Product - MES

Critical Manufacturing framework

Critical Manufacturing has always been a pioneer in delivering comprehensive MES using the latest technologies. This is because from the beginning, we have looked out into the future. This has allowed us to base Critical Manufacturing MES on modern yet stable, production-ready architectures.

Critical Manufacturing's infrastructure framework for Online Transaction Processing (OLTP) enterprise applications lies down at the bottom of everything we do. Its value resides within the following pillars:

Low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) - through usage of state-of-the-art standard integrated components, strong focus on simplicity and ease of use, deployment and maintenance;

Agility - through powerful, extensible framework, rich functionality, and ease of customization and integration, and user screens each customer can configure yet upgrade;

Versatility - through a generic data model and rich, extensible, customizable application platform plus screens that work on any platform, including mobile.

World class performance reliability - through the usage of standard, proven, cost effective hardware & software solutions; architecture designed for performance, scalability and smart database partitioning;

Our infrastructure framework consists of three tiers that provide good partitioning, modularity and scalability of applications and are designed to work seamlessly together. Given the fact that every customer has its own special business requirements, the infrastructure was designed to be customizable and extensible across the three tiers.

Designed for the creation of rich, interactive user experience, web graphical user interfaces have been developed on a cross-browser, cross-platform base for Rich Internet Applications (RIA). Modules using the new HTML5 approach support any mobile or desktop operating system.

The newest addition with Critical Manufacturing 5.0 is the capability to develop screens for a particular purpose in a particular company or facility. This is a breakthrough in MES’ ability to support unique user and application needs and with screens that can still be upgraded with the rest of the system.

Customization:

ADD RIBBON ACTIONS: enables to add a button that calls a page or an URL supplying the context of the page.

  • Association with customer logic
  • No compilation required

CREATE ADD-INS: gives the ability to create new GUI modules that comprise new classes, pages and controls (added via configuration only), while increasing the consistency, integrity, robustness and common look and feel. A user workflow wizard guides the user through complex interaction scenarios.

NEW GUI’S: allows for creating new user interface based on the presentation framework classes and controls.

  • Maintain look & feel

The business tier implements and exposes all functionalities as services to the outside world. The interface layer supports Web Services among other protocols.

The business workflows are the orchestration layer used to provide higher-level functionality through the coordination of business objects.

The business objects follow a hierarchical object model, which facilitates the development of objects with a common behavior.

Customization:

CUSTOM ENTITIES: allows for creating and extending business objects, using the meta-data repository.

  • Automatic compilation
  • Automatic persistency generation

CUSTOM SERVICES: new services can be created, exposed and consumed with no downtime or recompilation (for Services and Orchestration).

DEE RULES: a dynamic business rules engine allows the implementation of pre- and post transaction logic to every service and operation.

  • Compiled and executed in runtime

Designed for the creation of an automatic powerful data warehousing, reporting and data-mining integrated capabilities, it provides reporting and business intelligence optimized for the runtime system, thus offloading as soon as possible data to the Operational Data Store (ODS) and to the Data Warehouse (DWH).

Customization:

REPORTS: new reports can be created and existing reports can be modified using the Microsoft Report Builder graphical design tool.

  • Include filters, tables, charts options

CUBES: enables to create new cubes with Microsoft Analysis Services or modify pre-built data warehouse cubes.

DATA SOURCES :allows for integration of external data sources operational data store (ODS).

Critical Manufacturing's software is built on a technology stack from a single vendor (Microsoft), with new additions at the user interface level to ensure that customers can select any OS and platform and use key applications effectively on mobile devices of their choice.

The Microsoft core ensures the highest interoperability as well as a single point of contact for software related issues. We use the following technologies:

  • Microsoft Silverlight
  • Microsoft C# / .Net
  • Microsoft SQL Server
  • Microsoft Windows
  • HTML5 – an international standard from the Worldwide Web Consortium
  • Angular 2 – an open source application development platform with support from Google
Total Manufacturing Integration

Seamlessly integrate IT layers and increase interoperability of dispersed manufacturing applications

Critical Manufacturing MES' open and extensible architecture supports Manufacturing Execution Systems, Manufacturing System Integration, Manufacturing Equipment Integration, Manufacturing Data Analysis and Business Intelligence.

  • Easy, bidirectional integration with SAP, MS Dynamics and many other ERP systems;
  • Integration with SECS (SEMI Equipment Communications Standard)/GEM (Generic Equipment Model), OPC, Database, File and many other possibilities;
  • Critical Manufacturing's framework based on Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) and SQL Server Integration Service (SSIS) allows a myriad of integration options;
  • Critical Manufacturing's modular approach allows integration with legacy / 3rd party solutions for specific functionality.

Hardware reliability, scalability and performance

The Critical Manufacturing's infrastructure framework and technology allows the products which are built on top of it to scale from a single notebook to a very distributed application farm to ensure high-availability and load balancing.

The system can be deployed in several variations depending on the load and scalability requirements, starting from single server.

  • Hardware can be scaled according to the manufacturing needs, at any time.
  • The Application Server farms scale up as well as scale out via Network Load Balancing.
  • Database can be configured in high-availability mode either through fail-over clustering or mirroring.

See also:

Integrating ERP, MES and automation levels
Democratization of the modern MES
Automation needs standards
Agile MES

CIO Review:

20 Most Promising Manufacturing Technology Solution Providers

by CIO Review Magazine (October 27, 2014)

CIO Review has included Critical Manufacturing in its annual list of the world’s 20 Most Promising Manufacturing Technology Solution Providers.

A distinguished panel comprising of CEOs, CIOs, CMOs, VCs, analysts and the CIO Review editorial board has selected top players from over thousand companies. The listing provides a look into how manufacturing solutions work in the real world, so that you can gain a comprehensive understanding of what technologies are available, which are right for you, and how they shape up against the competition.

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