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The Technology Building Blocks of a Manufacturing Unit
Enterprise Resource Planning
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real time and mediated by software and technology. ERP is usually referred to as a category of business management software — typically a suite of integrated applications — that an organization can use to collect, store, manage, and interpret data from many business activities.
Manufacturing Execution System
Manufacturing execution systems (MES) are computerized systems used in manufacturing to track and document the transformation of raw materials to finished goods. MES provides information that helps manufacturing decision makers understand how current conditions on the plant floor can be optimized to improve production output. MES works as real time monitoring system to enable the control of multiple elements of the production process (e.g. inputs, personnel, machines and support services).
Advacend Planning & Scheduling
Advanced Scheduling software is an interactive, multi-constraint scheduling system that provides support for decision-making for overtime, order prioritization, production batches, due date negotiation and order processing. Advanced Planning software is a strategic decision tool designed to aid you in long and mid-term planning.
Configure Price Quote
Configure, price, quote (CPQ) software is a term used in business to describe software systems that help sellers quote complex and configurable products. An example could be a maker of heavy trucks: If the customer chooses a certain chassis, the choice of engines may be limited, because certain engines might not fit a certain chassis, and so on. If the product is highly configurable, the user may face combinatorial explosion, which means the rapid growth of the complexity of a problem. Thus a configuration engine is employed to alleviate this problem.
Business Intelligence
Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical processing, analytics, dashboard development, data mining, process mining, complex event processing, business performance management, benchmarking, text mining, predictive analytics, and prescriptive analytics.
Manufacturing Solutions Architecting
How to properly connect all those building blocks? How to extract the best of each system? What is going to be the new process to be followed by the business? There is not a single answer for those questions as there are countless ways to properly implement those solutions. See below some of the options we have deployed in previous projects:
Classical architecture where APS resides between ERP and MES but data is being exchanged between all of them.
Very flexible so it can answer most business requirements;
Complex to develop and maintain as there are multiple touch points between systems;
Possible to utilize strongest point of each system, so data bundries needs to be defined per business requirement.
CPQ is the system calculating routings and bill of materials, exchanging information with ERP for won opportunities and APS for it to generate proper plant schedules.
MES relies on APS to gets what are the next production orders to be executed;
MES sends back to ERP all production orders actuals using APS as middleware;
BI is connected to ERP, APS and MES databases, consuming specific data objects from each so users can create their own dashboards.
Data Lake is the differentiator on this system integration flow, providing a range of cloud enabled features for the business;
Data Lake allows for easy connection of databases from multiple systems;
Allows for self service of business intelligence initiatives, reducing IT requirements;
Relationship between APS and MES can also vary with either APS or MES being the owner of MOM layer.
Why ERPs Cannot do Everything?
When ERP became the system to go in the 90s, the main promise was that a single system was going to be able to address every aspect of your manufacturing unit, from quotation to execution and delivery. After decades trying to make this promise a reality, and after billions lost due to inefficiencies, it is now clear that a single system is not capable of delivering optimal solutions to some areas of a production system. This is why it is becoming more and more common for manufacturing companies to implement specialized systems to address specific needs, creating integration whenever necessary.
Every manufacturing unit is different from each other. ERPs have a common way of working that you can change to some extent until there is a need for huge customizations. When it comes to customization in ERPs, implementation becomes incredibly expensive, requiring huge effort from many different persons;
Manufacturing units are ever evolving. What is true today, might become irrelevant tomorrow. With ever increasing market requirements, enterprises require more and more to provide better products at a more competitive price. In order to accomodate this constant evolution technology system needs to follow this evolution, otherwise business will come back to custom Excel spreadsheets fast;
ERPs are cumbersome. Countless clicks are required to achieve the minimum. So many buttons and hidden features with knowledge being lost every time someone else takes over the job from a key user. Most of the time people are working for ERPs than ERPs are working for people.
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