Just as a private jet can’t get you from point A to point B without a pilot (at least not yet), hiring a company with plenty of implementation experience is a must when deciding to implement an MES solution. This helps reduce risk and ensure you get the most from your MES investment.
When you decide to look for an MES partner, one of the many things you need to consider is whether they offer comprehensive set of services that will guide your company through the full spectrum of the MES project. When these services are performed effectively, they can minimize disruptions and maximize uptime within your manufacturing environment.
The process of determining what, why, and how to make something deliver maximum value is the key to any project’s overall success. MES projects can be complex and challenging – business requirements and expectations are continuing to grow while budgets and timelines shrink. A chosen partner should help you analyze your business processes. Defining the technical and functional aspects of your shop floor systems is a vital step in the analysis. You can draw on industry expertise to help you create your long-term MES strategy, choose the right platform and applications, and plan a detailed roadmap.
It’s also essential to design a solution that will fulfill your immediate needs while helping your organization achieve long-term business goals. The design process typically starts with defining your MES requirements and mapping your business needs. The result is a blueprint document with detailed architecture and system design specifications. Later on, it is crucial to define the steps to follow during the development phase, standardize best practices that ensure solution quality, enforce periodical system reviews, as well as provide templates for documentation and evidence.
The right partner guarantees solution quality through manual and automated testing. It encompasses different quality gates for different project stages and provides appropriate templates for test approach definition, scenarios, evidence, etc. After the testing stage, it should be determined how to roll out the MES solution to the production facilities, including installation and configuration of the pre-production and production environments, on-site system tests, user acceptance tests, cut-over, go-live, and hyper-care.
Besides the abovementioned elements, some other aspects might make some companies a better fit for your MES projects. Industry knowledge matters, but it’s the combination of industry knowledge with global experience that leads to world-class services. With an experienced global partner, you can be sure that your project is in good hands. Such partners are aware of local specifications and cultural differences and can predict and mitigate potential risks. A track record of successfully deploying and managing global MES projects enables process standardization and optimizes quality and efficiency. Faster deployments, in turn, result in lower overall costs and higher ROI for you.
When working on global deployments, a company should always remember that there will be technical and functional differences in the MES solution deployed across multiple production plants. For example, one plant can have an automated quality testing equipment connected to MES, while another will perform their quality checks manually. Working with an MES services provider that has global experience and will provide guidance on how to handle such situations is crucial.
A history of successful deliveries also proves that the company you choose is responsible, accountable, and able to transfer their knowledge efficiently. A good partner has completed their fair share of MES projects during which they gathered enough wisdom and experience to increase the likelihood of being able to predict what can ‘lie around the corner’. Regardless of your business circumstances or geographical location, your partner’s team should guide you through the demanding journey of an MES implementation and turn your well-planned strategy into a success.
