That's scary for manufacturers.

Speaker A: Yeah, simple thing like network connectivity should not hold the production operations. Mhm.

Speaker B: So you know, and we had a lot of solutions for MII that, that would, that would take care of that. So that, that we built, um, you know, that that was, you know, you would be able to download enough information for you know, because it was running on premise, uh, you know, if you lost connectivity to SAP, you were still, we were still able to build solutions that would continue to run and the operators had no idea that they were disconnected from SAP. Right. But now if you're disconnected, you are down. So I think that one of those trends is that Edge solution.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So what SAP is coming out with is the DM Edge. So DM Edge will allow you to have your pods and everything and run, run, you know, uh, even though you're not connected to the cloud. Instance. Right. So really, what is it? It's DM M on premise. What's the evolution? Could it be that everybody's moving their mes to the cloud but then they realize, hey, maybe this isn't the way to go and everybody moves it back to on premise? I don't know.

Speaker A: That's what actually I'm seeing many solutions. First they are, uh, there is a Microsoft solution similar uh, to, for shop floor connectivity. Also they are also having an Edge and cloud. Both of them, um, they learn from the mistakes and then come back to the basics again.

Speaker B: Yep. I always said like, you know, way back, you know, MII had all this new technology and everything and all these fun things that we could do, you know, like even up to like uh, you know, a couple of years ago people would show me demos of stuff that they've done with other products or with new products and I'd be like, yeah, we were doing that 15 years ago with Mii. I said that's not a big deal, you know. So you know, it's all, it's all the same um, ideas, it's new technology, better technology, different buzzwords.

Speaker A: Yes, yes. Actually, uh, like I was speaking to your other day that the people are many, many uh, many people are excited about data engineering that is nothing but uh, processing data. Uh, they have just come with a buzzword called data engineering.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: We have been doing it for years without knowing that. And I, when I first heard it I was thinking that it must be something cool. But uh, when I understood it exactly what it is, then I uh, I thought I have been doing this for years.

Speaker B: So what is like just the new terminology?

Speaker A: Yes, exactly. Similarly with AI Also like people have been telling this is AI, AI and uh, uh, it was nothing but if else statement. One of my relatives, uh, who was working in uh, Samsung, he told me that Bixby bought Bixby, uh, AI assistant from Samsung that was launched in 2016. People were actually writing statements in the uh, uh, uh, database. And based on that it was responding to the uh, customers uh, voice prompts. And recently I uh, read about that uh, Amazon, uh, uh, Amazon shops that were open without any person with computer vision and all that. There was a Demo also on YouTube that you can just pick up the stuff and computer vision will analyze and bill you when you check out from the counter automatically.

Speaker B: Yeah, I've been to a couple airports where they have that and there's, there's, there's maybe one person watching you go in, you pick whatever you want and it charges your credit card on your way out.

Speaker A: Yeah, but no, but the thing is uh, I recently I came across an uh, article I think Rick shared on his LinkedIn, uh, in some comment that there were actually thousand workers sitting in India who were analyzing that, those customers and doing the transactions behind, behind the scenes. It was not AI

Speaker B: it's like the hamsters running in the wheel behind, you know, behind the scenes making everything happen.

Speaker A: Yeah. So coming back to discussion like uh, for companies looking to adopt or upgrade to SAP DM from mii, what advice would you give to ensure a smooth and effective transition?

Speaker B: Yeah, and, and you know I've, I've, I've mentioned this a couple of times is DM is not mii. So the plan would be to run uh, in a hybrid type format, a DMMII landscape and then transition as functionality becomes available. Because there definitely is going to be more out of the box stuff and you always love out of the box as that becomes available. Whereas you're able to more easily convert, you know, some of that functionality that you've built in MII to dm. You know, that that's good and that's going to be, you know, that's going to be a couple years, you know. Now uh, you could, and there are things that we can identify that you know, maybe this wouldn't be so bad to do in BTP right now because, because there is a lot um, built and there, there is functionality there. But you know, if you want to get uh, an easy, smooth transition, you know. You know, you know typically it would be an analysis of your MII system, you know, what are you doing with it, you know, where, where's your integration, you know, et cetera, et cetera, all the basics and then you know, identify what you can put in DM M and then what's going to still have to stay in MII for the time being. And you know it's, it's, it's a, it's a process and it's a, uh, it's a Journey. But eventually I believe that SAP will get there.

Speaker A: Yeah, I completely agree with that. It's going to be hybrid mode until DM M has all the capabilities that MII has.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Mhm. But I think that's a long way to go and I don't think that 27 deadline that they are Sapie has given is going to work out in

Speaker B: this case because I believe that too and I know there's talks of extending that. So you know, I'm fingers crossed on that. But, but um, you know that that's, that's the thought. It is MII is, is. Is a good product still.

Speaker A: Yes, exactly. So finally coming to the last question. Reflecting on your journey with SAP, witnessing the whole era of SAPMI and now evolution to dmc, how do you feel these technologies have shaped the future of manufacturing?

Speaker B: Oh well, uh, you know, you know, even back in, you know, starting, you know, back in the, in 2001, you know, all from there I can, I can you know, pick out you know, points where you know, all the, you know, just from the uh, old time manufacturing, you know, shop floor, all manual processes, paper, paper processes, you know, and taking so many customers from paper to you know, using ah, a ah, tablet on the shop floor, you know, no more paper, all of it stored electronically. All those filing cabinets, you know, full of, full of your uh, paperwork gone, you know, just, just um, you know, that and I think that you know, way back when, when you know, Light Hammer started, you know, to now, you know, that, that you know, I think there is that, that we shaped a lot of that manufacturing, you know, how it's done today and, and you know, with all the real time information and visibility and things like that. So the move to MES systems, MES in the cloud, it's all just continuing to make um, manufacturing more scalable, flexible. All those things that happened during COVID where you had to change the way you're doing things. I think that the way that these technologies are built allow you to, you know, make those modifications quicker. Right? The you know, AI and machine learning allow you to do modeling better and you know the, and you just, you still have, you know, you know, even though it's not a new concept, but the real time visibility and you know, combining data and stuff like that, you know, all that is, you know, just getting better and you know, like I said, it's um, you know, it's, it's new buzzwords but it's, it's, it's the same you know, principles, you know, just better technology. You know, bigger, stronger, faster type of thing. So you know I, I think that, that you know and you know, the, the next years, you know, when whenever Industry 5.0 comes out, you know, I think some of that starting, you know, the, you know, we'll see what happens, you know, in the next 10 years. It'll be interesting.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that would be really interesting. So Joe, thanks a lot. Thanks a lot for being on my show and educating my audience about SAP AMI M Absolutely. It was really a great pleasure talking to you and getting to learn many new things about MII and dmc.

Speaker B: Always good to talk to Emerserat, you

Speaker A: know thanks a lot and I'll uh, be bugging you again in future to come to my show and share your progress on dmc. Um, we can discuss those things.

Speaker B: Ah, always happy to join you.

Speaker A: Yeah, thanks a lot. Have a nice day.

Speaker B: Thanks.

Speaker A: So this was Musarat and Joe in Innovate Extreme. Have a nice day everyone.

Speaker B: Thanks everyone. Mhm.