Reporting from MESA in Orlando...
September 18, 2007

1. The Plant-IT convergence: The leading topic at the MESA conference in Orlando this week is, “How can we get the plant and IT people to work together?” The premise started with the opening keynote speaker, author and consultant Peter Fingar, whose presentation was titled, “Mr. Plant Manager, Tear That Wall Down.” The plant manager didn’t build the wall or defend in over the past decade, so why is it his responsibility to tear it down? That was also the question asked of Fingar by Charlie Gifford of GE Fanuc, and Fingar conceded that it’s not fair to suggest that the responsibility to drive all the change on the plant floor rests with the plant manager.

2. So where IS the responsibility? One point that keeps coming out during the conference is that there are two divergent tasks in a manufacturing enterprise. The plant manager’s job is to make things efficiently. The IT/enterprise level’s job is to measure what is made. Bringing those two sides together is largely the role of the manufacturing enterprise system, which is MESA’s organizational mission. To that end, MESA has a new manufacturing model that takes into account strategic initiatives that will help drive manufacturing excellence. They include Lean initiatives, quality and regulatory compliance, PLM, real-time management, total predictive maintenance and additional incentives.

3. The bad news: In measuring what of these initiatives are already being implemented, Julie Fraser of Industry Directions Inc. studied some manufacturers. Her study found 73% of manufacturers say they are pursuing Lean, 64% are pursuing a total quality system and 47% are pursuing real-time enterprises. But when pressed about the specifics of those implementations, Fraser said “not a lot is truly being widely implemented. There’s still a lot of education to do.”

4. The good news: Ralph Rio from ARC Advisory Group talked about the intersection of Lean and MES, and found that leading companies make sure their plant floor employees have access to computers and to the information they need daily to perform their tasks and meet enterprise goals. It is in making sure the plant floor has the tools and the understanding of the enterprise goals that contributes to the success of any MES implementation.

5. And why MES is important: That’s summed up by Matt Bauer, chairman of MESA and director of marketing for Rockwell Automation. “There’s a growing desire on the part of the manufacturing to measure performance in real time. There’s a growing focus on manufacturing operations. For the first time ever, the spending on manufacturing operations is going to outstrip ERP.”

Posted by Wolseley on September 18, 2007 | Comments (3)