MES[edit]

A wide variety of systems arose using collected data for a dedicated purpose. Further development
of these systems during the 1990s introduced overlap in functionality. Then the Manufacturing
Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) introduced some structure by defining 11 functions that set
the scope of MES. In 2000, the ANSI/ISA-95 standard merged this model with the Purdue Reference
Model (PRM).[5]
A functional hierarchy was defined in which MES were situated at Level 3 between ERP at Level 4
and process control at Levels 0, 1, 2. With the publication of the third part of the standard in 2005,
activities in Level 3 were divided over four main operations: production, quality, logistics and
maintenance.
Between 2005 and 2013, additional or revised parts of the ANSI/ISA-95 standard defined the
architecture of an MES into more detail, covering how to internally distribute functionality and what
information to exchange internally as well as externally.[citation needed]

Functional areas[edit]
Over the years, international standards and models have refined the scope of such systems in terms
of activities[citation needed]. These typically include:.

 Management of product definitions. This may include storage, version control and exchange with
other systems of master data like product production rules, bill of material, bill of resources,
process set points and recipe data all focused on defining how to make a product. Management
of product definitions can be part of product lifecycle management.
 Management of resources. This may include registration, exchange and analysis of resource
information, aiming to prepare and execute production orders with resources of the right
capabilities and availability.
 Scheduling (production processes). These activities determine the production schedule as a
collection of work orders to meet the production requirements, typically received from enterprise
resource planning (ERP) or specialized advanced planning and scheduling systems, making
optimal use of local resources.
 Dispatching production orders. Depending on the type of production processes this may include
further distribution of batches, runs and work orders, issuing these to work centers and
adjustment to unanticipated conditions.
 Execution of production orders. Although actual execution is done by process control systems,
an MES may perform checks on resources and inform other systems about the progress of
production processes.
 Collection of production data. This includes collection, storage and exchange of process data,
equipment status, material lot information and production logs in either a data historian or
relational database.
 Production performance analysis. Create useful information out of the raw collected data about
the current status of production, like Work In Progress (WIP) overviews, and the production
performance of the past period like the overall equipment effectiveness or any
other performance indicator.
 Production track and trace. Registration and retrieval of related information in order to present a
complete history of lots, orders or equipment (particularly important in health related
productions, e.g. pharmaceuticals).
 The digitizing of the complete data from the log books into the web/tablet interface with the edit
lock feature and also pulling the data from the SCADA system into the common databank.
 The audit interface which helps in the evaluation of performance. For example, the direct/indirect
efficiency of the boiler or the cooling tower effectiveness, which is possible only by the complete
integration of the data from the log books and the SCADA System.

Relationship with other systems[edit]

MES integrates with ISA-95 (previous Purdue Reference Model, “95”) with multiple relationships.

Relationship with other Level 3 systems[edit]

The collection of systems acting on the ISA-95 Level 3 can be called manufacturing operations
management systems (MOMS). Apart from an MES, there are typically laboratory information
management system (LIMS), warehouse management system (WMS) and computerized
maintenance management system (CMMS). From the MES point of view possible information flows
are:

 To LIMS: quality test requests, sample lots, statistical process data

 From LIMS: quality test results, product certificates, testing progress
 To WMS: material resource requests, material definitions, product deliveries
 From WMS: material availability, staged material lots, product shipments
 To CMMS: equipment running data, equipment assignments, maintenance requests
 From CMMS: maintenance progress, equipment capabilities, maintenance schedule
Relationship with Level 4 systems[edit]
Examples of systems acting on ISA-95 Level 4 are product lifecycle management (PLM), enterprise
resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management(CRM), human resource
management (HRM), process development execution system (PDES). From the MES point of view
possible information flows are:

 To PLM: production test results

 From PLM: product definitions, bill of operations (routings), electronic work instructions,
equipment settings
 To ERP: production performance results, produced and consumed material
 From ERP: production planning, order requirements
 To CRM: product tracking and tracing information
 From CRM: product complaints
 To HRM: personnel performance
 From HRM: personnel skills, personnel availability
 To PDES: production test and execution results
 From PDES: manufacturing flow definitions, design of experiments (DoE) definitions
In many cases, middleware enterprise application integration (EAI) systems are being used to
exchange transaction messages between MES and Level 4 systems. A common data
definition, B2MML, has been defined within the ISA-95 standard to link MES systems to these Level
4 systems.

Relationship with Level 0, 1, 2 systems[edit]

Systems acting on ISA-95 Level 2 are supervisory control and data
acquisition (SCADA), programmable logic controllers (PLC), distributed control systems (DCS)
and batch automation systems (BAS). Information flows between MES and these process control
systems are roughly similar:
 To PLCs: work instructions, recipes, set points
 From PLCs: process values, alarms, adjusted set points, production results
Most MES systems include connectivity as part of their product offering. Direct communication of
plant floor equipment data is established by connecting to the PLC. Often, plant floor data is first
collected and diagnosed for real-time control in a DCS or SCADA system. In this case, the MES
systems connect to these Level 2 systems for exchanging plant floor data.
Until recently, the industry standard for plant floor connectivity has been OLE for Process
Control (OPC), but it is now moving to OPC Unified Architecture (OPC-UA); meaning that OPC-UA
compatible systems will not necessarily run only on Microsoft Windows environment, but will also be
able to run on GNU/Linux or other embedded systems, decr