In any manufacturing industry, the factory is the major area in which the final value creation processes are deployed to obtain an outcome. This manufacturing process is a major link in the value chain of any organisation. It is also closely linked and dependant on upstream processes such as design, purchase, research and development, and parallel processes such as maintenance, quality management and inventory control. Considering this, the manufacturing processes need to be in synchronisation with the business requirements. Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are used as a real-time communication platform for this purpose, and to serve as a vital link with the business process requirements. .jpg) MES software has to cover the special needs of a company’s production processes, hence, there are different MES solutions and products available for different needs. There is no MES software available that covers all possible needs. A detailed vendor selection process is mandatory, if the company wants to find out if the MES fulfils its needs. How can a firm find the right MES vendor and the right product? The company must analyse specific production processes, define requirements and compare its needs with the vendor product in a ‘fit-gapanalysis’. It must rely on an MES product rather than an MES framework. MES standard products should provide industry-related standard functionality and built-in industry know-how. MES standard products significantly reduce costs for the introduction process for MES. The company can ask vendors for suitable customer references and visit these reference installations. It could also rganise workshops for a proof of concept and test the real ‘out-of-thebox’ capabilities for the business. “Potential MES project customers will have to work with industry domain specialists to exactly determine which kind of MES functionality will to solve the customer’s requirement. An analysis and specialised consulting are also required in order to understand the scope, timeline and cost of implementation,” explains Baban Bhuriya, Business Manager, Manufacturing Execution System (SIMATIC IT), Siemens Ltd.
Reasons galore Manufacturing operations typically have disparate automation systems, processes and silos of information. It is an imperative to have high-level visibility for effectively managing materials, machines, resources and processes. MES are implemented primarily to have a real-time, responsive production system catering to the business needs, with greater shopfloor visibility. Effective and efficient manufacturing demands agility in integrating production plans to customer demands for continuous performance tracking of production systems. MES improves material and information flow between different layers of automation across the organisations.
Valmeeka Nathan, Vice-President and Head of Product Lifecycle and Engineering Solutions (PLES), Infosys Technologies Ltd, says, “Improving overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and effective inventory management have a significant effect on reducing the cost of manufacturing. By effectively visualising and tracking resource wastage at various stages, MES enables manufacturers to achieve lean manufacturing objectives on the plant floors.” The regulatory requirements also necessitate MES to track products during various stages of production, ensuring adherence to the standards. MES, with its focus on the core functions as defined by the MESA functional model, offers a convenient technology platform to integrate production systems to business. Best practices and examples Some of the best practices for effective MES implementation include the following: MES implementations affect people, processes and operations. Hence, MES implementation initiatives should have a clearly defined vision and buy-in from the top management with an effective framework for making crucial decisions involving all stakeholders, including manufacturing operations, engineering and IT
Defining an MES implementation roadmap to optimise schedule, mitigate risks, staging the existing system with minimum impact to production, personnel and processes Clearly articulating the expectations from the MES system, with requirements and functional specifications, using the ISA95 model for gathering user requirements is recommended Developing an implementation strategy based on priorities, to narrow down the choice of MES functions and packages As different processes, systems methods and data are involved, standardisation is the key to integration. In global manufacturing, integration of multiple sites becomes simpler Well-defined Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and metrics for measuring the qualitative and quantitative benefits of MES, validated through a pilot project Building a framework to create awareness, collaboration and training.
For example, the Infosys engineering solutions practice took up a consultative engagement for a large aluminium major in the US and defined the roadmap for MES implementation. Subsequently, a pilot was planned with a clear understanding of the ROI metrics. After implementation, the defined metrics were achieved with significant improvement demonstrated in terms of quality, energy savings and increased visibility of the shopfloor operations. Another example is from a pharmaceutical producer named AstraZeneca, at their Indian production site in Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore). AstraZeneca has introduced PAS-X Weighing & Dispensing. The high-availability MES system manages the central weighing and dispensing operations and creates electronic weighing reports. It improves performance and enhances the right-first-time factor.The solution is based on standardised business processes and is intended to be rolled out in more sites in the Asia-Pacific region. SAP best practices include basic financials, basic controlling, basic materials management, production, basic sales and distribution and cross-industry scenarios (CRM, SAP SCM, SAP BW, and SAP SRM). The organisational structure provides the strategic vision and operational vision of the company through different modules-materials management, production planning, quality, document management systems, finance and controlling, sales and distribution, HR and payroll. MES market Globally, the MES package and services market runs to billions of dollars and is growing rapidly. New analyses from Frost & Sullivan reveal that the market earned revenues of approximately $3.6 billion in 2009 and estimates that this will reach $6 billion in 2013. Considering Asia-Pacific and China as the hub of manufacturing growth, any estimates for global projections could be expected to generate at least 50–60 per cent growth from Asia-Pacific and China. Christian Woelbeling, Senior Director Marketing & Sales, Werum Software & Systems, says, “The MES market for life sciences is expected to develop significantly over the next few years, especially in the strong growing Asia-Pacific market. This perspective is driven by the demand for rising quality standards and stronger legal regulations in the Asia-Pacific pharma and biotech markets.” The need to integrate MES systems with ERP systems (functionality levels that sometimes overlap in various software ‘areas’ or applications) leaves a lot of room for different views of one market. Enterprise software solution for small businesses For a small business, it’s better to build solutions that cater to specific areas and specific functions. Enterprise software applications are: Small-scale ERP solutions that also include CRM and HR MIS (Management Information Systems including the shopfloor systems) Content management solutions (if company has Webbased applications) Security software for safeguarding the other applications and networks. Smaller production companies can benefit from smaller applications with specific functionalities—also on the manufacturing level. Scalable packages such as KPI management are available on the market. Aniruddha Kadkol, Tata Technologies Project Manager—MACS, says, “Enterprise softwaresolutions need to be deployed, considering the existing manufacturing setup, the human resources available, business goals and budgets. We do a 360-degree evaluation of the above factors before working out our possible solution maps. Many of our customers and potential users are from small business.” Off-the-shelf MES packages There are many COTS packages from leading industry vendors that particularly address the needs of discrete manufacturing companies (GE Fanuc Proficy, CITECT Ampla, CAMSTAR, SIMATIC IT, Rockwell, Wonderware,Visiprise).The selection process needs to consider some key aspects like support availability in the geography, supporting the 11 MESA functions and ISA-95 standards, compatibility for configuring to specific processes of the customer, vendors’ competence in discrete manufacturing. Infosys can help device manufacturers to conduct a due diligence and arrive at the best fit for a particular device manufacturer. There are several factors and metrics that are to be taken into account. Some of these include: Effort to implement the various MES functions Effort for data exchange and mapping, interfaces—production data collection, production optimisation, quality inspection Effort towards configuration requirements Customisation efforts for analytics and presentation Percentage of available MES package functionalities to meet the requirements. Some of the metrics used for tracking the utilisation and improvements include OEE, cycle time, lead time, down time, yield and rejection rate. Cost-benefit evaluation of MES The cost-benefit analysis for MES can be computed by projecting the ROI for the key MES functions implemented-downtime reduction, overtime requirements, waste reduction, obsolete inventory, reduction in costs for tracking, reduced rejects and rework, reducing labour, improving cycle time and improving agility to meet dynamic demand cycles. The ROI benefit is derived by identifying the waste streams through a Value Stream mapping/analysis or similar technique and identifying the improvement initiatives and adoption rate. Companies can achieve the targeted goals when the business metrics are aligned to the manufacturing operations metrics enabled through MES. In turbulent times, MES can help manufacturers through promoting: Control and management of existing resources to cope with the production, thereby avoiding the need for fresh investments in manufacturing assets Inventory control to reduce cost of materials and improve internal cash flow Adherence to regulatory requirements, and faster response to requests or controls. MES on profitability MES by itself does not improve profitability. MES allows a trained workforce to recognise hidden inefficiencies in manufacturing and associated processes and enhances the workflow-based visualisation of the production and value creation process, thus enabling improvements and changes within shorter and shorter cycle times. Profitability, seen as a function of machine, manpower, material and process efficiencies, is highly dependant on optimisation of the same. MES allows a continuously improving path to tune the above parameters, thus enhancing profitability. On SCADA SCADA is an acronym for Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition. It refers to an industrial system that monitors and controls processesindustrial, infrastructure or power. SCADA has remote terminal units or PLCs to gather the data, HMIs or clients for data presentation and viewing and network setups to connect the monitored and controlled components. The main features of a SCADA are: Process visualisation Control and monitoring including process diagnostics Alarm and trend archiving Report generation Information flow to higher business or control systems MES on shortage prevention MES are the key to supply chain visibility. An MES does not merely focus on compliant execution of batch work orders according to standard procedures. When it comes to the supply chain, an MES helps companies with the visibility they need in the supply chain in order to manage inventory and the risk of shortages. The MES provides appropriate real-time visibility into manufacturing operations from shop floor to management—an important contribution to operational excellence.  MES includes business functionality for quality aspects. It provides deviation management functions, quality control and integrates third-party quality systems like LIMS. At the end of the day, the MES provides a batch record that documents all quality relevant aspects. Shaligram Rane, General Manager (Quality Assurance), Intas Biopharmaceuticals Limited, says, “In SAP-ERP, we implemented a production planning module which includes scheduling production based on a three-month rolling plan (defined by marketing). Master production schedule modules help in last-minute scheduling, shortage avoidance, efficient allocation of resources and cost control. These allow timely responses to the customers. The PP module efficiently organises what the customers need to do and when they need to do it. The schedule can be re-calculated easily when a process fails, for example, in situations like a material shortage or manpower absence.” Successes and pitfalls with MES The main successes with a MES are: Better visibility and transparency from plant level to business level Reliable, contextualised, up-todate information on the plant processes and resources MES provides a platform to enable information flow in vertical integration, connecting a plant within the manufacturing environment and allowing for seamless integration with other applications such as PLM, LIMS, ERP,WHM and SCM Allows companies to manage product variations flexibly and shorten the time to market for new products Integrate quality into production operations. The challenges companies must overcome to obtain value from MES implementation include: Dealing with the shift from the traditional way of working Adapting to the new way of manufacturing for operators and supervisors Training and competency building for the people involved The right management support and project organisation. Collecting actual time spent In many cases, data collection for legacy setups (even from automated machines) is done though manual job cards or reports. Contemporary machines do use Ethernet connectivity with central databases to collect production or information related to the actual times. Modern CNC machines now provide default connectivity with Ethernet, however, these still provide machine-related data. Business processes today demand not only actual time data, but need solutions for: 1. Product tracking 2. Purchase order tracking 3. Visibility and control on a macro level (instead of just at the machine level) for improvement of throughput 4.Overall equipment efficiency for all value adding workstations. MES roadmap To build a successful roadmap, a company must create a suitable environment, introduce basic concepts, understand the existing scenario, identify the bottlenecks, use the Plan-Do-Check-Act methodology, deploy the planned strategy, follow up and review performance throughout the project. During implementation, requirements are identified, the team is identified, there is commitment from the team as well as from management, There is also continuous monitoring and involvement of management wherever required for decisionmaking, GAP analysis and conflict resolution. |
