conMC: SAP MII Converter

SAP MII reaches the end of life:

1. SAP MII 15.5 is the last major release, no further releases are planned.

2. maintenance ends 12/31/2030 (general maintenance may end earlier).

Thousands of industrial customers worldwide have developed a variety of shopfloor applications based on SAP MII. They all face the challenge of defining a future-proof strategy early enough. The options are:

• Greenfield: start an MES project based on a standard MES (such as SAP DM or others).
• Brownfield: Migration of the existing solution to a new technology platform
• Bluefield: Hybrid approach. Partial migration of the existing solution, cleansing of data and processes, and use of standard application processes where possible

As an SAP MII implementation partner for 15 years, we understand the challenges of options b) and c) as SAP has not provided a migration tool yet.

Therefore concircle has developed a powerful conversion tool for SAP MII. This is conMC.

What is conMC SAP MII Converter

conMC stands for concircle MII Converter and, as the name suggests, will convert any SAP MII-based application into a node.js-based application using the latest technologies.

MII Workbench developments will be converted to the modern and widely used Typescript programming language.
Database connections and user interfaces are preserved and work exactly as in the old system.

Because the conversion creates near-runnable application code, some manual development effort may still be required to ensure complete conversion of the application. A roadmap is planned so that future releases of conMC will automate even more MII content.

Why conMC

Converting your MES with conMC enables you to:

• a shop-floor application that uses the latest technologies
• no impact on users, UIs and processes remains unchanged
• have a faster and more flexible system
• easily integrate new third-party tools into your system
• change the infrastructure architecture
• easily integrate new change requests
• better system monitoring and easy investigation of bottlenecks
• get rid of the feeling of a “black box”
• host it in a cloud environment (like BTP)
• use it together with SAP DM and use the standard MES functions

There are minimal changes for production staff, as all worker UIs and URLs remain the same. However, the MII configurations can no longer be accessed because the MII is no longer used.

New system maintenance screens (e.g. configuration of the scheduler, connections, etc.) will be provided by conMC for system owners* and administrators. The user interface design will be modernized and updated while retaining the same features as MII.

Requirements and licenses

System Requirement:

Operating system: Node.js is compatible with various operating systems.

Node.js version: The server must be installed with a compatible version of Node.js. It is recommended to use the Long-Term Support (LTS) version to ensure stability and long-term maintenance.

Hardware: Hardware requirements vary depending on the specific needs of the project. A typical server setup includes a multi-core CPU, sufficient memory (at least 2 GB or more), and enough disk space to store project files and dependencies.

Cloud providers: Almost every cloud provider supports node.js.