Cloud MES in the spotlight at Modern Manufacturing Expo

Cloud-based MES and product data management will be in the spotlight at the 2023 Modern Manufacturing Expo, according to the event organisers.

Cloud-based manufacturing execution system (MES) software can help process, discrete and mixed-environment manufacturers of any size to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) up to 30%, decrease maintenance and improve security. They are also able to lower capital expenditures and operating expenses compared to on-premises implementations.

“With MES as a service, manufacturers can achieve a fast track to modern manufacturing operations and frontline guidance, enabling connected workers across the enterprise,” said David Berridge, Senior Manager – ANZ for GE Digital’s Manufacturing and Digital Plant business. “By reducing the costs and human power needed to deploy and maintain an MES, any manufacturer can implement an adaptable production system and gain the real-time operations optimisation to support digital transformation, continuous improvement  and lean initiatives.”

GE Digital is a Silver Sponsor at the upcoming Modern Manufacturing Expo, where it will showcase its software solutions and other products to manufacturers and other industry decision-makers. The Modern Manufacturing Expo will take place 20–21 September 2023 at Sydney Showground in Sydney Olympic Park and is a free event showcasing leading companies in advanced manufacturing, processes, products and technologies to help transition traditional manufacturers into modern manufacturers, such as cloud MES and manufacturing product data management.

Fully hosted as a managed service, cloud MES provides companies with robust, composable no-code technology to improve their operations in real time, along with the flexibility to deploy in a way that best suits their needs. Manufacturers can decrease maintenance resource overhead and increase performance with the latest features and newest software releases provided quickly through the cloud infrastructure.

With a cloud-based, managed MES solution, manufacturers will no longer have to worry about patching the OS and supporting software; additionally, manufacturers can increase security through software managed at scale including vendor-managed security updates.

Unifying manufacturing product data management

Whether on-premise or in the cloud, today’s digital transformation can unify manufacturing product information from disparate data systems, transform and organise raw business-oriented information into production-ready formats, and orchestrate the information across factory floor systems at a single site or multiple sites.

Manufacturers need to stay in sync with constant updates to manufacturing product data to provide higher quality and throughput. Digitised manufacturing product data management can enable faster time-to-market with accurate product data based on unified information-mapping data from different systems such as ERP and PLM into MES.

Accurate product manufacturing data, which is readily available during production execution, is said to decrease waste by about 10% per plant annually from less rework and rejections. It also reduces production delays and compliance issues, leading to approximately 5% improvement in on-time delivery and 1% decrease in compliance-related costs.

“One of our priority focus areas for the upcoming Modern Manufacturing Expo is to address the practical, administrative challenges that local manufacturers face in their day-to-day operations,” said Marie Kinsella, CEO of the International Exhibition & Conference (IEC) Group, the organiser of the Expo. “We’re excited to have GE Digital onboard as a sponsor for their expertise and wide range of products that address these manufacturing-specific challenges that will be showcased to attendees at the Expo in September.”

With supply chain issues, more product and regulatory standards, production can get out of sync with the latest manufacturing product data, resulting in lower quality, increased waste and operations headaches.

Digitised manufacturing product data management records and allows users to analyse the updates to manufacturing product data at a given plant. It also stores deviations and comments, recorded as variances, to provide visibility into a plant’s adoption of the changes. This allows manufacturers to decrease quality variability due to ad-hoc modifications as well as the non-productive time and manual efforts trying to execute standard production work.

“Digitised manufacturing product data management helps companies solve common challenges such as inefficiencies in production due to inaccurate product data, siloed and custom approaches to product data, compliance risks, and lack of quality standardisation,” Berridge said. “For companies that are tired of cobbling together plant systems or manually trying to capture the right product manufacturing data on paper, digitised manufacturing product data management can help increase throughput, reduce waste and improve quality with the right information at their fingertips.”

Image credit: iStock.com/metamorworks