Manufacturing Execution Systems are software platforms that help us manage the operations of our manufacturing plant. They allow us to integrate with the rest of the adjoining factory systems or the corporate level ones , maximizing the performance of all our resources. Thus, we, among many other things, improve ratios of second level response time of our equipment maintenance for troubleshooting, or we comply with quality sampling at the right time.

Even though its efficacy and uses are demonstrated and are now a days one of the most diverse ones, there’s still factories that decide using instead of it, the Production Planning (SAP/ERP module), which already exists in the management plan.

Why is the Manufacturing Execution System the principal system at the plant instead of the SAP (ERP)? Very simple:

  • Quick answer: Because there’s a saying that says the cobbler should stick to his last.
  • Response based on experience:
    • The Enterprise Resource Planning are transactional and the Manufacturing Execution Systems apart from the transactions, are in real time.
    • The Manufacturing Execution Systems allow the management that is required in each instant of the shift at machine level, without losing the necessary integration with the PP of the SAP, which is the one in charge of offering it at an Enterprise level, for example, the cost of our orders done at the plant.
    • The Enterprise Resource Planning software (SAP) is very effective and it can be very useful for your factory at a corporative level with a monthly focus or of exercise. But they can be very ineffective if you use them for the daily management of a factory in the attempt of taking advantage of what you already have. To a more mundane level it would be like using a stylographic pen to make cut marks on the Wood. Instead of using a pencil or a thick marker pen. Each tool is thought for a specific environment and each environment has its specific tool, but for that we first need to know them.
    • The Manufacturing Execution Systems allow modeling the plant with the detail that it requires and offer a more detailed version of our factory’s processes. With that we obtain that the operator of a machine or of a task has everything that he/she needs available for the execution of the operation that must be done. Thus the machine operator focalizes his efforts and enhances its productive efficacy.

The SAP systems (ERPs) are software that control the productive process at the factory from a generalized point of view. Installing one of those systems is like putting the cart before the horse.

In this quote it is necessary to draw attention more than the technical meaning of the same. But they can help us to take the first step to go further, and make us reflects on concepts that maybe we have prefixed because other factories that we know do it that way, or because at the enterprise where we work it had been decided that way.

From another angle:

The Manufacturing Execution Systems are on first hand a system that encloses a set of different functional modules that cover different needs of a factory (productive, logistics, maintenance, …)

Also to understand the Manufacturing Execution Systems as an integration platform of diverse systems that were implanted at the fabric over time to cover different needs that were emerging from day to day. Such systems today may be rooted at the factory, or are a bit unamortized… and because of that they don’t want to be substituted, but they do have to live with each other.

An example of the acceptation of this platform could be a simile with a mall:

Each store (implanted system in its day to cover a specific need) resolves a different need (clothes, shoe wear, dry cleaner, …) that the clients require (operators) that move because of it.

A priori it seems like every one of them are independent and they are, but all of them function in an integrated way in some aspects:

Each of them have the same schedule of turns

  • The Access control to the same and the management of security is unique.
  • Each of them dispose of common services (bathrooms, cleaning of common areas, musical thread, …)

They have the option of incrementing the integration with new aspects:

  • Unified cleaning of every store
  • Unified management of resources
  • Unified management of payments
  • ...

And at the limit, achieving being the only macro store with different areas (stores, before that) that sell each one of their products. This macro store would be in fact at this time of the example, the mall properly named, and managing it in a conjunct and unique way, would be equivalent to our Manufacturing Execution Systems with multiple of their functional modules that are already operative.

  • Maybe our mall began by being an “integration platform”, in which they only utilized a few basic modules and ended up being a Manufacturing Execution System in which almost every functional module was utilized. (does the image of Macy’s fits?).
  • Or maybe (returning to the acceptation of the Manufacturing Execution System as a system that encloses a set of modules) our “department store” was designed and built from the beginning thinking in the concept of a macro store (at which at this level we could call it an attraction park, more than a mall). And because of it, it was decided to implant from the beginning a complete Manufacturing Execution System with all of the functional modules that were required (do you think that image of Disneyland or Alton Towers fit?)
  • And finally, from its inauguration, such services (pop up stores, franchises, …) that could arise as future needs that we would want to cover of our actual clients, they could integrate perfectly to the set giving thanks to the facet of the platform of our Manufacturing Execution System.