Manufacturing is a tricky business, and the more automated the plant, the trickier things can get. When manufacturers couple automation with the multi-site, geographically distributed nature of their operations, they quickly find that the old way of doing things just doesn’t cut it anymore. Enter Manufacturing Execution Systems (MESs).

In its most basic definition, an MES provides the execution capability to manage workflows and dispatch operations information. For decades, much of this information was handled through manual tasks and paper-based systems, and even today, many companies operate using tags, cards and manually entered data. A more savvy manufacturer may have operators entering electronic data into computers or handhelds, but promulgating that data across production, quality and tracking systems is often an arduous task requiring multiple custom interfaces.

A new generation of MES solutions, based on collaborative practices, is set to change all that by addressing the needs for common platforms, multi-site management and global distribution. From sophisticated electronic equipment to the food we eat and the plates we eat from, MES is positioned to help manufacturers respond to change and manage production throughout a network of assets.

No more red tags

When political luminaries gathered at the White House in Washington, D.C., last month for President George W. Bush’s inauguration ceremonies, there’s a good chance they ate off china plates made by a company that uses MES solutions. Lenox China, a Brown-Forman subsidiary based in Lawrenceville, N.J., and a producer of fine china, crystal and collectibles, has been responsible for all White House presidential china since 1918.

Lenox plants in New Jersey and North Carolina make (an automated process) and decorate (a more manual process) fine china plates. According to Richard Santoriello, senior applications manager, plant floor systems, for Lenox China, the strategic business drivers to move to an MES solution included improving on-time customer delivery, resolving customer back orders, determining accurate customer and product profitability, and responding to market pressure to assume management of customer inventory levels.

These strategic drivers resulted in several tactical drivers. The company needed to reduce and control process cycle times, improve inventory accuracy, increase visibility of work-in-process (WIP) and eliminate spreadsheets and redundant data. Says Santoriello, “In the old way of doing things, we would run around the plant floor putting red ‘priority’ tags on work orders. The problems we had were low inventory visibility and a lot of WIP.”

Lenox formed an MES steering committee and hired an experienced MES integrator to create, approve and deploy a common foundation for MES. Key issues included training, project leadership, information access, and strategies for archiving and integration. Says Santoriello, “You must encourage plant ownership. Plant personnel love these systems and say to me, ‘If you take this away, I would be lost.’ ”

The common platform approach allowed the system to be deployed across multiple plants. The improved visibility has resulted in consistent and uniform yield calculations, a 25 percent increase in WIP accuracy, and a 62 percent decrease in items in WIP.

See it, control it

Manufacturers who wrestle with visibility issues can derive many benefits from MES solutions, especially when applied in complex, multi-tier organizations. Says Jonathon Siudut, executive project manager at IBM Software Group, White Plains, N.Y., “Visibility is a big issue in manufacturing, particularly in the automotive and aerospace industries with their many tiers of suppliers. What used to happen within the four walls of a plant, is now spread among multiple plants in multiple locations” and even among multiple companies.

The new MES solutions have to function across large information technology (IT) networks, but provide a virtual single plant view. Among the challenges is dealing with disparate data, because each component has its own IT system.

IBM provides middleware, modeling and integration tools, such as its WebSphere platform, to architect an MES environment. Says Siudut, “We take a database product and work with our partners and Services group to layer on top of it a business solution.”

Alison Smith, senior research analyst with AMR Research Inc., in Boston, explains how MES business solutions vary from industry to industry, depending on the type of manufacturing. “In high-tech semiconductor manufacturing, there are few or no manual operations, and the MES is tightly integrated with equipment automation,” says Smith. “Medical device manufacturing is more labor intensive, with some manual data entry, such as the use of bar coding, but it requires (the MES functions of) traceability and historical record tracking.”

According to Smith, the pharmaceutical and batch processing industries, such as food and ...