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by Eric Marks, Contributing Editor   | Abstract: | Manufacturing execution systems are starting to draw the kind of attention that once surrounded more popular technologies like ERP. |
The MES industry will be 16 years old next year, and it has been a stormy childhood indeed. The term was first coined by AMR in 1990, and MES rode the Gartner hype cycle almost to perfection, with one glaring exception: MES was almost always the manufacturing investment that was postponed for other, more popular solutions. Recently, however, MES has become more celebrated than ever, and finally crossed the $1 billion barrier in 2004 (according to AMR Research). MES continues to be recognized as a critical tool in reaching compliance goals, achieving the real-time enterprise, and delivering on the ERP promises that ERP solutions themselves could not deliver. As a two-term Chair of MESA International during the mid- to late-1990s, I saw firsthand how ERP vendors aggressively marketed MES-like capabilities with no real ability to deliver, while automation vendors, who had the potential to deliver, were still transforming from hardware-centric product/distribution models to a more software-driven enterprise solutions model. While MES seemed a more natural fit for automation, the rapid rise of ERP vendors and the sheer size of enterprise ERP deals made them an analyst's dream. Now MES is in the headlines and is finally gaining its rightful place as a must-have solution for manufacturers, while the mature ERP market is rapidly consolidating. MES is now discussed in the same context as service-oriented architecture (SOA), which is one of the hotter areas in information technology today, while ERP is being discussed in the context of last decade's answer to integrating the manufacturing enterprise. [Click to continue] |