Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)
Times have passed when discrete manufacturing processes have not necessarily been reliant on digital production control systems for monitoring activities or for operational functions. Due to the increasing complexity in all areas of multifarious production cycles, it has become indispensable to keep track of the entire entrepreneurial sub-processes at all times. Therefore provides an information technology platform designed to not only monitor but also to control complex production processes.
The platform – providing the operating level of a multi-layered manufacturing execution system on a process-oriented basis – is called Manufacturing Execution System (MES – ). By taking the commitment of resources into account, the mentioned models/systems are able to map the detailed sequences – defined by the specific production tasks of an entire production process – to an elaborate computer system.
Thus, MES close the gap between the economically shaped level – respectively the managing level – of a company and the underlying production process at the automation level. By reproducing a production process within a MES, the production process itself will constitute an economic model whose state can be monitored, visualized and calibrated on-line.
- By linking a production control system to the level automated process real time management and supervision of the production will be possible.
- Backed up by veritable data, MES will allow you to evaluate all process-related activities within your plant from an objective perspective by means of user-defined visualizations (graphics, statistics and tables) to bolster your momentous decisions.
- The use of customer-specific key figures will facilitate the comparison of data and will assist you in weighing up modifications within the production program or within the strategy of your company.
- Using the data obtained, optimized control strategies will be calculated. Based on this output, the system will autonomously determine how to prioritize a certain workpiece at a certain point within a production sequence. Therefore priorities will be attached to every single workpiece to optimally organize the entire chain of processes. What follows is the perfecting for the utilization of resources as well as a significant improvement within the allocation of resources.
- In order to pool information control stations/points will be installed. This is, to provide an opportunity to analyze the production data before the production process will be altered by a specific intervention.
- Since MES allow for the fine-tuning of individual areas of your facility, entire process sequences will be synchronized in parallel. Thereby, inefficiencies should be averted. Starting with streamlining the order management going further to the issuance of delivery notes – every single processes of your corporation can effectively be synchronized and controlled. Ideally, even internal supply chains will be aligned with external ones whereby the set of problems coming along with just in time (resp. just in sequence) resourcing of equipment and materials will be shifted to the digital world.
- In order to optimize specific processes ex ante, detailed simulations even offer the possibility to set foot in a production plant well before completion via a 3D model.
- Without interrupting the ongoing production, MES allow for the optimization of
- the global resource management – taking throughput times, transfer buffers and maintenance tasks into account;
- distinct production sequences applied to single components or products;
- the manufacturing schedule applied to the entire product line.
- Additionally, the operational data generated by MES will provide:
- particular data sets coordinating the needs of the construction department subject to materials management;
- production figures and product data used for statistical/economic analysis;
- reportings for commercial order handling and processing et al.