Role Of Manufacturing Execution Systems During The Pandemic

The pandemic disrupted lives and forced businesses to relook at their strategies, urgently needing to pivot and adapt to market turbulence, downturns, and unpredictability. Manufacturers were majorly impacted due to labour dependent work models and supply chain disruptions. To overcome these challenges, manufacturers quickly looked to industry-specific, cloud-based systems for remote access and streamlined processes to boost productivity and reduce overhead costs. The pandemic called for a more comprehensive 360-degree view of the customer, insights and business relationships to maintain or increase market share.

Uniting the supremacy and productivity of modern factories with the data and adaptability of software, manufacturing is ready to become a platform for innovation. Software-based solutions ensure quality and efficiency are built into the manufacturing process and are proactively and analytically enforced. Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) includes processes for automation within industries, optimization of production techniques, and assembly to maintain product quality. MES software application primarily provides manufacturers with agenda, planning, tracking, analysing, and control of the manufacturing operations.

The market for manufacturing execution systems is forecast to grow to USD 14.9 billion by 2025 at a CAGR of 4.5% from 2020 to 2025. The need for mass production has put pressure on manufacturing industries to increase the effectiveness of production processes. This in turn is leading to increasing demand for industrial automation, low deployment cost, and enhanced product quality. MES connects multiple plants, sites, and vendors live-production information, and integrates easily with equipment, controllers, and enterprise business applications. The result is complete visibility, control, and manufacturing optimization of production and processes across the enterprise.

The new platform for innovation is enabled by advances in Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), sensors, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Cloud computing. Manufacturing via software-defined programs is making factories more programmable, and production lines adaptable and more responsive to customer needs. Due to MES manufacturers' control, they can precisely produce what the customer needs, when and where they need it, with increased resiliency and lower environmental costs. Such a manufacturing platform help connect machines to software that will not only help configure, monitor but also manage the system.

The turbulence caused by the pandemic is also quickly forcing a shift to integrated structures, data sharing, empowered employees, and automated workflows at accelerated adoption rates.

Cloud Adoption

A key trend boosting market growth, is the popularity of cloud-based MES deployments in different industries. Cloud-based MES-as-a-service is likely to be the next logical step in the evolution of automation technology in process industries. Such technological progresses have led to incorporation of MES with ERP, and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions. More equipment and machines are becoming connected in modern production environments and need to be connected to MES to provide real-time actionable data.

Automation

Factory Automation module is a factory level workflow engine designed to coordinate different systems and applications to achieve higher automation levels. The new module provides high-tech manufacturers with more excellent resiliency and responsiveness to guard against disruptions and reduce human resource dependencies. MES solutions act as the data hub for a company as it collects data from automated devices, realising vertical and horizontal integration in real-time.

Industry 4.0

Industry 4.0 as a pre-requisite demands end-to-end digitization of a given value chain. One aspect of digitization is the large-scale data collection throughout the entire value chain. Manufacturing industry’s real-time elements (through EDGE/IIoT) are an essential contribution to the overall data pool. Modern MES’ distributed intelligence inherently accommodates the Internet of Things, mobile devices, automation, and sensors. It offers advanced analytics, continuous improvement tools, and performance enhancements such as digital thread/digital twin, AR, and VR.

New IoT data platforms in manufacturing are designed to solve data challenges with a new approach that combines IIoT, MES, equipment integration and data platform elements for processing, and analytics that promises to accelerate the future of manufacturing via insights and intelligence to drive better business outcomes.