Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) are IT solutions that support the primary production processes in a production plant. These applications close the gap between ERP systems and production equipment control or SCADA (Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition) applications. Nowadays, MES applications have become essential to support both real-time production control as well as data collection and reporting (“manufacturing intelligence”), required to improve production performance.
Operational Excellence
The industry globalization that has taken place over the past decades has been forcing, and still forces, manufacturers to continuously improve their performance. In this context, “Operational Excellence” has become the key theme for the manufacturing industry. For most “Best in class” manufacturers, this means a continuous focus on cost reduction and improvement of product quality and throughput time.
To improve their performance, most manufacturers have applied methods and techniques such as Lean manufacturing and Six Sigma. Recent surveys show that almost 90% of the manufacturing industry has been applying Lean or has recently started to do so. IT solutions can support such continuous improvement programs or provide a complementary way of improving performance by increasing visibility on plant performance.
“Business driven” approach
Atos Origin’s approach is based on the belief that an IT solution in manufacturing is “only” an enabler and not a goal in itself. An MES solution (or perhaps better ”Manufacturing IT solution”) should after all contribute to a manufacturer's main business goals which most of the time are concerned with achieving Operational Excellence. This approach enables our industry consultants to have a deep and wide domain knowledge and experience in manufacturing, rather then just IT.
We see Information Technology as only one of the four domains that play a part in the realization of a business strategy; besides IT these are business processes, (organization) structure, and people. In our approach we cover all four domains. A good example of this approach is our ''Manufacturing Opportunity Scan'' service, which helps our clients to make clear how each of these four domains can contribute to realizing their manufacturing busienss goals (such as stock reduction, qualtity improvements, process capability improvement).
The Manufacturing Maturity Model© that we have developed is the primary reference model on which our Manufacturing Opportunity Scan is based. With this model we assess the maturity of a production organization in each of the four domains : processes, IT, structure and people. Furthermore, the business strategy is related to these maturity levels and a manufacturing improvement plan is defined. Improvement projects can only make sense if each of the four domains is included and brought to a similar level of maturity.
Full MES service portfolio and proven expertise
Atos Origin has built up an extensive and succesfull MES track record over a period of almost two decades. Our MES consultants not only have significant domain knowledge in any type of manufacturing industry (be it continuous, batch or discrete), we also have experts on all closely related manufacturing IT domains such as ERP, PLM, SCADA, PLC’s and RFID. This also positions us as one of the most experienced vertical integration solution providers, from business systems down to the shop floor. By combining manufacturing domain knowledge with the latest technologies we offer a complete service product portfolio covering the complete manufacturing IT landscape. Being the largest European MES system integrator, we are uniquely positioned in the manufacturing IT market.
ISA-95
ISA-95 is the industry standard for information exchange between enterprise and manufacturing control activities and their supporting IT systems. We fully support and implement this standard, for instance by means of our industry and technical consultants who are experienced in applying the standard for requirements analysis or functional and technical design specifications. Furthermore, we provide ISA-95 training courses, if required with ISA certification.
Besides these training courses we provide awareness workshops for managers and engineers in production, quality, logistics, maintenance and IT. By starting a MES project with these workshops, the ISA-95 standard becomes a universal language within the project team that greatly improves mutual understanding of business processes and information and IT requirements.