2010 June Issue - Best Practices - Defining Paperless MES Requirements

When most Manufacturing Execution System (MES) projects begin, they usually look for a solution to one or more of the major problems in shop floor operations – speed up the change process, reduce errors, reduce scrap, tighter control over processes, real time knowledge of shop floor orders, etc.  The belief is that if these problems are solved the company will reduce expenses, become more competitive and increase production capacity. 

Early in the project, the company initiates a requirements process to itemize and define the detailed functions that an MES solution needs to perform to solve the identified problems in shop floor operations.  This process varies in length from months to years so we looked at why that is so.

The requirements and process benefits usually fall into three groups. 

Group 1: The Low Hanging Fruit:   This group includes the requirements to solve a few of the problems that have a large potential payoff for the plant and company.  This group produces a compelling ROI story and typically represents 20% of the requirements and 65% of the ROI.

Group 2: The Must Haves:   Those necessary requirements with a lesser payoff and more investment needed to achieve them.  This group is a result of additional people defining a set of requirements for necessary functions based on the existing production processes / best practices.  These requirements must be satisfied to maintain reliable operations and typically represent 60% of the requirements and 30% of the ROI.

These first two groups account for 80% of the requirements and provide 95% of the ROI.

Group 3: The wish list:  This group includes requirements that benefit a few people but do not significantly improve production operations or costs.  This group can dilute the ROI benefits and typically add significantly more cost to the project.  This group also can increase the time to get the project off the ground.

For various reasons, many companies include Group 3 requirements in the early phase of the project.  While this can accelerate “buy-in”, it can add enough baggage to the project that it is no longer financially justified - the project becomes too large and loses traction.  In some companies, this produces an ROI that is so small that management abandons the project. 

A White Paper is available that extends this discussion into examples of successful projects and unsuccessful ones along with what type requirements go into each Group.  The Paper also discusses some of the keys to a successful MES project.  For more information go to the Knowledge Center and download the White Paper.