posted on 2/10/2011 9:58:30 AM
If your company is considering an MES/MOM system, here are three things you should ask yourself, plus a bonus question.
Manufacturing execution systems or manufacturing operations management (MES/MOM) and related applications are not as mature as enterprise, supply chain, and design engineering applications. There are mixed signals, however, on the market’s maturity based on three major indicators: standardization; consolidation in a few large players; and completeness of solutions. The last two are often linked—consolidation enables the bigger players to embrace all of the niche expertise they have acquired. There are questions to ask about each of these items—and one more.
Standardization: Industry standards such as ISA-95, which defines plant-to-enterprise information flows, and B2MML, which provides a language for those flows, now enjoy significant support. I cannot begin to name all of the providers that claim some use of these standards. One supplier named itself after the standard: Ninety-Five is based on Cordys’ business process management (BPM) capabilities with the goal of lowering the cost of implementation and maintenance, which I’d argue is a critical path item for the entire MES/MOM market.
On that point, Apriso (also built on a BPM platform) opened my eyes on how speed of implementation can encourage another form of standardization: enterprise-wide application rollout. Apriso is now confidently quoting a six-month implementation time for the first plant in a rollout, and less for subsequent plants. By the time you read this, one of its customers will be passing the 100-plant mark.
Ask yourself: Is my company or division making good use of industry standards? Is it time to select a preferred MES/MOM?
Consolidation: Several large automation players have grown an MES/MOM business through one or more acquisitions: Applied Materials, Emerson, GE Intelligent Platforms, Invensys, Rockwell, Schneider Electric, and Siemens. ERP players including SAP and CDC have also snapped up plant-floor players. Yet independents Apriso, Camstar, Eyelit, Factivity, and many others are also growing and winning business, often against these large companies. In fact, Logica asked 160 software companies for data in assembling its MES Software Survey 2010.
Ask yourself: Do we select a current large supplier to reduce complexity and risk? Or is there a focused independent that might deliver a fast track to success?
Completeness of Solutions: All of the providers in this space are looking to create solutions that feel complete to the customer. How broad the solution should be will always vary by industry and individual plant.
Sometimes, a comprehensive MES/MOM would be overkill, or require significant investments in automated data sources.
Ask yourself: How much functionality do we really need—now and into the future?
There is yet another question to ask: Do we want to run all of this ourselves? Or should we either run it in the cloud or have an IT outsourcing company take over responsibility? Some CIOs say mission-critical apps must go to the cloud. The Indian outsourcing companies have been suggesting outsourced MES for years.
If you have not yet standardized, a partner might be able to manage your current systems and migrate you over time to a consolidated set of applications. A colleague recently visited an automotive plant that has outsourced all plant IT systems to HP with such success that it won a new product in competition with its sister plants worldwide.
Given your stage of evolution with MES/MOM, would outsourcing plant IT or hosting it in the cloud reduce or raise your risk?
Julie Fraser is president of Cambashi Inc., the U.S. arm of the industrial-focused analyst/consulting/market research firm based in the United Kingdom.