MES Application Areas

Downtime

Downtime nearly always leads to lost production, and most companies think downtime is outside acceptable levels. More than 90% of companies record downtime to some degree, but in spite of this still struggle to make gains. What can be done now?

OEE

Are you being pressured to increase production from existing plant before further capital investment is signed off? Instinct is telling you what might be preventing you from improving performance, but wouldn't it be nice to pinpoint the problems exactly so you can do something about it?

Maintenance

Everyone knows that poorly maintained assets can lead to breakdowns and stoppages that impact production. Less obvious is the impact it can have in terms of quality issues; spoilage, rejects and waste; delivery commitments; morale; and the extra strain on Maintenance resources. All of which are losses that can be minimised.

Quality

What level of quality-related complaints are you currently receiving from your customers? What is this costing you to address? What is the cost of quality at the moment? Are customers' increasing demands for information exposing shortcomings in your quality processes - and taking up too much time?

SPC

World-class manufacturers making complex products use Process Capability to ensure quality, satisfy customer needs for transparency, drive improvement and reduce timescales for new product releases. It is very difficult to bring millions of measurements together and distil them into reports that can be readily accessed and acted upon. Can your organisation do all this at the click of a button?

Traceability

Do you dream of making your production processes paperless? You know the burden of paper-based data capture, you may be forced into capturing traceability information, but until now there's been no choice but to record all of that data manually. It's no wonder your production processes are slow and labour intensive.

Spoilage

Is spoilage an unacceptable percentage of your production? Do you struggle to see where the losses are really occurring? Are you at a loss to know what more you could do to tackle the problem?

Label Printing

Printed labels are used extensively in manufacturing for a variety of purposes, for example:

• WIP and Finished goods labelling - pallets, boxes, cartons, individual products.
• Product identification
• Product information
• Safety and hazard warnings

Process Parameters

Some processes are highly complex and difficult to comprehend. There may be many process parameters affecting the process, for example temperatures (zones), flow rates, pressures, speeds, cooling processes, moisture and environmental factors.

Production Scheduling

ERP Systems produce the schedule: sometimes only at a high level leaving the tactical allocation of orders to lines and sequencing to planners at the factory. Other times the schedule is detailed and needs to be communicated to the people running the line. Even then, problems can arise, for example breakdowns; unforeseen materials shortages; staff shortages; in which case orders have to be rescheduled.