Best-in-class global companies using MES to standardise and improve manufacturing

SCADA/HMI

November 2006 SCADA/HMI

Citect, one of the world's largest, realtime intelligence software companies, announced sponsorship of the 'Global Manufacturing: MES and Beyond Benchmark Report' written by the Aberdeen Group. This research supports Citect's corporate mission to connect people, in business and industry, to realtime information in ways that improve business strategies and decisions.

'Global Manufacturing: MES and Beyond' reports that, responding to continuing pressures to decrease costs and improve competitiveness, manufacturers have invested heavily in ERP systems to support global operations and supply chains. Comparatively little investment has been made in the manufacturing core, however, and this has resulted in the number one internal challenge blocking further gains - a serious gap between ERP and factory systems.

The key finding of the report is that best-in-class manufacturing companies are taking action to unify manufacturing processes and standardise KPIs across global locations. Manufacturing execution systems (MES), such as Citect's Ampla are increasingly being used as the global system to support this unification and standardisation, with the number of MES implementations expected to double in the next two years.

"Leading companies are taking a broader view of MES investments. Traditionally seen as a single project, best-in-class manufacturers are enrolling corporate IT to help establish a broader set of requirements for plants and factories," said Jane Biddle, vice president Global Manufacturing Research of Aberdeen, author of the report. "We are seeing the emergence of a new strategic alliance between manufacturing and IT and the combined focus on process improvement and standardisation at all levels of the company will lead to ongoing performance improvements."

As well as standardising processes and measures, the key technologies of MES and manufacturing intelligence will deliver realtime KPIs. It is predicted that the number of manufacturers utilising MES and manufacturing intelligence to deliver realtime KPI information across the enterprise will double in the next two years.

"Utilisation of Citect's Ampla MES as a platform for standardisation across multiple sites is a trend that we are increasingly seeing with some of the world's largest and best known manufacturing companies as well as the largest mining companies," said Colette Munro, global director, Ampla. "In addition, Ampla is providing the consistent and timely information required for continuous improvement programs like Lean and Six Sigma."

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Best-in-class global companies using MES to standardise and improve manufacturing

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