MES versus ERP – What’s right for your business?

The digital transformation experts SolutionsPT have launched a campaign to show why a combined approach to MES and ERP simplifies the value of manufacturing intelligence.

All manufacturers seek to increase productivity, improve efficiency, solve quality control problems, and eliminate downtime associated with re-occurring production and maintenance issues. While it is widely understood that digital transformation offers gains across all of these areas, the challenge is gaining the data visibility and context from across the whole enterprise, and not least from the factory floor.

It was previously thought by many that this data capability could be achieved with an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, negating the need for a Manufacturing Execution System. SolutionsPT, AVEVA Select partner for UK and Ireland, believes that a combined approach is better and has launched a free eBook highlighting how MES and ERP should work together to deliver rapid enterprise-wide benefits.

To understand why a combined approach is the most beneficial, it’s important to understand the role and emergence of each system. An ERP platform is an integrated set of software applications used to manage processes such as sales, purchasing, human resources, finance, and accounting. This creates a central data repository which then acts as a strategic planning centre for the enterprise.

While the ERP platform can show how much it costs to produce a specific product and the amount of material needed, the information is collected and reviewed over a particular time frame. Because the monitoring doesn’t happen in real-time and isn’t linked to the production process, ERP systems can’t provide real-time actionable intelligence for plant managers and machine operators.

An MES software platform on the other hand can provide end-to-end monitoring of manufacturing processes. Covering everything from raw materials to finished products, MES software is the quickest route to maximise profitability, flexibility, quality, and compliance.

By deploying AVEVA MES, businesses can digitalise the information found throughout modern manufacturing plants, standardise the best practices and key performance indicators across a single site or multiple sites, and offer a route to continuous improvement.

On its own an MES software can’t contextualise operations with other enterprise-level data. The full package of enterprise-wide data visibility contextualised with real-time execution level data and control is only possible with a combined MES and ERP approach.

SolutionsPT highlights that MES and ERP shouldn’t be a ‘one or the other’ approach. In fact, a combined application will yield compound benefits, assuming they work closely together. Advancing business strategies while keeping a close eye on costs is important for any owner, but crucial to those calculations are the activities taking place on the plant floor. For operators looking to improve efficiency or proactively implement maintenance, they need to make decisions in real-time which isn’t possible with an ERP system alone.

Manufacturers need enterprise intelligence at every level down to the finest detail. The ERP system provides the overview of operations and plays an important role in business planning, the MES software is working at the machine level and gathering information across all data silos, capable of conducting quality and performance checks in real-time and notifying operators accordingly. Combining these data stacks makes real-time contextualisation across business disciplines possible, and opens the full benefits of digital transformation to the enterprise.

With a combined approach featuring an ERP platform and the world-class AVEVA MES software, business owners and operators alike have the information needed to proactively streamline production processes and maintain quality and compliance throughout an enterprise, however big or small.