Industry 4.0

Today we will discuss the future of manufacturing, examining the effects that new technologies and the pandemic are having in shaping its future. We will review the need for digital transformation and building resilience in global manufacturing supply chains.

Categorizing manufacturing operations based on process workflows and establishing a functionality/weight-based methodology for selecting the right MES is a logical first step. Understanding industry-specific use cases will enable and aid better decision making when it comes to deciding which MES works best for you.

As I started to explore in the first post of this series, many companies seem to be strategically lost among the various digitization initiatives and are experiencing severe difficulties in achieving results from the investments made.

Whether it’s MES, Batch Recipe Management System, or EMI portal, they all are subjected to the “make versus buy” argument or sometimes, the “repurposing” of existing applications to make do. Let’s examine the reasoning.

If there’s one thing over everything else that’s going to ruin your plans for manufacturing excellence, it’s uncertainty. And that is something we have in abundance right now.

It is with great pleasure that we note that the 2020 Gartner Critical Capabilities Report for Manufacturing Execution Systems, recognizes Critical Manufacturing with the highest product scores for three use cases.

There are several reasons why MES needs Implementation Providers. These are companies focused on providing services, with a MES practice developed over many years, often with a strong MES-specific project methodology in place, and having the success of the project as the main objective.

Dark data has no immediate value and does not translate into useful information, even when orchestrated and organized. Yet you should store it. This post explains why and how

Industry 4.0 and automation & robotics have grown in importance in today’s manufacturing landscape. What role do these technologies have in improving process efficiency and capacity? Chris Parsons, Critical Manufacturing, explains how manufacturing execution systems (MES) can improve process capacity.