Manufacturing Executive - November 2008 - (Page 14) MES UPDATE is the territor y between the shop floor and enterprise application systems, such MES VENDOR ACQUIRED BY as ERP. That is where crucial decisions will POMS Honeywell be made on what apOrsi Group Siemens proach will be taken to automate critical Propack Data Rockwell Automation manufacturing data, Mountain Systems GE Fanuc such as inventor y, scheduling, quality Datasweep Rockwell Automation management, and regulatory compliance. Citect Schneider Electric Automation compaBrooks Software Applied Materials nies define the approach based on their Cimnet Invensys control systems herUGS (With Tecnomatix) Siemens itage, while application vendors, such as SAP, Intercim and Pertinence Merge emphasize a top-down Visiprise SAP approach in which the financial system executes the commands. The inherent problem is that, when it comes to integration, ERP systems are transactional, whereas plant floor control systems operate in real time. This is where the battle begins to intensify, and it is one reason that SAP acquired Lighthammer, which has technology that can extract manufacturing data and apply analysis in real time, as well as Visiprise, to fill its MES gap. Now, however, the battle is brewing over metrics, business models, and, most important, semantics. To enable plant floor systems and enterprise systems to communicate, these systems must speak the same language, measure things the same way, and support the same business process management model. Organizations such as MESA, a group of vendors and manufacturers supporting and using MES, are working to define these areas. SAP and most of the major automation vendors participate as board members and working group leaders. But, victory in the MOM battle could come down to which camp or vendor wields the most weight in the debate that will determine how these systems integrate. The hope for the manufacturers on the board, including Boeing, Chevron, and Sara Lee, is that the models that emerge will be standards-based and not vendor-specific. These companies are trying to influence the outcome so that MOM is not a product that has to be deployed and integrated, but rather a set of best practices and processes that will allow a mix of best-of-breed applications and technology. 2008 Nearly One Dozen Acquisitions Mark the MES Field DATE Dec 1999 Jan. 2001 March 2002 Aug. 2003 Nov. 2005 March 2006 March 2007 May 2007 May 2007 June 2007 June 2008 Perhaps the decision that manufacturing executives face as to which philosophy to embrace will be influenced by which side can best articulate the potential to shake MES free from its shop floor roots and establish its true enterprise value. If MES is finally going to embed itself in the consciousness of manufacturing CEOs, a new vocabulary may be in order. “[A manufacturing executive] doesn’t really care about features or functions of MES, or even that it’s called MES,” says Claus Abildgren, MES marketing program manager for Wonderware, a unit of Invensys. “He cares about reducing the costs of products sold, about reducing energy consumption, about increasing order fulfillment rates, and more accurate allocation of overhead costs.” Jan Snoeij, principal consultant with consultancy Logica in Arnhem, Holland, agrees. “We definitely don’t want to go in and start talking about MES as a manufacturing execution system. They want to know that they can be in control of their own process, so we need to describe MES to them in terms of their agility, their efficiency, their effectiveness, their ability to proactively come up with initiatives in the supply chain.” Such language challenges explain why automation vendor GE Fanuc has a big focus on what its vice president of software, Erik Udstuen, has rebranded as “the ‘E’ in MES, meaning enterprise.” Udstuen says that a portion of MES’ value comes from tying one enterprise’s MES information to another’s through EDI connections, often operating outside of ERP. And independent of ERP, MES can intelligently shift the order of production if a manufacturer ties its MES into its supplier’s MES and sends Manufacturing execs don’t “really care about features or functions of MES.” — Claus Abildgren, Wonderware alerts about disruptions to a production line or changes in an order schedule. What these industry participants say differs little from what MES advocates have been saying for years: that a finely linked ERP and MES system, or simply an enterprise-wide MES system, can help a company’s shop floor respond immediately to new orders, to a sudden change in product plans, to a shortage of raw materials, and to rapidly shifting demand. But the problem is that progress has been slow. According to AMR Research, overall market penetration of MES systems sits at a 14 November
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