The 3DEXPERIENCE PLM platform is a comprehensive system and organizational management solution that oversees the entire engineering product lifecycle — from initial concept and ideation through design, engineering, manufacturing, marketing, sales, product support, and eventual end-of-life recycling. It seamlessly integrates people, data, tools, and business processes to create a robust foundation for product engineering and data management.

While PLM systems focus on product definition, configuration, and the interrelationships between product components, ERP systems (Enterprise Resource Planning) — such as SAP— manage operational execution, including material flow, inventory management, production planning, and supply chain activities. These two systems serve distinct yet complementary roles and are not interchangeable.

In manufacturing and engineering-driven organizations, most product development activities originate in the PLM environment, making it the primary source of engineering data. Effective integration between PLM and ERP enables bidirectional synchronization: transferring authoritative product data from PLM to ERP and feeding back operational changes, while ensuring seamless flow of execution data related to product engineering.

PLMLeads 3DX-SAP Connector delivers a robust, enterprise-grade integration solution between Dassault Systèmes 3DEXPERIENCE and SAP systems. Key capabilities include:

  • Independent server architecture for both ERP and PLM systems, ensuring high fault tolerance and operational resilience
  • Secure connectivity with SAP through standard web services provided by the customer
  • Unlimited data scope with the flexibility to extend integration objects based on shared business processes in areas such as Human Resources, Project Management, Quality Management, BOM, and Configuration Management
  • Version independence — fully compatible with all current and future versions of SAP and 3DEXPERIENCE (including support for SAP Business One)
  • In-Memory database utilization to significantly enhance integration performance

To maintain the independence of PLM and ERP platforms while meeting stringent security, technical, and process standards for enterprise system communication, the PLMLeads 3DX-SAP Connector employs a dedicated collaboration architecture server.

Integration Architecture (Powered by vFLOW)

Based on defined Data Flow Diagrams (DFD) and triggered by events such as material creation or updates, collaboration requests containing source data are securely stored in the collaboration database server.

Once registered, the system processes requests according to a configurable schedule or in real-time. It leverages the APIs and web services exposed by each system to retrieve and synchronize data accurately. After successful retrieval, the target system is updated accordingly.

This architecture fully addresses concurrency requirements and fault tolerance. In the event that one system becomes unavailable (e.g., during maintenance), no collaboration requests are lost. All pending transactions remain securely stored in the collaboration server. This enables complete historical tracking, auditing, and debugging of every integration process. Users can easily view the latest synchronization status and update timestamps from both directions.