Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are powerful software systems used to improve capacity, quality, delivery and visibility.
These elements combine to create a plant-centric production management system that can help you improve plant productivity, track and synchronize plant resources, and empower business systems and people with real-time information about what is happening in your production.
Today’s MES is all about taking control of your production and syncing up the top floor with the plant floor. As the heartbeat of any manufacturing operation, an MES application consists of three basic elements:
Those elements can affect these business functions:
Yes, if you want to connect, manage, validate and optimize your production. A comprehensive MES — which can be purchased as a single-plant, multi-plant or industry-specific solution — can help you meet a range of productivity, quality, compliance and cost-saving goals.
You can benefit from improved:
| Are you running multiple generations of technology? | That complexity leads to inconsistency and incompatibility – and that situation makes it much harder to offer customers customization with high quality and low cost. |
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| Are you inconsistent in your work procedures? | Inconsistency is a disadvantage. If you are encouraging technology and innovation but not standardizing processes, those variances are creating inefficiency and waste – which ultimately increase production costs and reduce profitability. |
| Do you rely too heavily on paper? | If people are reading those reports its usually after something goes wrong (when it is too late). Processes and production information in the hands of the right people at the right time improve decision-making for maintenance, productivity, quality, production and the reduction of rework and waste. |
| Are you missing delivery dates or experiencing inconsistent production schedules? | Those misses could prevent you from expanding your market, and even cause customers to look for another supplier. |
| Is your knowledgeable workforce retiring? | Increased turnover and less experienced people increase the risk of mistakes, rework and losses. The standardization offered through MES simplifies onboarding and training of new employees. |
Yes. MES occupies a special place in your information infrastructure – between your shop floor controls and enterprise systems. Think of an MES like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for the shop floor – but more. As the bridge between Information Technology (IT) and Operations Technology (OT), it provides enterprise visibility to actual production results and control systems with a real-time view of what the enterprise needs from production to meet business goals, including work instructions, recipes, and other crucial information.
| I need to collect and consolidate IT and OT from existing equipment and systems. | You can go deeper in the numbers without investing in MES. A combination of FactoryTalk® InnovationSuite Analytics and IIoT software offers edge-to-enterprise analytics, machine learning, IIoT and augmented reality to industrial operations. You can start with ERP. |
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| I need reports every week. | ERP typically records transactional data and reports it at intervals (daily, weekly or monthly). This is fine for financial and relational transactions but insufficient for manufacturing management who need information in real time. |
| I need to see the flow of information for job management, scheduling, quality assurance, and material management. | You need an MES for online, real-time views of the latest scheduling priorities to eliminate inaccurate and time-consuming manual data collection; configure and customize reports and provide different users with the information they need. |
| I need to coordinate production scheduling and machine maintenance. | MES offers increased visibility to data and automated processes that improve quality, increase efficiency and improve productivity. MES can help shift work to other machines and alter the production plan to keep work flowing and better manage resources – human and machine. |
Learn more about the key differences between a MES and an ERP, and the role for one or both in your production.
In as little as three months you can start to realize the benefits of an MES.
Imagine how your business would change today with increased production, reduced cycle times and lowered reject rates. Plus, multi-site customer deployments globally, centrally, distributed and via cloud can broaden the impact and deliver value on a larger scale. Your MES can deliver noticeable results in the short-term, but remember that the MES is also building long-term potential.
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