While the management of production data remains the chief function of a manufacturing execution system (MES), the business case for new implementations and system updates have varied over the years. Two of the main drivers behind manufacturers' "must do" MES initiatives today are regulatory compliance mandates and ongoing efforts to integrate the plant floor with the business side of the enterprise, says Roy Wildeman, senior analyst with Forrester Research.
"Manufacturers need insight into the state of their equipment, the quality of their products, and their ability to integrate the plant with transaction-level [ERP] systems," Wildeman says. As a consequence, they are increasingly looking to MES to get more out of their maturing ERP systems. Manufacturing intelligence in the form of analytics can help to extract meaning from shop floor data, and as a result improve quality, control cycle times, and empower manufacturing personnel to make informed decisions, he adds.
MES software vendors are responding to this increased interest in the space in one of two ways. Some are expanding their focus across several vertical industries, products, and applications — a horizontal tack that aims to help manufacturers cut down on applications and associated IT costs. Others, including the pure players that already support multiple verticals, are retrenching and beginning to target sub-verticals with highly focused marketing and sales plans, Wildeman says.
Wildeman contends that as large-scale automation vendors continue to move up the process stack into the realm of real-time data and toward the transaction level the opposite push by ERP vendors downward to get closer to real-time data means manufacturers can expect to see ongoing jockeying for position as well as functional overlap in the MES space.
Wildeman points to Siemens' recent acquisition of UGS as an example of vendors that are helping manufacturers facilitate end-to-end process integration as well as actively promoting value around the concept of "design for manufacturability." The acquisition is also a sign of continued consolidation among enterprise automation and software vendors.
MES is beginning to be recognized by manufacturing executives as a part of a corporate strategy, gaining mindshare similar to that of ERP and supply chain technologies, as they come to terms with the need for integration between applications on the plant floor, contends Carter Johnson, senior vice president of corporate development at MES provider Visiprise. In the past, he explains, MES implementations were largely single-line, single-plant purchases valuable to the organization only as far up the management chain as the engineers or plant managers.
In addition, Johnson has found that his company's customers are interested in implementing comprehensive technology suites, instead of tying together homegrown or multi-vendor components. He adds that another significant source of business for Visiprise is the replacement market, in which manufacturers are seeking MES packages to replace obsolete point or homegrown pieces on factory floors.
As for regulatory compliance demands, several common denominators tend to apply to all manufacturers, according to Jim Henderson, president and CEO of MES company Apriso Corp. "Visibility and control is needed across all operations, including those of your suppliers."
Within the pharmaceutical industry in particular, Henderson says, manufacturers must meet FDA requirements to demonstrate that consistent production execution occurs at each of their plant locations — a particularly daunting challenge for those with production systems in place at multiple plants worldwide. As such, "manufacturing execution systems with business processes that are easily transferred across locations are well-suited to address these global challenges," he says.
Below, a look at the 10 most compared manufacturing execution system (MES) products on ManagingAutomation.com (1/1/07-3/30/07), with information on the degree of MES functionality that each product supports, according to MA's directory database:
1. Oracle Applications, the vendor's integrated ERP package comprising sales, service, supply chain, manufacturing, and other modules (100% of MES functionality supported)
2. Plexus Online, the vendor's on-demand "manufacturing performance system," including quality management, shop floor production and control, process inspection, and production tracking (48% of MES functionality supported)
3. CMSi5, CMS Software's integrated ERP package (93% of MES functionality supported)
4. Activplant's Performance Management System, a Web-deployed, scalable enterprise manufacturing intelligence platform built for the improvement of performance management (72% of MES functionality supported)
5. Incuity's Enterprise Manufacturing Intelligence (EMI), which includes zero install client software, self-configuring capabilities, and pre-configured reports (60% of MES functionality supported)
6. Visiprise Process Planning suite, used to define manufacturing and assembly processes for the machining/fabrication of parts, sub-assemblies, major assemblies, final line installation and tooling, and quality assurance (88% of MES functionality supported)
7. GE Fanuc's Proficy Plant Applications, which provide a unified, configurable "plant model" that automatically generates intelligent KPIs and monitors performance (100% of MES functionality supported)
8. The Visiprise Manufacturing Operations suite, which integrates data systems with shop floor activities to create an aggregate record of the entire product history (57% of MES functionality supported)
9. Lighthouse Systems ' Shopfloor-Online, a Web-based configurable manufacturing execution system that combines cross plant production and quality information, and provides data, analysis, reports, and electronic Work instructions in real time (67% of MES functionality supported)
10. Camstar's InSite, a manufacturing quality and compliance framework helps eliminate scrap, rework, paperwork errors, and redundant checks with real-time feedback to quickly identify and resolve issues (66% of MES functionality supported)