MES Short Lists Feature Plex, FlexNet, Even HighJump and SAP

Almost from the start, the terrain of manufacturing execution systems, or MES, was ripe for invasion. MES is a breed of manufacturing software that sits between the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and the people and systems that create products on the manufacturing floor. Part scheduler, part traffic cop between the production world and the enterprise, MES has long held something of a “betwixt and between” status in the pantheon of manufacturing software.

In a recent report whose title speaks volumes — “Is the MES Market Perpetually Inert or Prone to Capitalize on Emerging Product Supply Requirements?” — AMR Research/Gartner analyst Simon Jacobson wrote, “Multiple software classes seek to capitalize on this [MES] opportunity. Application boundaries are blurring, with pressure from enterprise and factory automation providers mounting.”

Manufacturing software buyers don’t seem the least bit deterred by the vendor maneuvering, however. Registered users of TechMATCH, ManagingAutomation.com’s free product selection tool, consistently rank manufacturing execution systems among the most desired enterprise software packages. Still, when we dove beneath the headlines and into the usage statistics for TechMATCH, what we found lent credence to AMR’s point: There’s a world of diversity in the MES market, and the vendor names that surface underscore how traditional lines are blurring in this hotly contested territory.

Below is a list of the 10 MES products most often selected for side-by-side comparison by ManagingAutomation.com users — a proxy for the software packages that are showing up on manufacturers’ software short lists. Each product in the list below has a link to its TechMATCH profile page, where you can find more information about the offering and dive deeper into the MES landscape with some comparisons of your own.

The Top 10 Most Compared MES Products in TechMATCH:

To get started in TechMATCH, check out an MES product comparison that gives you an insider’s view of some of the leading solutions for manufacturers.