MES investments can be 'high-risk'

London – Current MES systems only represent a preliminary stage of development toward the goal of intelligently controlled production processes, according to Paul Hurst of P4A, the UK distributor for Felten Production Intelligence software.

MES systems, believes Hurst, need to provide a holistic and process-oriented approach to free production management from unnecessary ’performance limitations’.

Hurst recommends companies that are still without MES systems, or machine and production data collection (MDC/PDC) systems, to avoid the use of classic MES systems.

Outdated MES philosophies, he argues, carry high investment risk linked to seven specific issues: The role of humans being neglected; Too isolated a perspective; A technical and system focus that is too strong; Rigid instead of flexible process guidance; Extensively isolated planning and control processes; Sufficient KPI control is not possible; No intrinsic administrative optimisation methods are provided.

“Many automation strategies fail to consider that humans, as the keepers of intelligence, know-how; or take account of the fact that experience with processes, can never be completely replaced by technology,” said Hurst.

“Instead of achieving a balance between technology and humans,” he said, “MES systems have caused the pendulum to swing predominantly towards automation and let the human factor, with its potential to increase productivity, fade into the background.

“In the field, production management is typically looked at in isolation, without consideration of the environment and its specific conditions. MES systems have actually reinforced this focus, because even with the requirement of integration into ERP systems, these systems were not designed from a holistic perspective.”

While the actual potential for increased productivity lie within the processes, current MES strategies are dominated by a technical focus, Hurst continued. And, because a logical process focus is missing, current optimisation possibilities can only be insufficiently employed.

Another problem with the conventional MES approach is the drive to maximise process automation, according to the P4A boss. Due to changes in the markets companies are being forced to achieve higher flexibility in their processes – pointing to a need for “solutions that ensure a needs-based coexistence between automated and manual processes.”

Insufficient control flexibility causes excessively static conditions, particularly if there is significant planning complexity, with a high number of products and production steps while, at the same time, short-term disposition decisions must be made, added Hurst.

“The reality is that production and business activities in a company are mostly in separate worlds, even though they may depend on each other,” he said.

“Due to their lack of process focus, conventional MES systems are not able to support the need for integration of business and production processes with continuous planning and control data.

“In addition, MES-based production management only considers optimisation options after-the-fact. Moreover, the KPI approaches used have insufficient evaluation depth.

However, it is necessary to have real-time monitoring using intelligent analysis and control tools, so that productivity obstacles can be identified quicker, more precisely, and for more-targeted improvement measures.”

The final problem with current MES systems is that, in their basic premise, conventional MES systems do not seek to improve the production management environment.

Such a limitation does not fit with the requirements of companies anymore, because productivity can be greatly influenced by operating parameters, said Hurst.

Therefore, a supplemental holistic management concept, such as Total Productive Management (TPM), must be included in the production management strategy. This moves away from the very isolated view of the planning and control processes that these products typically offer. It also makes way for the true integration of business and production processes, which are uniformly controlled by characteristic values.

At the same time, technological advances of the latest MES products allow companies to create their workflows according to individual demand and that they can change their workflows in a matter of minutes. This results in an optimum ratio between automation and flexibility for each process.