Earlier last century, it was easier for companies to increase their sales. There being fewer corporates and scarcer competition made it possible for even the more expensive products to be marketed. In such atmosphere, companies were strangers to the concepts such as R&D, Innovation and IT.
Latter half of the century brought similar companies working on similar fields and therefore, competition. With the advent of computers, IT concept started to take shape.
Hand written records began migrating towards digital infrastructures with computation technologies popping up in industries. IT systems first began planning materials in corporations. In this system called Material Requirements Planning, machines notified people on when to acquire new materials all by looking at the deadlines of sales orders.
Companies using MRP systems was at the beginning content with the technology but tough competition was indicating that the machines would also be needed to be planned. MRP II was developed under these circumstances, which told the crews which parts were to be manufactured to meet the sales.
Next step in this evolution was adding sales, pruchasing, HR, accounting and many more organizations to the IT systems. Enterprise Resource Planning would do just that. When whole organizations were entering data on time and correctly, ERPs would take a snapshot of the company and let bosses know how they were doing. More than that, ERPs would notify administrators on new inverstments or savings.
Nowadays technology and competition is in such a state that ERPs alone are not enough for companies wanting to go corporate. Organizations enter work orders on the system, enter material and end product but this is all a small part of the picture. They can’t identify the root reasons behind why a machine that was supposed to put out 100 units in an hour put out 85. They can’t see how effectively their personnel had been working, how many times their work stations broke down or halted.
Moving on with these needs in mind software companies started working on a system that would allow corporations to track all their operations every split second (not even seconds). Generally called MES (Manufacturing Execution System), this system presents you what’s going on with excruciating detail based on machine or personel.
“Mert Yazılım” along with its Trex DCAS software solution serves the leading companies in both domastically and internationally. What makes it special in its field is its ability to find solutions to every new development in industry.
With the help of touchscreen Operator Panels placed strategically along the plant, it gathers data and serves it in a format that allows engineering teams to pick it apart extensively.
Working principle of the program is collecting signals above a certain voltage and storing it in its memory. It’s also a software that allows operators working on stations, quality teams and maintenance teams to rapidly identify halts and/or quality/maintenance stoppages through the touchscreens.
Let’s run through which data MES systems, such as Trex DCAS allow us to analyse:
- Station based speed loss and loss reasons
- Speed losses affecting different machines
- Amount of time before and operator intervened the loss
- The time when a breakdown was eliminated
- Spent consumables during elimination
- Breaks taken by operators
- Amount of product manufactured in a unit of time
- Product based efficiency compared to theoretical capacity
- Average piece/hour or meters/hour speed of work
- Amount of lost time due to format changes (Preparation, model swaps)
- Machine based average speed numbers, speed changes based on timeline
- Comparing OEE between shifts
- Loss of material, semi-material and product
MES systems are known to increase manufacturing performance by up to 30% along with the improvements stemming from field data. It also increases performance since personnel are aware of their statistics being kept an monitored.
