CrescentOne Customer Event 2023

On May 9th we will organize our Customer Event at the Brainport Industries Campus in Eindhoven, a location where the most successful manufacturing industry companies and institutes from the Brainport region come together to give wings to the innovative power of the high-tech manufacturing industry.

The Customer Event will be an event full of information about our company and the way we will serve you in the coming years.

We have a curated agenda of

  • Information about CrescentOne and Glovia G2
  • Planned breakout sessions
  • Keynote presentation
  • Interactive panel discussions
  • Network opportunities

To see the agenda click here

We look forward to welcome you in this exciting environment, but please subscribe in advance by filling in the subscription form.

 

 

Fujitsu Glovia Inc. overgenomen door FOG Software Group

FOG Software Group breidt zijn groeiende portfolio van softwareoplossingen voor smart manufacturing verder uit door de overname van GLOVIA G2.

El Segundo, Californië ‒ FOG Software Group (“FOG”), een operationele groep van Vela Software en Constellation Software Inc. [TSX:CSU], is verheugd om aan te kondigen dat het Fujitsu Glovia Inc. (“FGI”) heeft overgenomen, met hoofdkantoor in El Segundo Californië en kantoren in Nederland, het Verenigd Koninkrijk en Thailand.

FGI’s GLOVIA G2 is een toonaangevende ERP-oplossing wereldwijd, eenvoudig te implementeren ERP-systeem voor discrete productie voor kleine tot grote bedrijven. FGI is een innovator in slimme ERP-oplossingen voor productie en helpt kleine en grote fabrikanten en assemblagebedrijven in binnen- en buitenland hun activiteiten te optimaliseren, beheren en uitbreiden. Van fabrikanten op één locatie tot multinationale, meertalige bedrijven met meerdere valuta, FGI heeft een gevestigd en groeiend klantenbestand.

FGI wordt een onafhankelijke business unit binnen FOG’s portfolio van Smart Manufacturing-softwarebedrijven. FGI zal nauw blijven samenwerken met haar klanten en innovatieve smart industry softwareoplossingen aanbieden voor de gekozen industrieën.

“GLOVIA G2 is weer een geweldige toevoeging aan ons portfolio van Smart Manufacturing-softwarebedrijven. De productie ondergaat een digitale transformatie en onze klanten zijn op zoek naar een stabiele en strategische leverancier om hen te helpen navigeren en profiteren van hun digitaliseringsreis. Onze complementaire groep softwarebedrijven vormt een Smart Manufacturing softwareportfolio onder de FOG-paraplu. Het biedt onze klanten een breed scala aan oplossingen om hun activiteiten naar Industrie 4.0 te brengen. Gezien het indrukwekkende en loyale klantenbestand van GLOVIA G2, het ervaren team en het brede productaanbod gericht op Manufacturing ERP, hebben we ons concurrentievoordeel verder uitgebreid. We zijn erg blij dat we GLOVIA G2 aan ons portfolio kunnen toevoegen, terwijl we onze voetafdruk met de ERP-markt blijven uitbreiden en slimme productiestrategieën nastreven”, aldus Magnus Sandberg, Group CEO of the Smart Manufacturing portfolio of companies. “We kijken ernaar uit om het getalenteerde team van FGI en onze diepgaande ervaring in de sector te combineren met onze financiële kracht en operationele excellence.”

 

Hoe gaat de maakindustrie verder….

Nu we al een tijdje leven met de gevolgen van het corona virus dwingt Covid-19 bedrijven om hun digitaliseringsstrategie te versnellen. Fabrikanten streven ernaar om te voldoen aan de eisen van een veranderde consument door het ontwikkelen van wendbaarheid, veerkracht en veiligheid, responsiviteit en innovatie. Lees meer …

Partnership met Quadira

Eindhoven/Veghel, 27 november 2020 – CrescentOne en Quadira gaan een partnership aan. CrescentOne, de leverancier van de innovatieve ERP-software GLOVIA G2 voor de high tech en automotive maakindustrie, kiest voor Advanced-Forms® document output management van Quadira om haar klanten een eenvoudige en flexibele document output management oplossing te bieden.

CrescentOne, onderdeel van het Japanse bedrijf Fujitsu, bedient momenteel de markt met de innovatieve en geavanceerde ERP-oplossing CrescentOne, specifiek ontwikkeld door en voor de maakindustrie. De ERP-oplossing wordt continue uitgebreid met nieuwe oplossingen gericht op verdere digitalisering van de productie en ondersteunende processen.

Met de toevoeging van Quadira’s Advanced-Forms® aan GLOVIA G2, kunnen CrescentOne en Quadira hun klanten een nog breder, eenvoudiger en flexibelere oplossing bieden. Advanced-Forms® is een gebruiksvriendelijke en flexibele oplossing om uitgaande documentstromen (bijvoorbeeld facturen, inkooporders, offertes en transportdocumenten) eenvoudig te automatiseren. Dit resulteert niet alleen in een hogere administratieve efficiëntie maar ook in veel minder fouten.

Voor Quadira betekent de samenwerking met CrescentOne een waardevolle aanvulling op hun huidige ERP-landschap. Met de focus op een eenvoudige en flexibele document output management oplossing voor ERP-oplossingen, is CrescentOne een mooie partner om de reeds bestaande wereldwijde dekking, nog verder uit te breiden.

Informatie over CrescentOne
CrescentOne is onderdeel van Fujitsu en heeft een lange geschiedenis in het ontwikkelen van innovatieve ERP-oplossingen waarmee bedrijven hun productie en supply chain optimaliseren en de efficiency verhogen. De laatste innovatie, GLOVIA G2 v4, komt voort uit meer dan 50 jaar ervaring op het gebied van producties, deels opgedaan in de meer dan 30 eigen high tech productie bedrijven voor servers, laptops, airconditioning systemen en auto-elektronica.

Informatie over Quadira
Quadira is al meer dan 21 jaar dé specialist in document output management. Met meer dan 1.000 implementaties, meer dan 600 opgeleide en gecertificeerde professionals wereldwijd en een passie voor de markt, worden klanten ondersteund bij elke uitdaging op het gebied van document output management.

Voor meer informatie:

CrescentOne B.V.
A.J. (Ad-Jan) van Rooij
VP Global Sales en Marketing
BIC 1 , 5657 BX Eindhoven
www.glovia.nl
Email: avanrooij@glovia.com
+31 (0)40-2655355

 

Quadira B.V.
Nicholas Verzuu
Sales Manager
Pater van den Elsenlaan 45-47, 5262 GG Veghel
www.quadira.nl
Email: nicholas.verzuu@quadira.com
+31 6 50 73 29 24 | + 31 413 369 506

 

Why shopfloor managers should consider disruptive technologies and how to maximise them

Production line quality, throughput, and utilization are familiar pressures to those who manage shop floors. They’re not new challenges – they’ve been around for decades.

However, new market requirements and new technologies call for a different perspective on these allegedly familiar topics.

As a result of our efforts to optimize our own factories, we’ve gained experience in adapting production to latest market requirements by using new technologies in the right context. In particular, we learned that:

  • Bringing traditional optimization topics like quality, throughput, and utilization in perspective to business goals helps to justify necessary investments in advanced technologies
  • A stronger customer focus calls for more individualized production (smaller lot sizes) at the same cost as mass production
  • Mass production cost levels can only be reached by integrating advanced technologies like AI
  • Harnessing new technologies requires a co-creation approach

Read the article on the Fujitsu blog

SCSN

Samenwerking in leveranciersketens wordt steeds belangrijker. Hierin is het delen van data cruciaal, denk aan facturen, orders, logistieke en technische data, etc. Het verzenden, ontvangen en verwerken van deze ontvangen data is echter kostbaar, inefficiënt en foutgevoelig. Het Smart Connected Supplier Network biedt een nieuwe datastandaard én technische infrastructuur die het delen van data in ketens veel efficiënter maakt.

Lees er hier meer over op de Brainport Industries site.

Of lees er meer over op de Tradecloud site.

Support to CrescentOne Customers

To Our Valued Customers and Partners,

CrescentOne has been working with Fujitsu Limited and other Fujitsu companies closely as a part of the Fujitsu Group to support your business throughout the course of this pandemic and to provide continuity of service at all times.

The following is Fujitsu Group’s statement for our customers and partners.

The continued spread of the Coronavirus –COVID 19 –continues to cause major worldwide concern and has led to a widespread speculation about its potential impact on many areas of business and society.

Fujitsu has already put in place wide-ranging contingencies to help prevent the spread of the virus –and has further contingency measures in place, should these become necessary. Our goals are to mitigate risks and minimize any potential impact to our service delivery until such a time when the virus outbreak is brought under control.

As a responsible employer, Fujitsu has already implemented contingencies to actively protect its employees from the impact of the Coronavirus, including steps to reduce the risk of exposure.

Furthermore, to safeguard our continued ability to provide support services to our customers, all Fujitsu locations including our Global Delivery organization have implemented Business Continuity Planning measures. These are tried-and-tested systems and processes that allow for extended use of remote and teleworking and are intended to help guarantee business as usual for all Fujitsu operations.

To safeguard the wellbeing of its employees, Fujitsu has taken a standardized international approach in taking all necessary precautions to protect the health of its teams around the world. Through these preventive measures, Fujitsu is helping to reduce exposure and lower the risk that the virus could be transmitted in the workplace.

This includes minimizing all non-essential business travel, especially communal transport (air and rail), suspending all business travel to and from the most affected countries. Expanding teleworking across the business. Prioritizing the use of conferencing technologies to address communications needs.

Fujitsu continues to monitor the situation very carefully and is closely following the guidelines of the relevant international and national health authorities.

Should the situation escalate further, Fujitsu is prepared to implement additional contingency measures as appropriate.

—————–
If you have any questions please contact your account manager. 

Thank you,
Yoshihiro “Zen” Nishi
CEO
CrescentOne.

Blog Series :: GLOVIA G2 :: ERP Manufacturing Software for Capital Equipment

GLOVIA G2 manufacturing ERP software helps capital equipment makers meet increasing customer demands, improve productivity and increase efficiency.

ERP Manufacturing Software for Capital Equipment’s Toughest Challenges

A very basic definition for capital equipment is any asset that’s used for longer than one year and that has a lifespan to be managed.

Capital Equipment is the computers that run our businesses, the medical equipment that saves our lives, the industrial machinery that makes everything else we use in our personal and professional existence.

But in practice, capital equipment is so much more than that. It’s the computers that run our businesses, the medical equipment that saves our lives, the industrial machinery that makes everything else we use in our personal and professional existence.

While capital equipment is an expansive category, the challenges faced by any capital equipment manufacturer are very similar: greater global competition, increasing customer demands, the need to improve productivity and efficiency. The move from a make-to-stock to a make-to-order environment has only exacerbated these challenges.

Backed by years of experience, we have the expertise to help capital equipment manufacturers meet their challenges head on.

Addressing the needs of our capital equipment customers has always been a priority at CrescentOne. Backed by years of experience, we have the expertise to help capital equipment manufacturers meet their challenges head on. Our extended GLOVIA G2 ERP manufacturing software is designed to provide the tools they need to optimize and analyze information in order to realize significant operational benefits, including increased on-time deliveries and substantial reductions in procurement and customer lead times.

Examples of GLOVIA G2 modules specifically suited to the needs of capital equipment manufacturers include:

Sales Quotes – to record, maintain, and track sales quote and competitor information

Configurator – to configure products that meet customer demands using a flexible, rules-based engine

Estimating – in lieu of the Configurator, to create a unique build specific to each customer

Project Resource Planning – to keep production in line with each individual sales order, hard-pegging components and sub-assemblies to specific products and assigning Seiban numbering as required

Service and Repair – to control the service and repair cycle through actions such as managing service contracts, launching service and repair orders, receiving and tracking damaged products, and reporting progress proactively on the customer’s repair

Call Center – to quickly and easily find a customer’s product or project, providing all of the necessary details to facilitate the highest level of customer service possible

Interwoven through all of this is the Equipment Register, which is an integral component of GLOVIA G2. All of the original parts, sub-assemblies, serial numbers, warranty, installation, and other details are automatically recorded in Equipment Register, as are subsequent changes and service calls. All of this information is instantly accessible via the Call Center, ensuring quick, accurate responses to customer issues.

Our ERP manufacturing software features a truly flexible and scalable infrastructure that provides the necessary building blocks to allow capital equipment manufacturers to track and manage their entire customer relationship from sales quote to service call.

Contact us today to learn how GLOVIA G2 can meet your needs.

Blog Series :: GLOVIA G2 :: Automotive ERP Solutions for Today’s Suppliers

GLOVIA G2 manufacturing ERP software helps automotive suppliers improve customer delivery times, cut overhead & achieve other important business goals.

The automotive industry continues to challenge suppliers with growing demands for improved quality, just-in-time delivery and quick turn-arounds on order changes. Increasing levels of global competition, customer requirements, costs and supply chain complexity only further complicate matters.

Automotive suppliers must master many tasks to remain competitive in this ever-changing environment. Deploying lean manufacturing practices, boosting responsiveness and decreasing waste, among other strategies, all present opportunities for suppliers to hone their competitive edge.

Backed by our years of expertise with the automotive industry, GLOVIA G2 provides proven resources to take advantage of those opportunities and to take control of your complete manufacturing process. GLOVIA G2 supports the way you do business, including communicating via EDI with both your customers and vendors via the middleware of your choice. Our solution allows you to remain in touch seamlessly throughout your entire supply chain to the final product delivery.

Built-In Flexibility

System flexibility is built into all GLOVIA G2 modules to ensure your needs – and those of your customers – are met on time and on budget. Examples of modules that our automotive customers have come to rely on include:

Customer Releasing designed specifically for the automotive industry, offers features like model year contract management, tracking of cumulative firm and forecasted quantities, releases, containers and ASN’s while integrating with all leading EDI message-handling providers.

Asset Lifecycle Management allows you to schedule, plan and execute the maintenance of your enterprise assets (manufacturing plant, infrastructure and facilities assets) whether planned or unplanned.

Engineering Change enables status tracking/history and change impact analysis and allows you to execute specific changes, group changes or mass changes for all areas affected by the ECN.

Tool and Gauge is a fully integrated supporting application to Work Orders and Repetitive Manufacturing that provides for the movement, usage, calibration, and reorder requirements of tooling used in the manufacturing process.

Kanban supports JIT and Lean Manufacturing pull principles via material and production Kanbans to avoid overproduction and minimize waste.

Master Production Scheduling provides a set of powerful software tools for material and resource planning, analysis and performance measurement with unlimited planning scenarios available in hours, minutes and seconds.

Repetitive Manufacturing is ideally suited for high volume or continuous flow schedules with stable production rates and can be configured to support push or pull techniques for work center inventories.

Quality Management provides tools to quickly and easily track and control quality assurance goals and results for purchased and manufactured items with additional features for handling rejected material, returns and Supplier Performance.

Shop Floor Dispatch provides a visual, “one-stop” tool for managing and recording production and inspection activities, offering individualized production dispatch lists for machines and staff that exactly meet your business needs.

Supplier Releasing allows you to easily manage model year supplier contracts, releases, ASN’s and receipts across all your suppliers, thanks to our compatibility with all leading forms of EDI.

Factory Planning features a highly visual memory resident Advanced Planning System that simultaneously considers machine, labor, inventory, tooling and skills constraints to generate an optimized production plan.

Proven Results

After incorporating GLOVIA G2 modules, our automotive clients have reported:

  • Reduced shipping errors
  • Shortened physical inventory cycle times
  • Increased customer on-time delivery
  • Decreased overtime
  • Reduced overhead
  • Improved profit margins

Read these case studies to learn more about the real-world automotive applications for GLOVIA G2:

Our professionals have the expertise and experience to help you take full advantage of GLOVIA G2’s benefits.


Contact CrescentOne for more information about our manufacturing ERP software and solutions or to request an online demo.

Article :: Manufacturing Execution Systems: The Missing Link

Executing on your full manufacturing potential

Original Article via :: Manufacturing Engineering
Article by Kip Hanson

You’ve implemented a popular brand of ERP software. Your PLM system is humming like a well-tuned sports car. You have CAD/CAM and TMS and toolpath simulation software in place, and all your people have been trained on its use. You’ve spent boatloads of money on software and consultants, have all the correct systems in place, and yet you blew an important delivery date last week and you still walk out to the shop several times a day to check on jobs. What gives?

Chances are good that it’s time to take the next big step towards production nirvana by implementing a Manufacturing Execution System (MES). Think of it as the missing link between ERP, the shop floor, and all the other software systems used to manage a manufacturing business. MES provides a higher level of production visibility and job tracking than ERP. It makes real-time scheduling truly real-time. It offers previously unattainable access to performance and quality data, along with the analytical tools necessary to improve both.

Let Me Count the Ways

MES does all this and more, but what it doesn’t do is fall into any neat, easily-defined software category. In fact, a Google search for MES software returns a host of “Best MES Software” results, a few of which lead to suppliers who can probably spell MES but that’s about all. Searches will find long lists of MES features such as data collection, master production scheduling, labor tracking and so on, functions that any ERP system is probably already doing. Even to those who are knowledgeable about software systems, MES can be a little confusing.

Someone well-equipped to help navigate this murky territory is Andrew Robling, senior product manager at Epicor Software Corp., Austin, Texas. For him, there’s nothing confusing about MES, or the benefits it brings to companies large and small.

“MES admittedly means many things to many people, but at its heart it’s about collecting data directly from equipment and machine tools so that you can make better decisions,” he said. “That data might be as basic as machine status or how many parts it’s produced so far today, and from there extend to true process monitoring, capturing values like machine temperature and pressure, or part quality data for SPC [statistical process control] purposes.”

Data collection can be automatic, he noted, with integration to a machine-mounted PLC (programmable logic controller), for instance, or completely manual in the form of shop floor touch screens and mobile devices. This flexibility might help to explain why many in the industry struggle to offer a clear-cut definition of MES, and why its capabilities vary from vendor to vendor. Ambiguous or not, however, there’s one thing that everyone agrees on—if seeking to increase visibility to the inner workings of a production floor and thereby improve manufacturing efficiency, MES is an excellent way to get there.

Get Real (Time)

Consider one of the most important of all shop floor management activities, accurate job scheduling. According to Robling, MES makes it possible to keep the wheels on the production bus, rather than finding out it crashed sometime yesterday afternoon. “Shops need a mechanism to display job information in real time, to let people know that the equipment isn’t operating as it should, or that a cutting tool is about to fail,” he said.

With MES, this can be accomplished in a variety of ways. It might be a management-level dashboard that turns red if there’s a problem, or Andon-style displays (visual control devices) on the factory floor that provide information on current machine status, production levels and non-conformance warnings. Robling said some shops will even send alerts through the company’s public address system. “Whatever approach is used, these systems give people an opportunity to take corrective action immediately, possibly avoiding hours of inefficient machine operation.”

MES is not only for automotive production levels. Robling agreed that MES is more common with larger manufacturers, but noted that even small job shops can enjoy significant benefits—in fact, these are often the ones who gain the most.

“We worked with a shop in Pennsylvania recently that figured their OEE level [overall equipment effectiveness] was somewhere in the mid-60s,” he said. “After implementing MES, they found that the handful of machine downtime instances they were manually recording each day were in reality much higher—on the order of a couple hundred small interruptions per shift that the operator didn’t bother reporting. The result? Their OEE was roughly 15 percent lower than expected. MES not only provided visibility to this problem, but also the data needed to address it.”

What About MOM?

Investigations into MES often find a related term, Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM). Subba Rao, innovation officer for the manufacturing operations management group at Siemens Digital Industries Software, Plano, Texas, explained that MES can be thought of as a smaller, less comprehensive version of MOM, at least from a Siemens Digital Industries Software perspective.

“MOM is broader,” said Rao. “Where MES is focused more on real-time data collection, MOM leverages that data for quality management, maintenance activities, closed-loop collaboration on engineering information for the factory floor, and orchestration of the various processes needed to produce quality products. We like to call it the digital brain for production operations, one that delivers insight and transparency to all involved.”

He also explained that, compared to even five years ago, MES and its big sister MOM are easier than ever to implement, thanks in large part to Industry 4.0 and the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things). That’s because today’s CNC machine tools as well as other types of industrial equipment are typically chock full of sensors that detect everything from axis loads to spindle vibration. These sensors are simple to connect and more than happy to share data with external software systems, allowing all manner of predictive maintenance, process monitoring, and improvements to occur.

Simplified connectivity is great, Rao noted, but it is what is done with the data that counts. “Operators, machine programmers, production control supervisors and everyone else involved wants to know what’s being worked on right now, how the shop is performing, and how processes could be improved for current and future product innovations,” he said. “But that’s just a small slice of what MOM brings to the table. Everybody in the company is looking for better ways to perform certain tasks, whether it’s the quality control team that wants to analyze statistical trends or the logistics manager who needs to stage material. MOM, and to a lesser extent MES, helps to facilitate the coordination and orchestration needed to achieve truly efficient manufacturing.”

Optimized Results

Hold on though—what if delivery and quality levels have been running at 98 percent or higher for the past two years? What if setup times are about as good as can be expected, especially, say, in an a low-volume, high-mix environment? And, say as well, that shop floor scheduling and “orchestration” are well in hand. Why upset the apple cart?

Good question. It’s entirely possible that in this example, a machine shop or a sheet metal fabrication business has no need for the advanced functionality discussed here, and that the data collection and job tracking that come standard with most ERP systems—what many in the industry actually label as MES—are all that’s needed to continue hitting at the current “home run” level.

But consider this information from ECI Software Solutions, Fort Worth, Texas, which suggests that MES takes production efficiency to an entirely new level.

Many ERP systems do a decent job in scheduling, at a macro level. But what about when a shop is bending 20-gauge stainless steel sheet, or cutting slots in titanium with a ½” [12.7-mm] end mill, and wants to know all the other available jobs that share those attributes so that it can leverage the same setup and tooling? MES provides an opportunity to optimize work centers based on whatever values the shop wants, and then communicate the updated schedule back to the ERP system, so that everything is working in a harmonious fashion, according to the company.

This is something that most ERP systems can’t do on their own, according to ECI, because they don’t have the necessary machine interfacing or access to engineering information. MES does, though, resulting in far greater machine utilization, less scrap, and shorter setup times. And because a properly-implemented MES captures in-process data such as equipment loads and inspection results, substantial process improvement opportunities exist that would otherwise have been unattainable. The bottom line? MES is a good place to start an Industry 4.0 initiative.

Goodbye Tribal Knowledge

Of course, machine optimization assumes the engineering data is actually available, and that it is clean, well-organized, and all in one place. For many shops, especially those without a formal engineering department, however, this information is scattered about on tooling sheets and programming systems, or resides in the heads of the veteran machinists and sheet metal fabricators who’ve been making shop floor magic happen for the past 30 years. The question then becomes, what happens when these valuable employees either retire or leave the company?

In many ways, this is MES’ true value. It acts as the central repository for all of the documents, drawings, and instructions needed to set up and operate manufacturing equipment. It then monitors the performance of that equipment, manages the production and quality-related data coming out of it, feeds that data back to the company’s other software systems, and gives humans the opportunity to identify ways to improve processes and machine utilization.

In short, MES does what people have been doing for as long as there have been buttons to push or levers to pull. It eliminates the intuition and gut feel that far too many shops rely on every day, turning what would otherwise be tribal knowledge into a corporate asset, according to ECI.

The Big Poka-Yoke

At its most basic, MES is about control and the ability to error-proof processes, and through that error-proofing avoid production problems, according to Mike Hart, director of product strategy for manufacturing and industrial IoT at Plex Systems Inc., Troy, Mich. “It’s about connecting the dots.”

Those dots might include a job’s tooling and raw material requirements, he said, as well as its planning and quality control expectations. There’s what’s running now, what’s running this afternoon, and what’s running next week to consider, and what impact these activities will have on inventory levels. MES ties these often disparate sources of information together to create a connected organization. It gives operators easy access to the tools needed to be effective at their jobs, while management obtains a more coherent view of their business systems, together with the information needed to make smart decisions.

Increased visibility is great, but how does MES help to make processes error proof? “Because if you know who’s performing a certain process or running a certain machine, you can then use that information to find out what training they’ve received, and whether they’re qualified to do the job,” Hart said. “But even more than that, MES makes certain that all the proper control plans are in place and that people are ‘checking the boxes’ at the correct times and places. If they don’t, red flags are immediately raised—not tomorrow, not when the job is done, but right now.”

Shifting Gears

If MES is so great, why haven’t more shops invested in it? For that matter, why is there so much industry focus on ERP, when it seems like the real benefits come with an MES implementation? At the risk of stating the obvious, ERP is a requirement for practically any manufacturing company, or at least any company with more than a handful of employees and an eye towards growth.

Simply put, ERP pays the bills. Literally. Accounting functions such as payables, receivables, tax reporting, and more would be exceedingly difficult without ERP software, as would inventory control, shipping and receiving, sales order management, purchasing, and the all-important MRP. ERP systems also boast some level of scheduling and shop floor control functionality, even though most fall short on managing its inner workings. Hence the need for MES.

“We’ve seen it go both ways, but yes, some shops choose to pursue an MES strategy first,” Hart said. “It really depends on what pain points they’re experiencing. If there are problems, for example, with material traceability, or the shop is facing quality challenges and they want to shine a light on what’s happening out there at any given moment, they’ll typically start with MES. That said, one of the key benefits of MES is the potential integration with ERP and other manufacturing systems, so it’s important to keep that in your sights as you move forward.”

Say Hello to the Emperor

Bear in mind that implementing MES raises many of the same considerations and potential pitfalls as ERP. “There’s no point in doing it unless your data’s correct,” said Jim Errington, executive vice president of sales and service for CrescentOne Inc., El Segundo, Calif. “I tell this to ERP and MES customers alike, that no matter how great the system or how super its tools, filling it with bad data will only provide bad answers.”

Errington shared a story of a customer he worked with recently. After spending months cleaning up its bills of material and routers, they flipped the switch on the factory planning side of their MES software, only to overload a critical work center. The problem? No one noticed the inaccurate move times. “Like many shops, they never had a real scheduling system, so these values were never looked at,” Errington said. “Everyone was aware that you can’t move a two-ton casting instantaneously, but in this case, that’s exactly what they told the system to do.”

The oversight ended up putting them behind schedule by several days, he added, and took them weeks to recover from a simple mistake. This is why it’s so important to get the engineers and planners and costing people involved in any implementation—MES or otherwise—so as to avoid situations like this. “A lot of people say that data is king; maybe so, but that makes data accuracy the emperor,” said Errington.

His scheduling example illustrates one more important point about MES. Unlike ERP, MES is an elephant that can be eaten in small bites. For instance, it’s quite possible to implement only the scheduling function, as CrescentOne’s customer did, or integrate MES with the shop’s maintenance software for OEE tracking, or use it to collect production data on the automated laser cutter you just installed, or provide better information to the assembly line … the list goes on. Yes, data integrity and good housekeeping are equally important, but the effort will almost certainly be smaller and the ROI much faster.

The message is obvious: low hanging fruit abounds in even the best-run companies, and MES is the stepladder needed to pick it. “This will become increasingly clear as we move into Industry 4.0 and more companies want to collect and analyze the data coming off their machine tools,” Errington said. “MES gives us the ability to connect the factory with the rest of the business, providing real-time data, more accurate scheduling, greater machine utilization, and improved control over every aspect of the production floor. To us, MES isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s a must-have, at least for any manufacturer that wants to remain competitive.”

This article was first published in the October 2019 edition of Manufacturing Engineering magazine. Read “Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES): The Missing Link.

Advanced Manufacturing Media – SME

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Contact CrescentOne for more information on how GLOVIA G2’s ERP Solution can keep tabs on fast-paced factory-floor operations, while giving you a customizable solution to fit your business needs.