Manufacturing Executive - January/February 2009 - (Page 20) SPECIAL ROUNDTABLE REPORT GIC A TE ING TAKRE TRA MO S OF THE W ANT IE V OFT ES S ITION E, M AGU , IN ADD ITS, PR G IN ID THAT Y BENEF INETIN A N C A ME SERS S FFICIEN PLAY A N N I EU ILL DE LE I WAR OST AN LOGY W ANT RO TO BETO C TECHNO IMPORT PANIES r M THE SINGLY EIR CO SES. ark Halpe M S A H CRE LING T BUSINE Edited By B ENA E AGILE COM L P I 20 f nine people can represent the future of an industry, then a recent roundtable gathering in Prague provided a terrific glimpse into the direction that manufacturing execution software (MES) is heading. And that direction looks up — as in up the corporate ladder. Users from Rolls Royce, can giant Rexam, the Steel Authority of India Ltd.’s Bhilai Steel Plant, Dutch dairy heavyweight Campina, South African chemical and fuels maker Sasol, and German-Japanese producer of elastometric seal and custom-molded products joint venture Freudenberg-NOK all agreed that top-level executives are increasingly paying attention to MES, the software that watches and controls what’s happening in the plant. Consultants from Logica and Atos Origin concurred. The panelists disagreed over how much thought the executive suite is giving to what manufacturers have long regarded as a shop floor technology, but no one disputed that MES is gaining mind-share among the brass, who want to tie it to the enterprise and use it to become more agile to dynamically respond to rapidly changing market demands and dutifully meet compliance needs. In a lively, wide-ranging discussion co-moder- Manufacturing Executive JAN/FEB-09 Photos: Ales Vegricht
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