OREANDA-NEWS. SAP SE (NYSE: SAP) today announced the availability of the new SAP Engineering Control Center interface to EPLAN, a leading electrical computer-aided design (CAD) engineering solution.

The new interface is another demonstration of the company’s strategy to simplify and expand the authoring tool integration to the SAP Product Lifecycle Management (SAP PLM) application using the SAP Engineering Control Center integration tool.

The pace of technological advancement is constantly increasing and puts pressure on manufacturers to be more innovative. Products are becoming more and more complex and are often a combination of mechanics, electrical, electronics and software. Product data is stored in multiple repositories, making it difficult for engineers to keep track of product data and ensure data consistency.

With the new SAP Engineering Control Center interface to EPLAN, users can include electrical CAD data such as connection lists, electrical and fluid engineering circuit plans, electrical part lists and wiring information in their mechanical CAD product models. Electrical data is integrated to SAP PLM helping to achieve reduced complexity and error and more efficient product design.

SAP’s strategy aims to increase efficiency in engineering and manufacturing through a comprehensive and flexible integration platform for all authoring tools. The SAP Engineering Control Center integration tool allows interfaces that provide a complete view of a digital product, including mechanics, electrical, electronics, software and simulation, thereby creating total transparency across engineering disciplines.

“The new interface between SAP Engineering Control Center and EPLAN is a huge step in the direction of mechatronic integration of diverse disciplines along the product lifecycle,” said Maximilian Brandl, president, EPLAN Software & Services. “We are happy that our interface is a standard SAP product, which will support our joint customers with full integration to SAP software combined with an innovative user interface.”

“As product complexity increases, our customers are looking for a simplified way to gain a 360-degree view of product data. Therefore, it is critical for the enterprise to facilitate cross-discipline collaboration,” said Hans Thalbauer, senior vice president, Extended Supply Chain, SAP. “The interface to the electrical CAD system is a key enabler for a holistic systems engineering approach for product development.”

The SAP Engineering Control Center interface to EPLAN is part of SAP’s broader effort to strengthen relationships with its partner ecosystem, enabling partners to address even the most complex customer challenges. The new interface to EPLAN leverages the experience of CIDEON Software GmbH & Co. KG, a long-established SAP partner. Interfaces to leading mechanical authoring tools are already available from SAP software and solution technology partners that perform CAD integration, including CIDEON,  DSC Software AG, CENIT AG and .riess engineering europe gmbh.

The SAP Engineering Control Center integration tool, including the new interface to EPLAN, will be showcased at the SAP International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management, being held on Oct 1–2 in Darmstadt, Germany.