Offline shopfloor requirement

Question

Hi Folks,
I have a requirement which encompasses implementing a solution for online and offline scenario.
Contract Manufactures have to be provided with an ability to confirm POs from the shopfloor.
The boundary conditions of the requirements are as such:
- The business needs a solution that will work both online and offline to capture certain fields using a hand held scanner (RFID)
- The shopfloor network lies outside the network in which ECC is hosted
- The shopfloor might not have connectivity to the LAN/intranet at all times.
Given the above scenario, the solution needs to cater to the following features/needs:
- The solution must be web-based
- The same solution needs to be accessible online and offline
- The confirmation should be automated (irrespective of if they are connected or are offline). (In short, the user should not have to take the trouble of logging in again when there is connectivity in order to push the confirmation to ECC. Hence the conventional offline adobe forms scnarios -> fill offline, upload online is out )
A few solutions / approaches I could think of is as follows:
1) If we can convince the business that the shopfloor could have a VPN tunnel connected to the network in which ECC is hosted, we can use the following solution:
- Adobe forms used online and offline .
     - Online can be achieved by using interactive adobe forms.  The necessary   fields are filled in . (+Question: Is it possible to have a reader connected , say via USB and have an app that converts the barcode into keystrokes + autoenter and is entered in the adobe forms?+). On click of submit, a BAPI confirms the PO in ECC.
    - Offline can be achieved by using Offline AdobeInteractive FormsIntegration using SAP PI ABAP Mapping. The user accesses a saved version of the Adobe forms in the desktop. Once filled, on click of submit, the PDF form can be converted as an XML attachment and sent to the Microsoft outlook outbox of the user. Whenever the exchange server has connectivity, it synchronizes the folders and automatically mails the PDF attachment to PI's mail adapter.In PI, it is transformed into an IDoc structure and finally be posted to a SAP backendsystem using Proxy/IDoc/ALE technology.
2) In an event VPN cannot be used, we can only go in for the offline scenario at all times which routes back data to ECC via PI.  In the current landscape , PI interfaces with external network via a web dispatcher placed in the DMZ.
The emphasis here is on a 'automated offline' scenario. The part where the application needs to be 'outside the network' could be negotiated.
A few solutions I have been evaluating, but do not have concrete understanding on are:
- Use of a Federated(distributed) PI approach, in conjuction with BPM (not clear on how this would work, but am still reading up on it.)
Has anybody have a similar requirement?  Are my assumptions mentioned above valid? (eg: I am assuming that RFID scanner to Adobe forms integration can happen) Any pointers here will be extremely helpful.
Thanks and Regards,
Puja

Answer 1

Any thoughts on this? Or any suggestions on which forum should I post this query to in order to elicit a suitable response. (I posted it in this forum since the original solution was to have a web dynpro application [with interactive forms] ).