In a manufacturing facility the MES (Manufacturing Execution System) is a critical operational tool that connects two vital worlds; the world of enterprise management (ERP) and the world of manufacturing operations (located on the plant floor). One of the challenges of this symbiotic relationship is that the two systems are very different. ERP focuses on orders and schedules as the foundation of their unit of measure. Whereas the plant floor focuses on processing information like temperature, pressure, and speeds resulting in rate, counts, and pace. When you frame it in that light, you can see how a level of complexity and creativity may be required to connect the two worlds.
This complexity is something that MES software platforms and MES developers are trying to problem solve each and every day. They enable and create robust, stable systems that make the production of a manufacturer’s goods more efficient, and devoid of the no.1 efficiency enemy; paper forms and Excel spreadsheets. With that being the case, the use of MES means that the system must function at all times around the clock. In order to deliver on that type of uptime and availability, there must be a resource to turn to when things go bump in the night, a network issue occurs, the database connection fails, or something else entirely unpredictable. Typically, this skill set is not required full time and often does not reside inside the manufacturing facility staff’s area of expertise. To help in this area, Actemium offers tailor made, 24×7 MES support that fits the needs of a manufacturer.
To provide more insight into specific examples, one of our manufacturing customers, who has 26 U.S. production facilities, we provide 24×7 support for all their MES applications with a focus on labeling systems, inventory recognition, efficiency / OEE tracking, Quality Management, and Production Reporting.
WHAT SYSTEMS ARE BEHIND THE SUPPORT?
In order to triage, manage, and address support requests from 26 facilities, Actemium’s centralized structure to request support is leveraged with a Service Level Access (SLA) timeframe for each type and level of severity prioritized. From the SLA requirements Actemium defines an internal decision tree structure to ensure attainment. This establishes a clear owner of the service request and associated SLA. The service request is managed through a ticketing system to ensure a request does not get misplaced and attention to the issue is maintained. The ticketing system additionally provides historical data for reporting purposes to measure the results of the support and is a critical tool to communicate status and areas that need attention to the customer.
After an initial setup period of a month, Actemium’s industrial performance improvement services provide a consistent response and resolution of over 100 tickets per month by more than 6 different support engineers who are aligned and experienced in solving the customer’s needs. Based on our agreed triage structure, Actemium can strategically prioritize service tickets that come through the hotline, meaning that the most critical issues are elevated for immediate assistance and those with a lower level of service are prioritized for the following period of time.
DESIRED RESULT:
The ultimate goal is to fix, correct and prevent operational performance challenges though investigation, improvement recommendations, and in some cases, create small project efforts. These performance improvement services span many sites and address specific challenges that impact performance of the plant regardless of its location around the globe. Actemium’s global scale provides the ability to address issues and help with MES problems no matter the time zone and country of origin.
MES systems such as those highlighted here control the release of product from “Work in Progress” to “Finished Goods”. When these critical systems go down, plant production and productivity soon cease as well. By having a support structure to ensure that there is someone to turn to in the event of an issue, the customer can improve their recovery time and resume production.
Additionally, by tracking the root cause of the various issues that happen, our support service organization can fix and address issues to inhibit them from occurring again. The support team is constantly analyzing how to improve the systems to prevent the challenges that inevitably arise. By always thinking one step ahead, many unforeseen challenges are minimized or can be avoided altogether. And that is truly invaluable.
