MES software: what it is and when your plant needs it
The ERP knows how much should have been produced. The plant floor knows how much was. An MES is the system that closes that gap, and leadership's question is whether its operation already suffers from it.
An MES (manufacturing execution system) is software designed for the factory. It coordinates, records and monitors production from raw materials to finished goods, and sits between the ERP and the plant control systems.
A disclosure before we continue: Cyrrus doesn't resell licenses or take commissions from any vendor. That's why we can compare without preferences.
What does an MES do?
It receives work orders from the ERP and schedules them by priorities and available resources; dispatches the work to lines and people; allocates and tracks labor, materials and machines; keeps a two-way data exchange with the floor to correct in real time; controls documents, quality and traceability by lot, serial or order number; and collects production data to measure performance. When finished, it returns the results to the ERP.
What is the difference between an MES and an ERP?
The ERP manages the business as a whole: long-term planning, purchasing, costing and customer orders. The MES manages execution on the plant floor. The ISA-95 standard (IEC 62264) describes how they communicate: it places the ERP at level 4 (business planning) and the MES at level 3 (manufacturing operations management), and focuses on the interface between the two.
| Level (ISA-95) | What it contains | What it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Level 4: business | ERP: planning, purchasing, costing, orders | What should we produce and at what cost? |
| Level 3: manufacturing operations | MES: scheduling, dispatch, traceability, quality | What is happening in the plant right now and how is it executed? |
| Levels 0 to 2: control | Machines, sensors, PLCs and supervision | How does the physical process run? |
Evaluating an MES or an ERP for your plant?
We define what your operation needs and how it must integrate with the ERP, and compare the alternatives with no vendor commissions.
- Plant requirements and ERP integration
- Independent comparison, no commissions
When does a plant need an MES?
Not every plant does. These are the signals we look for: lot or serial traceability is a customer or regulatory requirement; quality is critical and defects are found late; the ERP's plan and what happens on the floor diverge and nobody sees it until month-end; downtime and cycle times are logged by hand; or several plants run on different rules. If none apply, a good production setup in the ERP may be enough.
What should leadership ask before investing?
Four things. First, which decision you can't make today for lack of plant data, and what not making it costs. Second, how it will integrate with the ERP, who maintains the interface and what happens when either changes. Third, the multi-year total cost, using the logic of what it costs to implement an enterprise system, including devices, plant networks and supervisors' time. And fourth, how go-live will happen without stopping production.
Get the plant floor to adopt it
An MES changes how operators and supervisors work. We manage the implementation and adoption.
- Implementation project management
- Role-based training and usage tracking
How do you choose an MES?
Start from your real process: type of production, number of plants, quality and traceability requirements, and the plant team available. Ask for demos with your own flows, visit similar customers' plants and weigh integration with your current ERP. Test the screen with real operators: if it gets in their way they won't use it, and an MES that isn't logged on time doesn't do its job.
How we can help
At Cyrrus we define plant requirements, compare the alternatives with no commissions and manage the implementation and adoption. Learn about our software selection and ERP selection.
If you're evaluating a system for your plant, request a free diagnostic session with our team.
30 years in strategy and IT: Oracle consultant, IT leader at PepsiCo Latin America, Covidien and Coremar, and founder of Cyrrus in 2017. MBA, Universidad del Norte.
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