WHAT IS MES?
DATA DRIVEN PRODUCTIVITY

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Manufacturing Execution Software

A MES, or Manufacturing Execution System, is a specialized genre of manufacturing software used to control both engineering and production environments (also known as the line, shopfloor, fab, factory, lab etc.) Other common phrases used to describe MES software are Production Scheduling, Shopfloor Control, Manufacturing Information System (MIS), Inventory Management and Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS).
Lean Manufacturing

At its core, an MES is a real-time system that provides direction and instruction to the shopfloor and tracks all activity in the manufacturing environment, hence the "execution" moniker. The primary unit of track-and-trace is called Work In Progress, or WIP (the widgets you're making), and is often grouped into a logical and/or physical container called a Lot/Work Order.

A good MES will also track the usage and efficiency of industrial equipment and many auxiliary items such as consumable materials (e.g. chemicals, reticles, tooling fixtures) spare parts, and even employees.
The MES should always be able to answer the questions of "Who, What, Where, When and How": "Who" performed the activity? "What" data was captured as part of the activity? "Where" did the activity occur, or on which equipment? "When" did this happen and how long did it take? "How" was the activity performed; which recipe was run or which procedure was followed?

An MES will also provide significant insight on factory performance by way of operational dashboards and KPI reports (Key Performance Indicators), the most common of which include yield, throughput and cycle time. These are often utilized as part of a lean manufacturing initiative designed to reduce waste, and therefore cost. The data being captured on the manufacturing line can be translated into actionable information and then brought to the surface so management has a clear picture of how things are running; pain points become clearer and inefficiencies can be improved.

Analytics MES
While every manufacturing line is different, the most important thing to remember is that the MES must be able to accurately model and capture the way your WIP physically flows through the process.
From a high-level business point of view, an MES can receive input from a planning group or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, capture the production activities for those parts, and then provide granular and macroscopic views on the health of the factory. The performance data output by the MES can then be fed back to the planning group in order to scale at an appropriate rate. But Manufacturing Execution Systems are not just for mature processes, they are also invaluable during the R&D and ramp-up stages of a company. It all comes down to data integrity and visibility; how much time are you losing because engineers are looking at disparate data sources and have to search multiple excel files (or various paper travelers) for information?
It's important to keep in mind that MES and ERP are two very different types of software that serve different purposes. ERP is primarily used for supply chain management and financial reporting, while MES provides granular insight into how something is being manufactured and how to control that process.
It's also possible to integrate the MES a step further by way of equipment automation, sometimes referred to as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCaDA), where the MES will communicate directly with the manufacturing equipment at the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) level. While this is the "ultimate achievement" vision for high-volume manufacturing lines, it's often far too expensive to implement for most small to medium-sized businesses, hence the need for a flexible and comprehensive system that supports manual input as well as varying degrees of data collection integration.
At I-Track Software, we believe a robust MES can bring significant value to SMB manufacturers, and we also believe that it doesn't have to cost a fortune or take 6+ months to implement. This is why we developed our innovative ToolTrack MES platform that delivers the flexibility and visibility to transform an inefficient shopfloor into a world-class manufacturing environment for roughly 10% of what other MES vendors charge.
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