Enterprise resource planning software, known as (ERP) brought about one of the first revolutions in manufacturing efficiency. However, ERP does not cover those manual-intensive operations that take place on the plant-floor. The plant floor is riddled with inefficient practices that both waste time and money and slow down productivity.
In today’s tough market place, and with growing competition and reducing profit margins, it has become essential for businesses to improve their manufacturing processes and to widen the application of so called ‘lean principles’ to the plant floor. ERP has made some inroads into the area of manufacturing operations, including order management, inventory management, works scheduling, materials planning, cost control and reporting, but as ERP was not designed to address the needs of the plant-floor itself, it has not and cannot, answer the challenge of making the plant floor as efficient as needed.
With ERP not being able to cover the needs of manufacturing businesses they have been forced to introduce a number of ‘work arounds’ so that the essential data that flows to, from and around the shop-floor can be managed and processed. These include
– Mountains of (unnecessary) paperwork
– Manual processes Buy Products Directly From Manufacturers
– Excel Spreadsheets
– Ad-hoc (often inefficient), custom-built applications
These and workarounds like them are directly opposite to the integrated business system approach (that is ERP) and compromise all the benefits delivered by the lean manufacturing culture. This lack of integration between the ERP systems and the plant-floor causes a ‘disconnect’ that costs the business both time and money, and in extreme circumstances could lead to the loss of business too, as more efficient operators steal their trade by producing goods faster, if not cheaper.
Without a proper Manufacturing Execution Software system, information relating to production schedules and engineering changes are often communicated slowly to operators, which in turn results in delays and wasteful errors. Other the other hand, data flows back to management on paper, these forms having then to be read and most often then re-keyed into the ERP Industrial Engineering Tools system, with all the wasted time and potential for errors that this entails. The problems for business are also exacerbated by the fact that the managers of the business cannot see what is happening on the plant-floor in ‘real time’ thus making it difficult, if not impossible to react quickly to changing conditions and thus to identify potential problems.
The Cry of the Financial Controller
Financial controllers of many businesses have been heard to cry something like:- “We need to find ways to reduce direct and indirect manufacturing costs so that we can maximize profits”
There are two main ways to keep costs down and maximize profitability, these being to reduce the time spent on all non value added activities and the other to reduce material waste.
One way is to reduce the time spent by plant-floor operators and personnel in the supporting of the functions that manage the vast amounts of data required to support the manufacturing …
Tag: execution
Integrate Information Flow – Realize Critical Benefits With Manufacturing Execution Systems
To thrive in a fast-paced and relentlessly competitive business climate, enterprises have to run very tight ships. Manufacturing companies that leverage Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) to integrate information flow across the chain of operations, finance, and management are realizing critical benefits in quality, productivity, continuous process improvements and bottom-lines.
MES: The rudiments
MES is a dynamic information system that powers efficient execution of manufacturing operations. It basically connects 11 decision-based functions under one reliable, common repository for current data exchange:
* Production/assembly floor and engineering
* Accounting
* Production control
* Purchasing
* Configuration management
* Quality
* Manufacturing engineering
* Process engineering Difference Between Industry And Manufacturing
* Research and development
* Testing
Access to the latest information about production activities across the enterprise and supply chain via two-way communications means all enterprise systems stay on the same page.
Key Advantages
* A paperless enterprise
Paper based record-keeping systems are subject to human errors that can result in production delays – and even worse, shipment of faulty products. As a software-based alternative, MES can enforce adherence to correct manufacturing procedures and eliminate both recordkeeping errors and the time-consuming reviews meant to catch them. Quick and easy access to key product and process data make it much easier to trace components and fix specific snags.
* Efficient document control and data collection
Engineering change notices, CAD/ CAM representations and components as well as quality documents can all be controlled by an MES document control system. It obviates multiple entries of the same data and ensures no operator or assembler retrieves an obsolete revision to perform a specific task.
* Improved quality control
The innumerable documents employed by quality managers as well as the various systems used to create and edit them can be merged into a centralized intuitive process. This makes it easier to view shop-floor bottlenecks and make appropriate changes in real time, compare predicted costs vs. actual costs, track non-conformances, and electronically flag operators when a process is due for inspection.
* Additional benefits
Further merits like increased line yield and throughput, significantly reduced cycle time Uk Service Sector and out-of-box failures make the case for switching to an MES very compelling indeed.
The MES and ‘Best-In-Class’ Nexus
An important study by the Aberdeen Group reveals that best-in-class performers shared several common characteristics with regard to MES. These enterprises were 52 per cent more likely to utilize MES and 61 per cent more likely to integrate MES with ERP. Their research also indicated that 77 per cent of these distinguished performers utilized automated data collection for production, inventory and quality data. They were 67 per cent more likely than other manufacturers to furnish this data to relevant job roles for efficient decision-making.
Recent research by the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) titled “Metrics that Matter”, also indicates that manufacturers who use MES to frequently share key performance information between operations and finance demonstrate a clear industry advantage. Respondents to the research who used MES were more than twice …