The MES, or Manufacturing Execution System, is usually one of the default solutions chosen to keep track of what happens in industrial plants.

In this way, the MES is usually responsible for executing production orders, quality management and maintenance in real time. They are beneficial systems, as they improve productivity, reduce problems and give us visibility of what is happening on the shop floor.

However, traditional MES have their limitations, sometimes avoidable, but sometimes simply inherent to the way these systems work (complexity, lack of flexibility, high implementation times…) What can we do about it? We can look for alternatives to the MES, such as a Flexible Manufacturing Execution System (MES) where, among other functionalities, we can display our key industrial KPIs.

We’ll talk about all this and much more in today’s blog ✍️

What is a MES and why is it considered the standard solution?

A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) specializes in optimizing manufacturing operations. They supervise the entire process of transformation of materials, from the beginning until they become finished products. 

They provide a layer between the management level (usually the ERP) and the plant control devices (SCADA, PLCs, sensors, machines…), offering accurate and updated data that facilitates operational decision making.

MES is a particularly useful system as it provides visibility that makes production operations more efficient, helping to reduce bottlenecks and downtime, increase productivity (OEE) and reduce quality issues.

What we get from having a MES System

🔹 Machine data capture: The MES is able to capture and give us up-to-date access to data covering the manufacturing process. It provides us with information on the processes being executed, execution times, series, etc.

🔹 Visualization of indicators (KPIs): It allows us to visualize manufacturing processes through dashboards. By visualizing key industry KPIs such as OEE, the system enables managers to make informed decisions, helping to optimize production operations. 

🔹 Eliminates paperwork and manual processes: With MES, both manual data entry and paperwork are minimized. This not only saves time, but also greatly reduces the likelihood of errors resulting from manual processes.

🔹 Workflow optimization and waste reduction: By capturing data at every step of our production process, it is easier to pinpoint areas for improvement and implement corrective measures more quickly. This translates into improved workflow and less waste.

🔹 Automatic alerts: A MES can include automatic alerts and notifications systems that will keep managers always informed of any unforeseen events or deviations that might arise, allowing them to avoid failures even before they occur. This proactive approach would reduce the chance of a faulty product reaching the market.

🔹 Better comunication: A modern MES system facilitates real-time communication between different departments, be it maintenance, quality or production. This allows problems to be solved in a more efficient way.

🔹 Traceability and compliance: It allows a better traceability of the product life cycle, from raw materials to the final product. Traceability is achieved by recording data such as serial numbers, batches, quality controls, changes in facilities, work processes… If a problem occurs in a product, it is possible to trace the cause, which helps to find solutions. 

However, embarking on the installation of a traditional MES also has its complications as it can be a complex and costly process in terms of time, money and resources. 

In addition, many of the MES systems on the market are inflexible and do a lot of things in addition to collecting data from your machines that you probably don’t need for the specific needs of your plant or the way you work, but which you will certainly have to pay for.

MES : ✔ Advantages – ✘ Disadvantages

What does it mean to have a Manufacturing Execution System?

When considering the implementation and configuration of a MES, especially a traditional MES, there are a number of questions you should ask yourself:

🔸 Implementation time: Since it is a comprehensive system, its implementation is usually a major task that requires balancing the interests of the entire company.
It is often a complex and time-consuming process and can take months to years (according to Gartner, ~15-16 months on average).

🔸 They are rigid and can be costly to customize: MES are typically rigid systems with well-defined features and system architectures. They usually suffer from a lack of flexibility that means you have to define what you need in advance as if it were a long-term snapshot. Customizing an off-the-shelf solution can be difficult, time-consuming and costly. The good news is that there are scalable and customizable MES alternatives that we’ll talk about later.

🔸 You will need to adapt your workflows: MES architectures have a rigid nature. It is often easier to change your operations to fit the MES rather than changing the MES to fit your operational needs. This adaptation comes at a cost. 

🔸 Undynamic: As operational needs change on the shop floor, MES can slow the pace of improvement. They make it difficult to change systems, as they need to be customized to fit new processes. And this is something fundamental that MES alternatives do offer. 

🔸 Production-focused only: The MES has been designed to be used in production. They are not made to be used by management or other departments, they tend to lack versatility in this aspect.

🔸 They do not advance as technology advances: Emerging technologies such as AI or cloud computing are changing the future of manufacturing. However, most MES providers are lagging behind in incorporating these technologies into their solutions. 

🔸 Dependence on accurate data: The effectiveness of MES is highly dependent on the accuracy and timeliness of the data it handles. It requires robust integration with other systems such as SCADA and ERP.

Do you really need a traditional MES?

The reality is that, although it is a very useful tool for industrial manufacturing, in many cases it is not necessary to implement a standard MES system. 

Why? In the end, the reality of today’s industry is that processes are constantly changing and evolving and projects are somewhat dynamic, which clashes with the more rigid nature of a system such as MES. 

In the same way, there are functionalities of the MES that overlap with other systems, so having them already covered, it would not be necessary to incorporate them in the MES. For example, traceability or planning is often already covered by the ERP or some other specific tool, so it is no longer a key need in our MES.

However, there are functionalities of the MES System that are extremely useful and necessary, hence the existence of very interesting alternatives. 

Alternatives to the traditional MES system 

But… Is there really a way to have a more flexible version of MES that is dynamic and lightweight, without functionalities that are not really needed and easy to integrate with other systems?

Luckily, there are very interesting options that work as an adaptable version of the MES Manufacturing Execution System (Flexible MES) and meet all these requirements. 

Why does a Flexible MES make sense?

As we mentioned earlier, data is dynamic within a company, so having a fixed picture of how our processes are going to be in a year’s time may not be very pragmatic.

And what we really need is something that starts to be useful from (almost) the beginning, that adapts to our processes and that is more dynamic than a traditional MES.

We can dispense with certain functionalities of the traditional MES that are often already incorporated in other systems with the same or even better results. For example, the previously mentioned traceability, or even the planning part. It is possible that your ERP already has this functionality, or that the company has a better planner than the one integrated in the MES.

What is a Flexible MES System?

These things mean that it is not always necessary to opt for a traditional MES. By opting for a Flexible version (MES Lite), you lose certain functionalities such as the ones we have just explained, in favour of gaining other things that may be more interesting: 

✔️ Faster implementation speed:

With an adaptive MES type system, we will be able to start extracting value from the data in a very short period of time (~1 month) and grow organically. 

In this way, we will not have to spend months waiting for our large traditional MES project to conclude without being able to take advantage of the information of interest to our plant.

✔️ Greater dynamism:

With a Flexible MES it is not necessary to define the entire project at first, a year ahead and without having started to implement it (or what is the same, without knowing if it is really going to be completely adapted to our needs).

A scalable MES system allows us to start with a small part of our project (for example, managing a production line) and to progress and improve little by little, until we have the system that our plant really needs. In this way, the true Lean philosophy is followed, improving in an agile and continuous way.

✔️ Possibility of having our Cloud MES:

Taking things to the cloud infrastructure is a current trend that more and more companies are following, and with good reason.

The Cloud MES model offers numerous advantages, as it allows our information to be available remotely, from anywhere, at any time and in real time. This model is more economical than on-premise (it saves hardware, maintenance and specific personnel costs), it also offers greater availability (by design), it prevents data loss…

✔️ Ease of integration with other systems:

Flexible MES, in addition to being able to extract information from machines and industrial protocols (like traditional MES), are also prepared to obtain data from other platforms, databases or APIs. This will allow us to have all the information centralized, eliminating what are known as information silos or islands.

Which Flexible MES options we recommend

There are different options on the market that can function as a Flexible MES. 

But from our experience, a system based on Grafana that works as an adaptable MES and allows us to take it to the cloud, would be the perfect alternative to the traditional MES.

By implementing a MES through Grafana we will be able to have that visualization of indicators in real time in a much more dynamic way, without having to be tied to a rigid structure and without it being costly to create new screens as our needs change.

Besides, Grafana’s versatility makes it possible to generate different simple and visually attractive dashboards, fully adapted to the different profiles in the company (not only production). In this way, each decision-maker will be able to see only the KPIs and information that is truly relevant to him, facilitating decision-making..

To conclude

So which is better, traditional MES or Flexible MES? The important thing is to look closely at what problems you are trying to solve and find a solution that meets your needs.

In reality, there is no one best solution for everything, but we believe that people will default to a traditional MES when many times it may not be necessary. We are not always going to need a standard MES, but there are things in the MES that are very useful and bring a lot of value to our shop floor operations. And this is where Flexible MES comes into play.

Would you like to know more? 👇