Those who want to stay competitive in electronics manufacturing can’t afford to ignore changes in the industry. Increased process integration, more efficient staffing and a commitment to sustainability aren’t choices anymore – they are requirements. This is Industry 4.0 in action, where manufacturing execution systems (MES) play a crucial role in providing comprehensive control and visibility across the entire factory. MES serves as the cornerstone in enabling an Intelligent Factory that is automated, efficient, connected, flexible, sustainable and reliable, ensuring synchronized and streamlined operations.
What can an Intelligent Factory deliver when operations expect more from a MES?
Your MES should provide a systematic approach to automating and orchestrating the movement of materials throughout the production cycle. By integrating with various components of the manufacturing process, the MES ensures that materials move seamlessly from one stage to another, minimizing delays and bottlenecks in the entire factory. Automation within the MES not only accelerates material flows but also enhances accuracy, reducing the likelihood of costly rework. Critical Manufacturing MES modules and functionalities such as Factory Automation, Material Flow Management, Material Logistics/MSD and Floor Life Control help deliver optimal throughput.
You should expect your MES to play an important role in minimizing downtime, particularly if it enables on-time maintenance combined with integrated, real-time equipment monitoring as your pathway to predictive maintenance. Critical Manufacturing MES offers a fully integrated maintenance module that helps to maximize operational equipment effectiveness (OEE) by ensuring better equipment utilization, extended lifespans, and uninterrupted production. In addition, the fully integrated data platform provides data analysis from sensors in context with data from other systems, starting your journey to predictive and prescriptive maintenance to further reduce downtime.
Expect more from connectivity when the right MES serves as the nervous system that ties everything together. By integrating with manufacturing systems such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), product lifecycle management (PLM) and other operational technologies, MES facilitates the seamless exchange of information, enabling a more responsive and adaptive manufacturing environment. Critical Manufacturing MES simplifies connectivity regardless of the system vendor by supporting both proprietary protocols and industry standards such as IPC-2591 CFX.
In a world of uncertainty, flexibility is a must. An MES gives manufacturers the agility they need to adapt to rapidly evolving market conditions. Being a single and complete modular system, Critical Manufacturing MES allows you to model your business and factory processes without huge programming requirements. The software offers master templates that are easily customizable to fit your needs, and its containerized deployment architecture enables you to scale quickly and easily across your value chain.
An MES plays a pivotal role in optimizing workforce allocation and utilization. Through the real-time monitoring of production processes, it enables a data-driven approach to staffing, helping manufacturers allocate resources to meet production demands. This results in cost savings and in a more engaged and productive workforce by deploying the right resources to where their skills are most needed. Critical Manufacturing MES also allows you to react faster to issues by utilizing its alarm notification center with automated event notifications. Better workforce training support is also provided by logging trainer activities and requiring their signatures until workers are certified.
Yield and performance define manufacturing success. Expect your MES to be a crucial ally here by continuously monitoring and optimizing production processes-providing real-time data on equipment performance, quality metrics, and overall production efficiency. Critical Manufacturing MES offers fully integrated modules for quality management, maintenance management, material defects, material logistics, and material resource tracking, giving manufacturers the right tools for success and empowering decision-makers with actionable insights to fine-tune operations for the highest performance.
A proverb says “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together”. We believe in the power of partnerships. An MES fosters collaboration by connecting stakeholders within and outside the organization, enhancing visibility across the supply chain and allowing manufacturers to respond promptly to changes in demand, supply chain disruptions, or other unforeseen challenges. Critical Manufacturing also has a strong ecosystem of trusted partners that go through intensive training and certification to provide the best service to our customers.
Sustainability is strategic—today and in the future. MES contributes to sustainability goals by optimizing resource usage, reducing waste, and improving energy efficiency. Through data-driven insights, manufacturers can identify areas for improvement in their processes, leading to a more environmentally friendly and sustainable operation. With Critical Manufacturing MES you can also expect an inclusive system that accommodates a mode for color blindness and visual impairments and a natural language assistant chatbot.
In conclusion, if you are on an Industry 4.0 journey, you need an MES. As manufacturing evolves, an MES is the cornerstone technology that meets current needs while paving the way to the Intelligent Factory, addressing critical aspects such as automation, efficiency, connectivity, flexibility, sustainability, and reliability.
