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There is no substitute for good requirements, good specifications, and a good selection process in any IT project.  Especially those projects that are complex and touch so many people and disciplines, like MES projects.

I often liken MES projects to building a house.  It isn’t enough to go to a custom builder and give them requirements like this:

• 5 bedrooms
• 4 full baths
• 3 car garage
• 5,500 square feet
• Oh, and we want this to be our dream home.

NO, NO, NO!  We all know that a builder would laugh you out of his office and say, “Come back with some architectural blueprints, some specifications, and a budget.”  Even if the builder was a Design Build firm, you would expect the clock to start then, and to pay for the design of your new home!

However, so many times I see companies trying to do the same thing with MES projects.  Requirements go something like this:

• OEE
• Tracking and Genealogy
• Reporting (including drill-down and ad-hoc reports)
• Schedule dispatch
• Label printing
• NO, NO, NO!  There is no way the customer is going to get what they want.  There is no way they are going to get an apples-to-apples comparison from different vendors.

In coming posts, I will explore how manufacturing companies can do a better job of laying out requirements.  Who knows, maybe we will even post some templates!

We are often asked to help justify Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) solutions in order to get capital approval to move forward.  This is a monumental task because MES systems are very difficult to justify on hard savings.

One of the reasons MES solutions are hard to justify is they help you with many “soft” improvements.  Deming said “You cannot improve what you cannot see.”  MES solutions help you see what you need to improve, and help you systematize your improvements.  What is that worth?

Here are some practical items you can focus on for your justification:

1. What manual data collection can be eliminated?  What does that cost in real labor?  Not only in the people collecting the data, but those the scrub it, chart it, report it, and debate its accuracy. (Reduces Cost)

2. What “oops” problems could be eliminated with more synergy in the manufacturing process?  Wrong labels on parts or containers, shipping product that had questionable parts/processes, quality spills, adding value to known bad product? (Reduces Cost)

3.  Could you increase velocity or agility if you could manage complexity and proliferation of your products?  Would you still have to hire extra expediters?  Would you have to build the new line?  Would you be able to take on more work? (Increases Revenue)

4.  Could you provide better visibility into your operations for your customers?  What would better customer service do for your relationship with your existing customers?  Would they give you more work? (Increases Revenue)

5.  Have you had a quality spill you can quantify?  What did it cost?  What if you could eliminate or reduce the cost of the next one? (Reduces Cost)

As I write this, I think this post could be turned into a multi-part series…  Feel free to contact me if you need more ideas for justification.

In an article by Bianca Scholten written for Automation World, a couple of questions were raised:

• Who should champion a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) solution?
• Who should support an Manufacturing Execution System (MES) solution?

In this article, Bianca sites engineering and IT as the two functions within a manufacturing environment that could potentially support an MES solution.  I would also add operations and quality has two functions that need to be involved in MES solutions.  The customers of MES solutions are most likely to be operations and quality.  The providers of MES solutions are most likely to be engineering and IT.

In nearly 12 years of providing MES solutions, we have found that the most successful projects are when there is a great cross functional team that works together to define and provide the solution.  Most of our projects have been owned by the IT organization within the factory.  This works best when an IT organization is a “manufacturing IT” organization not an “administrative IT” organization.

Standards, best practices, and knowledge sharing, are all ways to help disciplines work together.  But at the end of the day, the best solutions are going to come out of teams that work together to define the problem, implement a maintainable solution, and drive business results with that solution.  This is way easier said than done.  Maybe the source of another post :-).

I have sold and worked with sales people that sell manufacturing solutions for my whole career. Here are some thoughts on what it takes to be successful - and - what I think works best with the customer:

1. Listen - find out what the customer is trying to do. Often sales people talk WAY TO TECHNICALLY, WAY TO EARLY in the process.

2. Talk with their terms - use their terms for everything. Customers don’t care that you call it a Production Order - if they call it a Work Order, you should call it a work order.

3. Demonstrate with their data - a standard demo does not work with these complex solutions. Take your customer’s data, terms, routes, parts, etc. and configure your software to demonstrate their processes.

Of course, there are many other selling tips and tricks, but these are some of the basics. Good luck selling.

Oracle has announced a partnership with Kepware to build OPC connectivity into their ERP solution.  This will be interesting.

As MES professionals, we are always debating “who will win?”  Is it the ERP companies, or the automation companies that will win the battle for the MES space?  This seems to be a play for Oracle that tells the world, “we are coming down into automation to get the data we want.”

I will be curious what type of data repository, or manufacturing execution system database schema Oracle has, or will, put together to house this information.  How will it be reported?  How will it be presented?  How will this data drive business logic?

I do like the acknowledgement from Oracle that there is valuable data in shop floor systems that needs to be integrated into ERP.  Perhaps one they get into some projects, they will see just how fun shop floor integration projects are!

As a side note, Kepware is an awesome company, and they have the best OPC Servers in the market. (IMHO)

Original news on MBT Magazine….