Printing of Production-Related Documents 
The printing feature allows you to automatically print production-related documents when and where they are needed on the factory floor. It also enables manual printing of documents that are created on order release to the shop floor. The system uses SAP NetWeaver Adobe Document Services component or third-party software for printing. Printing with Adobe Document Services (ADS) minimizes total cost of ownership (TCO) for required printing capabilities by using the SAP NetWeaver component.
Note
If you use other third-party printing software, see your SAP ME consultants for using it with the system.
When you set up printing for your site, you decide the following:
How, when, and where in the manufacturing process printing is to occur
You can set up automatic printing at defined points on your production lines (see ADS Document Print). For example, you may want to print a barcode label document right before or after the first step on a particular routing. Or, you may want to print a packing list document right before or after operators perform the PACK operation.
You can print or reprint documents manually from a POD or through the Document Reprint activity any time after order is released to the shop floor (see Document (Re)print).
What printers to use
Which of the following document types to use:
Barcode labels
Shop orders or SFC travelers
Packing lists for containers
What information, and in what order, (template) each document is to contain
Which materials require printing of specific documents
For example, material A requires printing of traveler AA and label AB, whereas material B requires printing of label BB.
Prerequisites
You have installed and configured SAP NetWeaver Adobe Document Services component or the Loftware Print Server software.
To use the Adobe Document Services component of SAP NetWeaver for printing, you need to install this component during SAP NetWeaver installation and configure it (see the Prerequisites section of Setting Up ADS Printing).
You have a template file containing SAP ME data fields on your server.
To print the document, the SAP NetWeaver Adobe Document Services use the .XDP template file stored in the designated shared folder on the server. XDP template can contain references to SAP ME variables (see Referencing SAP ME Variables in Printing Template). You can create this template file in Adobe Lifecycle Designer or use the template file that comes with SAP ME system.
You have set up network printers on your system network.
To print documents, SAP NetWeaver Adobe Document Services need to have access to the network printers.
Activities
Printing provides the following features:
Printing of different document types: labels, travelers, packing lists
Creating and assigning of custom document templates for printing
Associating materials with documents to print
Automatic printing at defined points
Manual (re)printing of documents
Depending on your settings, you can trigger printing at different points. Manual printing can be performed at any time after order is released to the shop floor. Automatic printing can be triggered depending on at which hook points you have set up ADS Document Print (SY521) or Document Print (SY520). For example, you can set up automatic printing on shop order release, operation start, SFC serialize or relabel.