by What are Manufacturing Execution Systems?
Manufacturing execution systems (MES) are computerized systems used in manufacturing that provide operational control of processes and track and document production output and quality. MES provides connectivity between enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and manufacturing equipment on the plant floor.
MES Functions and Features
Manufacturing Execution Systems and Software manages and optimizes core production processes like quality control, material movement and facility condition monitoring. Common MES functions include:
– Production Tracking: Track the movement and transformation of materials through the production process from raw materials receipt to finished goods output. MES tracks production progress and provides real-time visibility into production activities.
– Data Collection: Collect critical production data from plant floor equipment including machine status, downtime reasons, rejects and production counts automatically. This eliminates manual data entry errors.
– Quality Management: Ensure product quality by capturing quality inspection data, non-conformance tracking and root cause analysis of defects. MES facilitates statistical process control.
– Equipment Monitoring: Track real-time key performance indicators (KPIs) of production equipment like machine run time, downtime duration and causes, setup times and overall equipment efficiency (OEE).
– Labor Tracking: Record employee attendance and production goals completion through features like badge swipes, electronic timecards and tracking of labor tasks.
– Inventory Management: Monitor material and component usage as well as inventory levels during production to minimize waste and maximize fill rates.
– Maintenance Management: Schedule preventative maintenance tasks and manage maintenance work orders and history to reduce unplanned downtime.
– Shop Floor Control: Manage sequencing, prioritization and dispatching of production jobs to ensure just-in-time delivery of customer orders. MES optimizes resource allocation.
MES Benefits for Improved Operations
MES offers manufacturers key benefits that help improve operational efficiency, visibility and productivity:
– Increased Overall Equipment Effectiveness: Actionable data on machine performance leads to improved downtime reduction, changeover time reduction and quality improvement efforts to boost OEE.
– Reduced Production Costs: Identification of problem areas and waste elimination through batch reduction, improved yield, and reduced inventory carrying costs lower total production expenses.
– Improved On-Time Delivery: Real-time shop floor monitoring and control helps prioritize customer orders to ensure on-time delivery commitments are met.
– Enhanced Quality and Consistency: Quality management features facilitate statistical process control, reduce defects through root cause analysis and ensure consistency in meeting product specifications.
– Optimized Labor Utilization: Labor tracking helps optimize employee assignments, training needs identification and ensures compliance to production targets.
– Inventory Reductions: Visibility into material and WIP inventory levels at all points of the production process minimizes overproduction and obsolete inventory risks.
– Predictive Maintenance Capabilities: Historical equipment data enables condition-based and predictive maintenance for planned downtime versus unexpected failures.
MES Implementation Best Practices
Proper planning and change management are critical to the success of any MES implementation project:
– Evaluate Needs Accurately: Map current processes, identify pain points and desired objectives to ensure MES capabilities are a good fit.
– Select an MES Partner Carefully: Consider vendor experience, certification for specific industries, integration capabilities, security practices and post-sales support.
– Staged Rollout: Divide implementation into logical phases by process, department or location for controlled testing and change absorption.
– User Training and Buy-In: User readiness is vital, so dedicate resources to comprehensive end-user training programs and promote the benefits.
– Integrate with ERP/QI Systems: Careful integration testing is needed at ERP interfaces like orders, inventory, bills of material and quality systems like SPC.
– Monitor Post Go-Live: Actively track KPIs, user feedback and system utilization to ensure goals are being met and changes are managed efficiently.
Overall, a well-implemented MES solution can play a transformative role for manufacturers by automating tasks, streamlining operations and offering actionable insights for continuous improvements in plant productivity and performance.
*Note:
1. Source: Coherent Market Insights, Public sources, Desk research
2. We have leveraged AI tools to mine information and compile it
