Intelligent Manufacturing € October € 1996 € Vol. 2 € No. 10

Breaking New Ground with MES

By David Blanchard
Editor

Any buzzword technology worthy of being reduced to an acronym inevitably reaches the point where it has to put up or shut up. Potential users no longer are fascinated by the novelty of the concepts and need real-world answers that will satisfy the corporate bean-counters who ultimately will decide yea or nay on implementing the trendy technology.

Manufacturing execution systems, or MES, have reached that point. As we reported several months ago (see Intelligent Manufacturing, July 1996), MES systems hold out the promise of closing the gap between a manufacturing company's front office and the factory floor. This is accomplished by integrating real-time data with other information systems, such as production planning and distributed control systems.

MESA International (Pittsburgh, Pa.), a trade association devoted to furthering the development and application of MES systems, held a roundtable conference earlier this month in Chicago to address this very issue: Who is using MES, and how successful have they been?

According to Bernard Asher, president of RWT Corp. (Mount Prospect, Ill.), "MES supports the owner/operator in real-time and provides the architecture and infrastructure to enable change." For instance, an MES system can:

• help manufacturers operate machines most efficiently,
• give a timely response to exceptions,
• provide historical data for trend analysis,
• identify and support changeover,
• provide serial number and routing validation,
• provide feedback for process correction, and
• eliminate paper from the factory floor.

Typical benefits of MES, Asher explained, can include: reducing cycle time; improving quality; reducing work-in-process and scrap; reducing set-up and changeover time; improving on-time delivery; improving responsiveness; reducing non-value added activities; and improving the utilization of assets.

Brooke Banbury-Masland, worldwide manufacturing industry manager for Microsoft Corp. (Redmond, Wash.), cited a number of successful implementations of MES. Johnson Matthey Electronics (Spokane, Wash.), for instance, is a manufacturer of precision products for the integrated circuit fabrication industry. The company's production requirements included semi-custom products and short turnaround times to meet the just-in-time inventory requirements of its customers. By implementing an MES system, Johnson Matthey had as its goals to reduce overall production cycle time, yield variance and administrative overhead, while at the same time integrating order entry and planning functions and supporting global open systems.

To achieve these MES goals, Johnson Matthey used the InTrack MES solution from Wonderware. With InTrack, the process model and all data are maintained in a relational database. Seamless integration with a man/machine interface (MMI) facilitates the acquisition of process data in real-time. Furthermore, the data can be accessed anywhere within the network.

Similarly, Chesebrough-Ponds (Jefferson City, Mo.), a supplier of toothpaste, has implemented an MES solution based on Intellution's FIX BOS open database system. FIX BOS provides Chesebrough-Ponds with immediate access to batch recipes and histories that allow it to continuously improve the process. As a result of the MES application, the company reduced supply chain costs while maintaining high process quality. In addition, improved line allocation has allowed for more efficient and streamlined production.


Networked Business Objects
According to a survey undertaken by Advanced Manufacturing Research (AMR) (Boston, Mass.), a whopping 84% of those manufacturers and vendors survey believe their customers will connect to their business systems via the Internet. What's more, this connection to an electronic commerce environment will take place by the end of this decade, and most think within the next two years.

For those manufacturers wondering how in the world they can react so quickly to their customers' Internet needs, Bill Swanton, AMR's director of research, plant operations, offered a possible solution: networked business objects (NBOs). An NBO, he explained, is an encapsulated application that communicates via message passing. It models processes rather than data, and features dynamic application configuration and true distributed computing.

The most important benefit to manufacturers is the "need for speed," since NBOs can be implemented quickly, and match up well with modern manufacturer's agile requirements. "With NBOs, inter-company supply chain integration becomes a reality, providing more choices with less pain," Swanton said.

By taking advantage of Internet as well as intranet (internal corporate networking) opportunities, a manufacturer can reduce the total cost of ownership, added Microsoft's Banbury-Masland. "You can maximize return on your technology investment because the Net provides competitive breakthroughs and improves information management and use," she said.

For instance, FACTORYworks from FASTech Integration (Lincoln, Mass.) provides integrated production reporting, equipment control and statistical analysis to the desktop (see Intelligent Manufacturing, August 1996). This MES workflow solution features intranet capabilities that enable operators to view lots on the entire factory floor and eliminate bottlenecks. As a result, more efficient management of manufacturing operations is made possible.

Other manufacturers present at the MES Roundtable included Sara Lee Knit Products (see article in this issue), ABB Industrial Systems, Caterpillar, Compaq, IBM, ITT Night Vision, and Rockwell Automation. The promises of implementing MES solutions have generated a lot of interest in the technology, while the pitfalls inherent in the complexity of these solutions have frightened a number of manufacturers away. MES doesn't work in every situation, but the benefits already achieved by numerous manufacturers are opening the industry's eyes to where its future may lie.