It is a truism that if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it!  This applies especially to the manufacturing sector as companies across all industries strive to improve performance, become more efficient and be better placed to respond to an increasingly competitive worldwide marketplace.  The need to have clear information at every level to support key decision making, as well effectively monitor efficiency levels has never been more central to a company’s long-term well-being. Considering a manufacturing execution system (MES) solution is regarded as one of the answers to meeting such challenges.  Mark Perry from Siemens Industry Automation & Drives Technologies outlines some of the real benefits to be gained from considering the first steps towards embracing a MES option.

Today’s business environment requires manufacturers to become ever more flexible and responsive.  At the core of this need lies the ability to access vital data and information at the right time, in the right way.  This data will provide the true knowledge from which all sensible and improvement based decisions can be made.  But generating such knowledge can really only be achieved through embracing manufacturing software technology which links into the various company control layers, and help transform data obtained from various systems into integrity based information - as well as supporting smooth manufacturing operations around a plant.  From such a solid foundation, all the key functions needed to benchmark performance, scrutinise efficiencies and increase flexibility to optimise plant responsiveness will be well served.  
 
MES options for companies can vary widely.  They can include a comprehensive and full scale total MES solution, now being implemented by many large- scale and world class manufacturing businesses.    Such companies have done so as a response to the growing importance of sustainable value creation which in turn is creating pressure and interest within companies to ensure the top floor knows what is happening on the shop floor.  Manufacturing efficiency, quality control and cost containment are now firmly on the corporate agenda as companies look closely at how strategic IT investments can help fulfil corporate strategies.  MES, in many cases, is proving the answer to this pressure.

However, not all companies are able or ready to embrace a fully integrated MES solution, and if this is the case, they can examine the immediate benefits to be derived by taking the first steps in this area.  MES solutions are scalable, and nearly all manufacturing processes would benefit in some way through the implementation of just some of its invaluable tools.

There are a number of key manufacturing control areas that companies could examine should they seek to improve all round performance and enable them to better understand their effectiveness and efficiency.  They can all be addressed through MES solutions and they include:

Using data collection to improve productivity across the plant.  In areas such as data collection, aggregation and contextualisation, drastic improvements can be made within a manufacturing environment.  Data management has a key and central role in the drive for improved productivity and performance, and simple software functionalities can help senior management with this objective.  MES software can collect, archive, group, aggregate, validate, contextualise and manipulate process data from a variety of real-time historical and diverse back-end data sources.  This data collection can then prove invaluable in assisting in the need to support quality assurance, reporting, statistical analysis and performance monitoring, as well as areas such as certification delivery.

This data when available via the MES solution enhances the position of management to make clear and decisive decisions based on real facts.  For instance, it will allow support for exception handling or to improve performance based on KPI calculations set against manufacturing events or resources.  KPIs can be associated with production orders, equipment, process segments, batches or even personnel, and will help give an unequivocal understanding of the manufacturing status across the whole company, if required.

Benchmarking Performance. Companies may wish to examine performance in a number of ways.  Data analysis is available in many forms to help management benchmark the performance and efficiency of the plant production and, again, this can range in option terms from looking at performance data in a time-oriented manner, or within a contextualised way set against manufacturing events.

Production Performance./KPIs   This critical area is closely linked to KPI management.  All data collected and aggregated from different sources has the ability to be contextualised to relevant production events such a production operations, process segments, orders or batches.  Data contextualisation maintains the relationships between specific production events and ranges of time-series data, product quality data or any other key performance indicator.  Again, the MES solution will automatically trace production events and collect and calculate KPIs according to such events and, thereby, automatically build the relationships between different sets of data. Key tools such as OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) can be used to define and calculate multiple KPIs including availability rate, performance rate and quality rate, as well as finding causes of equipment downtime, prevention of idle times and identification of poorly performing production areas.OEE is extensively used in process industries, for example bottling to monitor plant performance.

Client Access.  The capability of providing the right information at the right moment to the right person can make a significant difference in the efficient handling of manufacturing operations.  MES based software can enable this to happen with a variety of tools available to help supply, dispatch and analyse the data in question.  For instance, historical data can be examined from different perspectives such as trends, messages, bar graphs and production.  Likewise, within an Excel Add-in function, data can be displayed within spreadsheets and simply configure queries by means of a wizard.

Finally, areas such as compliance with industry standards and supporting regulations, as well as long term external archiving and pre-defined reporting models, are some of the additional solutions available from within the MES toolbox.