Empower Your Manufacturing Business with Sales Process Automation Software for Manufacturing

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mes systems or manufacturing execution systems as they're often called can be the glue that holds together the operations of a manufacturing operation but what exactly is mes software i'm going to talk about that here today [Music] my name is eric kimberling i'm the ceo of third stage consulting we're an independent consulting firm that helps clients throughout the world with their digital transformation journeys so manufacturing execution systems or mes software are systems that tie together the operations of a manufacturing facility oftentimes organizations have a lot of moving parts a lot of things happening on the factory floor that needs to be tracked and automated using mes software so what i want to talk about today are a few things one is what is mes software and how is it different than other types of enterprise technologies and more importantly what are the business benefits and advantages of using mes software which i'll talk about at the end of this video [Music] to understand what mes software is it oftentimes helps to analyze it and understand it in the context of how it compares to other types of enterprise technologies so for example in manufacturing facilities there's often times erp systems or enterprise resource planning and those are sort of the back office systems that tie together your financials your hr processes maybe even your sales processes some of your inventory management maybe your warehouse management so a lot of different functions can be captured and automated using erp technologies but what erp technologies generally do not do well and neither do other sorts of technologies by the way is they don't automate manufacturing processes well and think about a manufacturing facility and all the robots and the people the assembly lines the the workstations and all the inventory and the movement of goods in and out of the manufacturing facility the work in progress there's a lot of stuff that goes into manufacturing and erp systems track things after the fact for the most part you might enter work in progress as they move from major segments of the manufacturing facility to others or you might track it in the system once it goes to the warehouse but what manufacturing execution systems do on the other hand is they track at a granular level what's happening on the shop floor it tracks steps throughout the process it's gathering information from sensors and robots and people as inventory and work in progress is moving through the manufacturing facility mes also fills the gap or takes erp functionality one step further in terms of manufacturing resource planning or manufacturing production scheduling those are often referred to as the mrp or nps modules within erp and what those modules do is they define at a high level what needs to be produced and when and when do raw materials need to be purchased to support that production but that's sort of where erp systems oftentimes stop and what mes systems do is take it one step further and translate those master production schedules into detailed shift by shift machine by machine and assembly line by assembly line production schedules on how that bigger picture schedule is going to be met so this is where you get into a lot of the labor scheduling the inventory allocation the tracking the steps in the manufacturing process and ultimately gathering information every step along the way so with mes software comes a lot of big data that's being captured on the shop floor with mes comes the ability to schedule jobs and specific work orders on the shop floor and it also comes the ability to schedule labor and assign those to different jobs on the shop floor [Music] now ultimately what mes software does is it ties together the entire operations end to end into manufacturing processes from raw material in your warehouse to the shop floor as it's going to different workstations as work in progress as it goes to finish assembly as it goes to the finishing process whatever steps in your manufacturing process there are and ultimately back to your warehouse so it's tracking everything along the way it's tracking not just what's happening with the end products but also what's happening to your machinery what type of volumes are working through each of the machines on your shop floor when should those machines be serviced i'm going to come back to that point here in a moment the predictive maintenance piece of it so those are just a few examples of how mes software really ties together all of the different processes within a manufacturing facility and as i mentioned before it also ties together the processes in the manufacturing shop floor ties it back to the erp system or hcm systems or other types of technologies so i'll give you an example of how mes software can inform and tie back to other steps in an erp system or other back office processes if for example you have a sales rep that sold the product or placed an order with a customer now your mes system can give real-time data back to your crm system your sales software to give an update on when that order will be ready and ultimately when that order will be ready to ship so your sales rep now has visibility into what's happening on the shop floor if you pay people on a shop floor some sort of bonus or variable compensation based on how much they produce your mes software would tie that information back to your hr or hcm system so that you can calculate what bonuses or compensation might look like you may also have asset management software where you schedule maintenance for some of your big capital assets like your big machines and robots and things of that nature mes software will track and provide predictive maintenance capabilities to help you understand where you're going to need attention from a maintenance or repair perspective so you you can predictively and proactively address any potential needs that might happen with those machines or robots out on the shop floor so those are just a couple examples of how mes data and processes and technologies can tie back to other important processes either upstream or downstream in the overall end-to-end cycle a key advantage of manufacturing execution systems is the fact that now you've got big data which enables artificial intelligence and big data is essentially massive amounts of data as they get collected and you can if done properly translate that big data into information that you can make meaningful decisions from you can also use big data to feed into artificial intelligence and machine learning to look for patterns things like predictive maintenance as i just talked about a few moments ago so one of the advantages of having mes software is that you're capturing all this data at every step along the way and you're able to feed back to machine learning and artificial intelligence reporting better transparency and visibility into what's happening from an operations perspective in terms of throughput efficiency quality all that stuff is being captured via mes software [Music] i've alluded in passing to some of the benefits of mes software but it's worth exploring this in more detail first of all mes software provides automation so you're automating your processes you're providing better visibility and transparency into what's happening with your processes you can better capture your throughput and how fast orders are moving through your manufacturing shop floors it can help you identify bottlenecks so where you see variations or variances in performance you can really hone in and understand and do root cause analysis on why certain production steps might not be happening as efficiently it also helps you with predictive maintenance so it can help you anticipate where you might need to maintain or repair robots or machines out on the shop floor it also helps with labor scheduling so you're able to have a clear path to achieving and fulfilling the master production schedule that might come out of your erp system and finally another important benefit is that it will help with regulatory purposes so if you're a food and beverage manufacturer or a pharmaceutical manufacturer manufacturing execution systems really give you some very granular traceability so that if any step along the way there was a quality issue or one input or one raw material created some sort of quality issue or if you had a recall it's going to give you that lot traceability to go back through your process to understand where that root cause was so you know what you're recalling and you know what ultimately you need to fix from a regulatory safety and or health perspective so those are just a few things that mes software can help with and just to sort of sum this all up it's also an important step or an important component of industry 4.0 industry 4.0 is a big buzzword a big trend for manufacturers mes software is a key component sort of the heart of industry 4.0 that ties all that data and all that automation back to your machines and back to the work in progress back to your labor all that stuff happening on the shop floor and ultimately back to your erp systems and some of the other back office systems so it really is the heart of providing that end-to-end visibility that so many manufacturers crave as part of their journey towards industry 4.0 so i hope you found this information useful as an introduction to what mes software is for more information about mes software and other types of enterprise technologies i encourage you to download some of the links i have included below links to content such as our annual digital transformation report which provides top 10 lists of all different types of erp systems and other types of enterprise technologies for manufacturers and even other industries as well it also provides best practices for how to implement those technologies more successfully so i encourage you to check out that report as well as other content resources i've included links to below i hope you found this information useful and hope you have a great day you