MES – Production control and monitoring as an integrated system

In the early 1990s, an American association coined the term "manufacturing execution system" to designate a new field, which in fact gave its name to the association itself (MESA). MESA also made a name for itself with the "eleven functions of MES", which will be discussed later.

From which supplier did the coloring used in this yoghurt rejected by quality control? Is the morning shift more efficient than the afternoon shift? Had the mixing tank used to prepare the 9/13 products been washed? How many productivity points are we losing on line 4 due to adjustments? Do we have time to run the promo before tomorrow morning's delivery? The operators prefer to use the SESKA machine for this product, as it has fewer problems, but aren't we losing out overall?

These are the kinds of questions that an MES (manufacturing execution system) is designed to answer. Very quickly, manufacturers realized that neither the systems they had for production (control and supervision), nor their management software packages, in particular ERP (enterprise resource planning), were capable of doing this. So there was definitely an area not covered.

Nevertheless, having arrived well after other software, MES initially suffered from this situation. A bit like the Spanish inns of yesteryear, where customers brought their own food, manufacturers sought to define as belonging to MES everything they couldn't find in their existing tools...

Today, thanks to important work such as that carried out by the ISA (International Standard of Automation), and the research efforts of software publishers, MES has truly taken its place in the palette of essential tools for companies to meet their challenges.