IoT Integration in ERP: A Case Study of Global Shop Solutions
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Database Management & Storage
- Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Applicable Industries
- Electronics
- Equipment & Machinery
Applicable Functions
- Facility Management
- Warehouse & Inventory Management
Use Cases
- Additive Manufacturing
- Manufacturing Process Simulation
Services
- System Integration
- Training
About The Customer
Global Shop Solutions is a leading provider of ERP software solutions for the manufacturing industry. Their ERP software provides applications needed to deliver a quality part on time, every time from quote to cash and everything in between including shop management, scheduling, inventory, accounting, quality control, CRM, global shop support and more. Available in the cloud or on-premises, their manufacturing customers benefit from real-time inventory accuracy, improved on-time delivery, lower administrative costs, increased sales and improved customer service. The company's headquarters in The Woodlands, Texas includes a state-of-the-art R&D facility and Global Shop Solutions training center. Through its offices in the U.S., Mexico, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the company supports thousands of manufacturing facilities in over 25 countries and nearly 30 industries.
The Challenge
The advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) has revolutionized the manufacturing industry. The replacement of expensive PLC-based devices with cost-effective IoT-enabled devices has become a norm. Global Shop Solutions, a provider of a popular ERP solution for over 40 years, faced the challenge of meeting customer demands for IoT-enabled options. They needed a lightweight, embedded database solution that could interact efficiently with the Actian Zen database, the core of its ERP solution. The challenge was to find a serverless database that could be embedded within these inexpensive devices to store and process information. Using a tool like SQLite could meet the need for a small-footprint serverless database capable of collecting data, but sharing the data with any server-based database would require a middleware layer to transform the SQLite data into a format that another database could ingest.
The Solution
Global Shop Solutions found the solution in Actian Zen Core edition, a serverless version of the same Actian Zen database that supports their ERP system. This lightweight, serverless database interacts seamlessly with Actian Zen Edge, Enterprise, and Cloud editions, ensuring a powerfully integrated, high-performance ERP solution. As Actian Zen Core edition uses the same security models, data types, and data formats as the server-based edition of Actian Zen, moving data securely between an IoT device and the Global Shop Solutions ERP system requires no ETL and no middleware. This eliminates the need for Global Shop Solutions to create and manage an entire infrastructure layer, and also eliminates what could become a processing bottleneck in a customer’s manufacturing environment. Furthermore, the performance of Actian Zen does not require the ongoing attention of a DBA, making it an ideal solution for Global Shop Solutions customers with understaffed IT teams.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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