| It is unfortunate and likewise telling that justification for Manufacturing Execution Systems(MES) is really so much black art. This is not to say that there are no examples of well implemented systems, running well with the constraints put upon them; there are. However, for every success story, you can find multiples of others where it just isn't playing out as expected. And it can be hard to track down this kind of information. Consider the personal consequences of a million $ project being declared by the implementation staff as: not really what was expected; and that the gains hardly seem worth the cost and effort to keep it alive. This kind of statement does not do well for career paths of Project Managers. And yet, in spite of this, MES systems are becoming more critical to a factory's success every day, as the amount of information available and the amount of information necessary to run a plant can at times be overwhelming. In general, an MES systems costs are not strongly linked to the size of a plant or the volume of production. Yes, there are per user or per workstation costs that are a piece of the financial analysis but they are usually a smaller piece of the total picture when all is said and done. When a plant purchases a piece of production equipment, that equipment has an inherent ability to produce product. The costs are leveraged by the capacity to produce. Buy more equipment and produce more product. A typical MES implementation on the other hand has large up front and continuing support costs that are for the most part in no way related to plant output . Here lies the problem for most of the mid size and smaller factories. How do they justify costs when they essentially are paying a price that is similar to that paid by a larger factory producing five times more product than they are? They run with home brewed systems or no systems at all rather that occur the costs of a typical MES implementation. Of the smaller and mid scale factories that do implement, how successful are they? If we look at our own research it becomes clear that only the more fundamental pieces are really bought on-line in most cases. The more advanced features such as electronic batch record management downloading process instructions to operators automatically linked to up-to-date training records for signature verification never get implemented, except in the largest factories. The biggest gains to be made by an MES system comes in the form of fundamental pieces of information that previously were collected and assimilated by hand. This is especially true in the smaller factories. So what are the key concerns with MES? ■ First lets start with the term itself, Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES). The name itself tries to be all compassing, all powerful, all capable. If a system is really MES in nature, that implies an openness of all sorts. How does one integrate so many pieces under one roof? Most likely it is not done in a proprietary framework but rather in one that is expandable, one that is by nature a piece of a larger whole. This is the very nature of client/server architectures today. The data being generated by factory operators belongs to the organization, not just to the software that is generating it. And it takes an open system architecture to accomplish this. ■ Third it is not knowing your factory. This weakness usually surfaces on a plants first MES implementation. There is significant information that is carried around inside of the heads of critical and usually unrecognized people in a factory. It is not necessarily the Mfg. Mgr. who has all the answers. It is frequently the lead operators or street smart technicians who really know how the factory is run. To not identify and include these people in the planning and implementation stages is to unnecessarily handicap your efforts. In conclusion then : ■ Choose an open type of systems architecture and software that allows for the data to be used across your entire organization. ■ Don't let yourself get seduced by the possibility of also including the kitchen sink in your implementation. ■ Utilize your resources, namely your undocumented collective knowledge about how the plant runs. If you do this you will have a much easier time. Integration with your accounting systems, planning and scheduling systems and others become easy. These all become plug and play pieces because the data is shareable, it has been well thought out by the people who really understand your factory and your feelings of how did I get into this mess should never appears. Free Consultation While MES maybe new to some people and customers may have questions, we will provide satisfying, understandable answers. Simply contact Factorytalk and "Call for a Coffee" for a free consultation. We are located at : Factorytalk Pte Ltd E-mail Address : |
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