Why Invest in Manufacturing Execution Systems ?
The ultimate goal of any Digital Transformation Project nowadays is to take the human operators out of the production facilities and achieve production in Dark Factories. Without human operators and production managers the noisy, dangerous and toxic production environments will be easier to control and trace. In recent years investment in automation systems has increased in order to achieve this goal. Most of the time the missing link is Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) which combines business and automation layers that produce maximum high-quality products on time with minimum losses.
One of the essential points of these projects is to understand the current and future operational structure before and after the application of MES. Missing the detailed functional analysis phase is an important step that people often skip.
Selected MES software is the backbone of the enterprise and needs to be flexible to model a full manufacturing operations and business integrations together with ERP software. These are some of the use cases it achieves:
- Execution of the planned orders,
- Managing materials to be ready for production and transferring them to workstations,
- Starting work orders on time with correct machine status and materials,
- Ensuring high quality production,
- Confirmation of the order recording the correct amount of goods and losses.
During these operations minimizing human error is only possible by using MES software which is carefully adjusted for the needs of the production environment.
Common Mistakes in MES applications:
- Using a single software configuration for the different types of production models.
- Manage ERP and MES applications independently.
How to Overcome Mistakes in MES Applications:
The right approach is :
- Carefully model the interface and do not repeat the same variables at two sides as being MES and ERP.
- For the operations of ERP, MES provide online data and similarly for operations of MES, ERP manage the planning, starting and confirmation of the job orders.
- Similarly manage quality and maintenance operations in ERP with the data coming from MES.
Following these rules ensure faster and automatic operations free of manual errors.
Other Pitfalls at the Main Stages of an MES Project:
- Too much focus on IT issues both around timing and budgeting:
Problem: In general IT groups of the enterprise lead these MES projects. For a MES project it is important to select the right software layers, the most suitable database, the most efficient network and the correct sizing of the server. The real reason to start the project is to solve the problems of the production team however this is usually forgotten. Leading IT management focus on IT issues both around timing and budgeting. This minimizes the contribution of the manufacturing team.
Solution: Investing in data collection systems, additional barcode readers or special sensors usually bring more value to the overall production compared to enormous server investments. The essence of the digital transformation is in the data collected from production machines. Not only collecting but also utilizing data is a challenging task. Detailed Functional Analysis will clarify the need of real time data and the frequency of the data transactions. Hence correct data collection architecture can be established. Flow of data and information models should be realistic with parts data collection rate should be determined. Most of the time IT decides on data collection methodology ignoring process details and end up with too slow or too expensive systems.
- Limited and uncertain time allocation of the machines to be tested with MES :
Problem: Factory production schedule is a variable entity depending on the market conditions, production orders and other internal high-level decisions. Hence long-term planning of big projects needs to be revised frequently.
Solution: It is better to divide the project into smaller sub projects and control calendar more effectively. Usually valuable contribution of the production personnel appears on the final training sessions causing software revisions. Initial involvement and training of the key production personnel is critical in the success of the projects.
- Maintaining the MES system
Problem: Both IT and Maintenance teams claim to manage the system which results in inefficiency and often the lack of good maintenance.
Solution: The skill set to provide maintenance for advanced MES applications can be collected from IT and maintenance teams together. Our experience convinced us to form the team from IT people trained by the maintenance team. By then any maintenance request from the user can be fully examined starting from sensor and extending to MES database.
It is not hard to run a successful project with the dedicated team members collected from IT, production and maintenance. Most natural leaders of these teams are the related production people. The fine line between success and failure in MES is in utilization of the right people in the correct positions.