Plant Connectivity Overview

PCo provides connectivity services for the manufacturing industry, in particular unsolicited data notification services: In this way it enables the manufacturing integration between real-time manufacturing systems and SAP applications. PCo is a highly extensible infrastructure on which to build manufacturing applications.

Through SAP MII, PCo can query real-time, historical, and statistical data for agents that support such queries. PCo can write current and historical data for specific agents.

PCo can act as OPC UA client as well as OPC UA server to integrate into Industry 4.0 communication networks. With its ability to model operational sequences, PCo is able to orchestrate independent machine units on plant level. Especially when acting as server, PCo provides a modification- free extensibility. Customers and partners can enhance the functionality by adding their own server methods to PCo without modification of the standard.

In connection with the Digital Manufacturing Cloud, PCo provides access to data sources, devices, and machines. It hence acts as the integration component between cloud applications for manufacturing and the shop floor.