Get More Out of Your Production and Process Control with MES

As Industrial Internet of Things (IIot) strategies and more connected smart systems quickly make their way onto the plant floor today, more production data is available than ever before. While more data means more visibility into your operations, and that is generally a good thing, it is also overwhelming for plant managers to determine what data to collect, how to contextualize the collected data, and who can analyze all the data in a meaningful way.

Thus, it can be beneficial to work with a third-party expert, such as Applied Control Engineering (ACE), to develop a well-thought-out manufacturing execution system (MES) that can take data from the plant floor, contextualize it, and make it available to the right people at the right time for improved decision making.

While in the past, an MES was traditionally a large monolithic system deployed throughout the plant floor that required a significant upfront investment, things have changed in recent years. Now, as a result of the evolution of IIoT and Cloud-based data storage and analytics, MES today is much more agile and less expensive than in the past.

Seeing One Cohesive and Transparent Version of Your Operations with MES

With today’s technology, developing a custom MES solution that specifically address the key care abouts for your organization is possible. Whether that is having better insight into what you produced, how to give operators advice on what is coming next, or how well the plant is running, ACE is well-positioned to help our customers with any aspect of developing an MES.

An MES designed and developed with ACE can help your organization have better insight into any, or all, of the following tasks:

• Performance tracking/OEE – See how fast and efficient your operations are running
• Production tracking – Track how much was produced, the production error rate, and how that compares to other days
• Track and trace – Understand product genealogy
• ERP interface/integration – Show what is produced and available for sale or turn demand into a production order
• Batch management/electronic batch records – Especially useful in heavily regulated industries
• Historian – Easily store and retrieve data

In short, we can work with you to develop a software-based solution for any of your manufacturing processes that will provide you a cohesive, and substantiated view of what is happening with any of your plant floor processes.

Whether you are working in the food and beverage, pharmaceutical, chemical production, or electronics industry, we thoroughly understand the underlying technologies used in MES and how they apply to your specific applications. We will work with you to create an effective MES that will take the data you need from the plant floor, contextualize it, and make it available to the appropriate people at the right time. As a result, your organization will see quantifiable benefits such as more efficient production that will increase capacity or producing the same amount at a lower cost – all with the employees and equipment you already have.

Learn more about our approach to MES design and development or download our white paper, The Evolution of MES. This paper examines where MES began, where the technology is going, and how to get the most out of MES systems today.