What is a MES system (known as CIM or nowadays MOM)?

MES systems (Manufacturing Execution Systems) are software platforms focused to help in operation management in our manufacturing plant. It allows us to monitor production processes in our industrial factories with the objective to improve productivity, or efficiency, among other ratios. These systems allow that the operational activities are executed in a more effective manner, consuming fewer resources in the long run. These are tools that will assist us to attempt to maximize the production process performance through manual process automation in the scope of factory operations (production, quality, maintenance, and logistics).

However, and just as it was stated in this article from the Electro Industria magazine "This in itself is not new. They are procedures that always try to be applied in each operational process. The distinctiveness is the way to do it”. Digitization and automation allows us to forget the external audits, manual calculations, work timesheets, and other procedures from the last century.

Digital manufacturing was forged in the beginning of the 70s in the 20th century sparked by the publication “Computer Integrated Manufacturing” by Dr. Joseph Harrington. MES systems were born in the 80s (at that time it was spoken of CIM or Computer Integrated Manufacturing). The first models were developed at Purdue University (Indiana, USA). During the 90s, the system was developed so that mass production could be done. Currently more efficient and developed standards and controls have been incorporated. This has allowed to reduce in the implementation costs of these systems and has made them more effective.

In the last 3 to 4 years there is talk of MOM systems (Manufacturing Operations Management) pushed by the major multinational players in the sector (manufacturers and consultants).

MES Systems Implementation Benefits

Benefits are many and diverse. The implementation of this system in our factories will allow us to:

  • Reduce our factory personnel endeavor
  • Have information in line, centrally located, updated, and available at any moment
  • Perform our operation management more effectively
  • Anticipate possible damage or adverse situations that may delay production
  • Perform preventive configurations, plan, and simulate situations
  • Improve our employee pro-activeness, and therefore, reduce delivery times
  • Improve the management and control of our inventory and make the supply control of all our materials more effective (raw materials, intermediate or finished products)
  • Being able to make real-time corrections on our production to certain commercial, maintenance, operational or other events. Which allows us to directly modify the processes.
  • Properly comply with the regulations of our market, which is essential nowadays.

Objective: efficiency, productivity, cost effectiveness, and performance

Real life monitoring (or not, depending on our needs) of production processes allows being more efficient, more productive, and attaining a greater cost effectiveness and performance. Both, during the process and at the end result. With the installation of a MES system, fundamental operational improvements can be attained. Also, cost production is reduced. In addition, quality increases in our products and all of that makes that our company indirectly becomes more competitive. Over the years the trend in the establishment of MES systems has matured and passes through the introduction of MES products market standards. It is therefore advisable to conduct a thorough study of the needs of our factory and set the objectives to be obtained, before launching into the system implementation.

Our Job

And in this world is exactly where we’ve being working for years. We help our clients that have from simple management systems indicators to multi-factory MES systems of greater or lesser complexity. The set of live MES systems from our customers, integrate the most of functionalities that is required by an operations management system: from materials management, horizontal and vertical integration with other industrial systems, full traceability, first class maintenance management, order management, quality management, or energy management, among others. In Mesure Systems we choose the best tools in the MES market, as well as the respective scalability, based on the needs of our customers. Our experience and approach on these types of projects offer our clients a guarantee of success and the accomplishment of meeting the original objectives at hand.