Thirty years ago many companies still used paper or spreadsheets for the accounts, typewriters or word processors for invoices, and a card index system for inventory control. These have all but disappeared in business administration. However, the same is not true for the shopfloor.
Work instructions are created in Microsoft office, with part numbers being copied and pasted from the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to the work instruction, rendering it un-auditable and prone to error. Production records are kept on a sheaf of paper that moves with the product, onto a screen that is disconnected with the work instructions.
The answer to this has long been proclaimed to be manufacturing execution systems (MES). At heart, these are computerised systems used in manufacturing that track and document the transformation of raw materials through to finished goods. MES can provide the right information at the right time and show the manufacturing decision maker how the current conditions on the shop floor can be optimised to improve production output. MES works in real time to enable the control of multiple elements of the production process such as inputs, personnel, machines and support services.
According to research carried out earlier this year, approaches to adopting manufacturing execution systems are changing substantially, leading to faster returns and greater satisfaction. Manufacturing business and IT leaders should take note that the approach they use to adopt MES will be a factor in determining long-term success.
The survey found that enterprise MES approaches go beyond traditional benefits such as increased quality and drive faster value across the manufacturing network with tangible business contribution. It also reported that there was increasing interest and expectations of the role that cloud computing will play in deploying MES and that it is expected to substantially alter how organisations deploy MES.
To maximise the benefits, business and IT leaders involved in manufacturing need to stop viewing MES as a single-site investment and take an enterprise implementation approach that can be replicated across plants, and include all plants in the planning and design of the proposed implementation. It is also important that they begin investigating whether or not cloud computing is a suitable option for their organisation’s MES strategy. This will help drive scalability and lower total cost of ownership in the long run.
So what initially drives manufacturers to look towards MES? “The main advantage of an MES system is to provide users with real-time information on current conditions from the shop floor, allowing them to make changes to production schedules based on machine, labour or part availability,” explains Antony Bourne, global manufacturing industry director at IFS. “For example, if a machine fault is identified during a production run, then users can be notified immediately and the production can then be rescheduled according to rules and/or manual intervention.”
According to Bourne, business processes have become more and more digitised over the last few years and the integration of MES into business flows means that organisations are now able to react more quickly to change and provide better customer support through the ability to give progress updates on orders.
“For example, previously, if a customer wanted information on a part order, then they would need to make calls to the shopfloor to check availability and progress,” he adds. “Today, when a customer orders a part, they will then receive accurate details on production timelines and shipping based on a real-time data flow.”
Not all MES systems are the same and some only operate on the shopfloor, which means they have no integration with the rest of the business and lack the data visibility provided by ERP. A better option is for manufacturers to look at some of the more advanced ERP packages that include MES as an available module and provide integration with the rest of the business.
“This level of integration means that data can be made available from multiple processes for procurement, manufacturing, quality and supply chain management, providing visibility into the entire journey of materials and the information needed to deliver a better production and customer experience,” Bourne says. “Another important element to consider when looking at MES is usability of the system. It’s really important that any MES solution should have a modern configurable user interface so that new users can be quickly trained and are able to easily adopt this new way of working.
Usability of the system
“For organisations to really benefit from MES systems, they should make sure that they provide the following capability: real-time production visibility and data collection; labour performance and efficiency; quality statistics; machine information/statistics; scheduling capabilities; document management; lean management principles; costings (actual against standard); overall equipment effectiveness (OEE); traceability of components; standard/configurable reports and user configuration of interface.”
Like many businesses, plastics companies comprise two worlds that are dependent on one another, but often kept separate: production and corporate management. Each uses its own particular IT systems and bases its decisions on different types of information. This is a problem with a number of implications.
Dynamic market requirements frequently pose unsolvable challenges to outdated IT environments. These include the inability to co-ordinate the production processes with the constraints and objectives from sales, purchasing, customer and product management or corporate planning – and certainly not in an automated and prompt manner.
Depending on the pain threshold and competitive pressures, there comes a time sooner or later when a decision is made to modernise the IT systems for both production and management control.
“These investments in MES and ERP often appear to be rather technical at first glance, but will for the first time offer a company the strategic opportunity to connect management with operational processes down to the level of individual machines on the shop floor in an automated manner,” Hermann Stehlik, vice president, Central Europe at Epicor, explains. “One of the immediate benefits is that this makes critical production data available at the click of a button; there is no further need for the laborious task of searching manually for the causes of excessive energy usage, scrap, downtimes or quality deficiencies.”
As the integration of production and management provides benefits, particularly to companies in the plastics industry, Epicor has tailored its established Mattec MES solution specifically for this industry and for integration with Epicor ERP. “One important aspect to understand is that our MES solution can be operated separately and independently of ERP,” Stehlik adds. “This enables companies to implement the modernisation of MES and ERP and their integration to suit their own schedule – either step-by-step or using a big bang approach.”
MES-ERP integration meets two fundamental challenges. On the one hand, direct correlations with production processes can be taken into account automatically for strategic decisions as well as the daily administrative workflows. On the other hand, starting points for improvements and savings can be identified, implemented and tracked accurately on the basis of real-time data from production.
“Thermotech, a multinational manufacturer of plastic components with a workforce of more than 1,200 worldwide, is a good example,” Stehlik explains. “It has been using Epicor ERP for many years. It now intends to implement Mattec MES alongside and integrate the two systems.”
The goal is to integrate all facilities and machines worldwide with one central data system, so that real-time data for performance measuring can be made available in the ERP system, from operating times and downtimes to operational key figures.
Better insight into processes
The connection between ERP and MES will enable Thermotech to obtain a better insight into its operative processes and simplify analyses to determine where and by which measures savings and improvements are likely to prove successful.
“The direct integration of MES with ERP will allow plastics companies to recognise the frequently small, but crucial details of the complex correlations and dependencies between production and management more quickly and take them into account in their decision making,” says Stehlik. “This is an important competitive advantage, which is relatively easy to realise.”
Ultimately, MES systems can support manufacturers in developing high-quality products quickly and cost-effectively by making shop floor information available to the rest of the company and through providing the ability to respond quickly to issues and changing requirements.
However, the more integrated the MES system is with the rest of the organisation, then the more gains manufacturers will see in terms of efficiency and cost improvements, and accuracy of data.