Real-time shop floor integration, simplified

Rubber World, May, 2008 by Susan Payne

As a manufacturer, you know where your money is made--on the shop floor, day in and day out. And, like countless other manufacturers, you also realize the shop floor is the next great frontier in the quest for truly lean operations. In a recent report titled, "Bridging the ERP and shop floor divide," the Aberdeen Group notes that the disconnect between ERP (enterprise resource planning) and the shop floor hinders manufacturing performance. But you already knew this. You have seen it in data collected from the shop floor with pen and paper on spreadsheets and charts, then uploaded in batches or transferred manually to multiple databases that are not readily connected to each other, let alone your ERP system. Very often, the data are uploaded after they are needed, creating problematic situations.

In the realm of demand-driven manufacturing, where you must consistently do more with less, real-time information from the shop floor is imperative to prevent problems, drive quality and enable the flexibility your customers require. Left unchecked, issues like down time, poor machine performance, scrap and overruns can quickly erode your profit. But without an enterprise system that works in unison with real-time shop floor data, these issues can remain hidden and change any seeming lean progress into nothing more than a mirage.

Unfortunately, the path to shop floor integration does not always appear straightforward. According to Aberdeen, manufacturers face many challenges in eliminating the disconnect between ERP and the shop floor. Existing systems are hard to integrate. Companies have no unifying manufacturing architecture. There are too many applications to support, and aging or proprietary systems to consider. It is also difficult to get the right information to the people who need it in time for them to make critical business decisions. What's more, Aberdeen says effective integration

cannot be accomplished simply by collecting shop floor data and passing it on to the ERE Rather, the ERP system must be active in pushing orders to the shop floor. It must keep constant track and provide access to current and planned inventory requirements.

Your shop floor operates in real-time. It moves fast, and so must you. Information today about last week's overrun will not allow you to prevent the overrun that is about to occur now. Beyond the collection and integration of shop floor data, the real challenge is to make that data actionable--in an instant--to everyone, at every level within your organization, and in fact across your entire supply chain. Only by doing so will you achieve the visibility and control you need to be competitive in today's demand driven economy. While this challenge may seem complex, with the right solution, you can attack it head-on, intelligently and cost-effectively.

Shop floor integration--myth vs. reality

Manufacturers approach shop floor integration through various means; some methods are more complicated, and thereby more expensive than others. A common myth concludes that ERP cannot handle shop floor integration in complex manufacturing environments. As a result, manufacturing execution systems (MES) and, more recently, manufacturing intelligence (MI) dashboard applications have come to the forefront as go betweens, extra layers designed to connect the shop floor to the ERP. Yet, in reality, because these bolt-on solutions are not inherent to the ERP system, they require higher levels of customization and architectural changes before they can perform as intended. Once installed, these solutions may also require greater ongoing support from IT staff. And even with the extra cost and effort, they may not provide immediate, accurate or automated results, because they have no execution capabilities, or they rely on batch transfers instead of real-time communication.

Demand-driven manufacturing mandates flexibility to respond automatically in an instant to changes in areas such as inventory, production status, customer requests, even compliance mandates. Batch communication does not happen frequently enough to support this level of flexibility; and worse, batch transfers perpetuate time lags and inaccuracies across your supply chain, resulting in problems such as excess inventory, carrying costs and lost productivity.

Manufacturers might also believe that the more complex a solution, the better it will be in solving shop floor integration issues. An MES system, for example, may be complex with feature-rich process monitoring tools, but do you need a separate system to monitor process when the machines you are running have extensive process monitors onboard? While an MES system offers information on product properties, that information is not the most relevant to profit. Rather, it is your production output that more directly affects your bottom line, and the data derived from that output that is more actionable to your ERP system.

Today's reality also demands real-time communication that flows automatically across your supply chain. A single-database, extended ERP system that knits ERP and shop floor capabilities into one comprehensive weave may deliver better results with less effort and cost than batch-oriented, third-party solutions. For example, an ERP solution like EnterpriseIQ from IQMS can deliver real-time shop floor integration across a globally distributed network and fulfill many of the same functions normally performed by MES systems. EnterpriseIQ, with its embedded RealTime Machine Monitoring technology, removes the complexity of real-time shop floor integration by using simple contact closures to connect all machines to a single ERP database. The result is actionable, real-time shop floor data that can be utilized any time, anywhere, by anyone within your organization to drive up quality, boost performance and improve your bottom line.