Choosing a software package for a manufacturing business was once a relatively straightforward exercise. Shop owners and CEOs looking for a platform to run their company would approach a few enterprise resource planning (ERP) software providers and choose the one that best fit their needs. Those responsible for managing the production floor turned to developers specializing in manufacturing execution systems (MES) for greater visibility and real-time information, just as the engineering department would look for the latest, greatest production lifecycle management (PLM) tool for greater control over designs and data.
Unfortunately, those days practically invented the term “silos of information.” And while silos still exist, their foundations are crumbling as more and more software users come to realize the inefficiencies caused by disparate software systems and the resultant data duplication, lack of collaboration and the inability of one group or department to access the wealth of information sitting on the opposite side of an invisible, digital wall.
“Many of the various functions made possible with ERP, MES and PLM are beginning to merge and overlap,” notes Casey Morgan, senior manager for strategic partnerships at San Francisco-based Autodesk Inc. “People are thinking of them more as centers of business intelligence, and rather than wondering about a specific product or a process, they’re asking questions like, ‘How do we make the business run more efficiently?’ and ‘What can we do to maximize throughput?’ They need the insights that only an integrated software platform can provide.”
Morgan notes that, as with so many other aspects of life, manufacturing has changed since the pandemic. For instance, businesses are attempting to onshore more of their work and need accurate, real-time information as they expand or modify supply chains. They’re also looking to optimize operations wherever possible, an activity made easier through software simulation and the automated gathering of production data.
Thankfully, such optimization is easier than ever. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and its ability to quickly gather immense quantities of production data has essentially placed MES platforms on steroids. Because of this, machine shops, sheet metal fabricators and other discrete manufacturers are no longer dependent on operators filling out paper timecards or sharing tribal knowledge, relying instead on increasingly ubiquitous onboard sensors and intelligent machine controls to feed MES with valuable information.
The challenge, then, is to share this information with other platforms—to break it out of a silo and make certain that the ERP and PLM systems have access to factory-generated data, and vice versa. “You can think of MES as the intelligence of the manufacturing process, PLM as the intelligence of the product that you’re manufacturing and ERP drawing from both,” Morgan says. “By linking and integrating these systems, companies can gain an enormous competitive advantage.”
Engineers, architects, machinists and media professionals alike have long turned to Autodesk for their CAD/CAM needs—and for good reason. So, no offense to Morgan or any of his nearly 15,000 colleagues, what business does a self-professed “design-and-make” solution developer for the construction, manufacturing and entertainment industries have weighing in on ERP and PLM systems?
Plenty, actually. As with others interviewed for this article, Autodesk has long realized the importance of software interoperability and integration, which is why the software giant recently acquired Prodsmart MES for small- to medium-sized manufacturers as well as the cloud-based PLM solution Upchain, which offers Vault Product Data Management (PDM) and provides “hooks” in the form of application programming interfaces (APIs) to many leading ERP systems.
Integration potential aside, Morgan admits that today’s software landscape is quite complex and more work is needed to simplify it. “Sadly, many manufacturers still rely on paper, Post-It notes and Excel spreadsheets to manage critical functions within their business,” he says. “Our job is to make it as easy as possible for them and others to achieve a fully connected system. That’s the dream of factory digitization, and we want to make it a reality.”
Siemens Digital Industries Software is another company that some used to mentally pigeonhole as a design-and-engineering-only software provider. But as digital manufacturing chief solution architect Dave Atkins is quick to point out, the Plano, Texas, company has invested heavily over the past decade or so in complementary platforms, including its MES for discrete, process and regulated industries. Siemens Digital also invested in the low-code application platform Mendix, an intra-plant logistics (IPL) and supply-chain-execution solution named MindSphere, along with various PLM and digital simulation technologies.
Atkins suggests that such expansions indicate a significant shift in the manufacturing landscape. “In the past, companies deploying these systems had an attitude of customize first, integrate later. They wanted their MES, PLM and ERP systems to exactly mirror their legacy manufacturing and supply chain processes, with little consideration given to adopting industry best practices or using the implementation as an opportunity to reimagine the business.”
The appetite for customization is decreasing as companies everywhere—many of which have made significant investments in customized systems—are beginning to rethink earlier decisions. They now seem more willing to adopt recommended procedures and proven, preconfigured solutions that allow them to design a product, plan and schedule jobs, order materials, execute production orders and validate that what they produce matches the design.
“If you take the basic, out-of-the-box business functions that all manufacturers require and make these your starting point, you can begin to see benefits more quickly, then think about customization and fine-tuning later,” Atkins says. Laughing, he adds: “As Teddy Roosevelt once said, ‘Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.’”
Maybe so, but out-of-the-box functionality doesn’t preclude the need for robust integration of what have long been disparate systems. Historically, companies such as Siemens have accomplished this by sending small armies of programmers onsite to write whatever interfaces were required to exchange and transform data between the ERP and PLM software, the MES and the CAD systems, etc. Today, however, Siemens is but one of the many providers offering “low-code, no-code” tools that take developers out of the loop, giving control instead to so-called citizen programmers without any experience.
“Our integration products, for example, work like a flow chart that allows even casual users to visually map data from one area to another,” Atkins says. “This approach helps separate the business logic from the data transformation steps, while still giving more technical people the ability to get in there and tinker with the nuts and bolts underneath. I think this level of functionality will soon be available industrywide as more software providers recognize the need for these easily deployed data pipelines.”
Parag Ladha, global industry marketing director for manufacturing at Microsoft Corp., agrees. He says that generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities offered through the company’s Azure OpenAI Service allow organizations to create their own “co-pilots” that support natural language querying of data across ERP, MES and PLM systems, democratizing advanced analytics for everyone in the manufacturing value chain and enabling data-driven decision making.
“We work with many of the industry’s leading-edge manufacturing and business software providers, giving our joint customers the ability to extract the best value from these applications on the Microsoft Cloud platform,” Ladha says. “One recent example is our collaboration with Siemens to integrate their Teamcenter PLM with the Microsoft Teams platform. Such integration helps manufacturers enhance from the factory floor to product development teams, accelerating root cause analysis and product development cycles.”
The cloud with software-as-a-service (SaaS) is another growing trend within the enterprise software space. For those who might be concerned about the security ramifications of moving the company’s IT infrastructure and software installations offsite, Ladha suggests what many have already discovered: Migrating the PLM, design and simulation capabilities to the cloud is one of the best ways to improve data security, privacy and governance posture.
Microsoft customer Eagle Industry Co., a manufacturer of specialized seals, valves and bellows for industrial and transport equipment, recently shared how migrating its PLM and design practices to Azure helped secure the company’s intellectual property while “substantially accelerating” product development and innovation, according to Ladha.
Christine Hansen, director of product marketing for Austin, Texas-based Epicor Software Corp., sees similar opportunities. The ERP provider has had a strong cloud presence for more than a decade, and like most in this market segment, continues to expand its offerings through in-house software development as well as various corporate acquisitions. Notable examples include partnerships with Pro.File PLM (a Revalize Inc. brand) and QBuild CADLink, as well as its recent purchase of eFlex Systems in Rochester Hills, Mich., a developer of manufacturing process control software.
“We’ve since rebranded it as Epicor Connected Process Control and have plans to integrate it with our Kinetic ERP, but, for now, it is available as a stand-alone product,” Hansen notes. “Regardless, the focus here is on making workers more efficient and processes more automated. It does this by providing digital work instructions that support connectivity to external equipment such as calipers and gauges, barcode and badge readers, torque wrenches and practically any other device that can record results, provide feedback and help guide an employee through a series of tasks.”
This level of connectivity extends to IIoT devices found on newer industrial equipment and CNC machinery, giving shops a chance to “close the loop” on their discrete production processes. The same applies to process manufacturers, where “smart” ovens, mixers, reactors and pumps will share their secrets with the company’s MES and ERP platforms. In each case, manufacturing becomes more transparent and predictable, improving throughput and quality levels.
It also opens the door to advanced analytics of the resultant manufacturing data, a capability that software suppliers are rolling out to many of their customers. Epicor’s Hansen says the company has “relationships with a company by the name of Sage Clarity, as well as Andon, Digital Twin and OEE level analytics as part of our Advanced MES solution, which can connect to various machine controls and control systems for real-time production monitoring. And, in the future, we fully expect to see AI leverage these valuable analytics, which is why we acquired the Grow solution.”
Grow is a no-code, full-stack business intelligence (BI) software platform that “allows companies to more easily connect and warehouse data,” Hansen explains. “It’s an important capability that will quickly become crucial as IIoT-generated data streams from the factory floor increase in size, count and complexity. Without BI tools able to connect with MES, ERP and PLM systems and sort through the mountains of data within, manufacturers will face difficulty separating the wheat from the chaff.
Like Epicor and other enterprise software providers, New York City-based Infor Inc. (a division of Koch Industries Inc.) embarked on a “build, buy or partner” path many years ago, resulting in the continuous expansion of core competencies and an ongoing need for integration.
“Consider a company that makes solar panels,” explains Andrew Kinder Infor’s senior vice president of international strategy and sales support. “As with any other manufacturer, the ERP platform is responsible for issuing the work orders, gathering labor and material costs and shipping the product, while the PLM system holds all of the information about the finished product design, its various components and manufacturing processes and so on. But it’s MES that’s doing the heavy data lifting.”
In this example, every one of the individual cells within each of the panels must be tested as part of the production process and the results stored in MES. Once the product is in the field, sensors in the panel use the IIoT to generate additional data, which ideally will feed back to a digital twin within the PLM software. If a breakdown occurs, it then becomes a fairly straightforward exercise to link the MES quality data with that found in the twin, identify the reasons for the failure and suggest areas for improvement and tell the ERP system what happened for warranty and financial purposes.
“Thanks to the IIoT and integration between these different systems, we’ve created a circular loop that was never before possible,” Kinder says. “Because of this, MES is no longer a nice-to-have—it’s become an extremely valuable tool for manufacturers of all kinds, not just the large OEMs with highly automated lines like it once was.”
So where does that leave PLM? Historically, the industry has viewed it as an OEM-centric solution, intended primarily for companies that design, manufacture, deploy and service products and must have a system to track their wares and associated data. While that view is still accurate, Kinder says it’s outdated.
“Smaller manufacturers tend to manage product revisions and design information in their ERP systems, but you reach a point where this level of product data management is insufficient,” he says. “You need an actual PLM system, because you’re no longer just interested in the design, but also the workflow and the tremendous opportunities for internal and external collaboration.”
Paul Farrell, vice president of product management at Austin-based Oracle NetSuite (a business unit of Oracle Corp.), is on board with much of this last statement but suggests that a robust PDM function is all that’s needed for many manufacturers. “A lot of companies begin by designing, manufacturing and distributing products; but, as they go on, realize that their expertise is more on the design marketing side, so begin to outsource some or all of their manufacturing to external vendors,” he says. “We have found that a properly designed and configured PDM system does a more than adequate job at managing these relationships.”
Outsourcing or not, strong scheduling and planning capabilities are equally important. This, however, requires a modern MRP engine, one that can process large, complex requirement sets in minutes rather than hours. “For too long, manufacturing companies have accepted the status quo of lengthy, often overnight MRP runs,” Farrell says. “But given today’s rapid pace and constantly changing requirements, people need the ability to connect their different sales plans and forecasts with the production schedule and immediately understand whether they need to adjust their procurement or staffing activities.”
This last part is particularly relevant given today’s ongoing labor shortage. Farrell’s experience is that manufacturers tend to overstaff, hiring more than they need knowing that some workers will be less engaged than others, with some not producing the planned output and others simply not showing up for work on any given day. The result is unpredictable output, often accompanied by equally unpredictable quality levels.
Optimizing the available workforce and related activities falls squarely under the MES umbrella, according to Farrell. “The manufacturing environment is more complex today than ever and the skilled-labor shortage is a big piece of this. As such, MES should do more than just capture quality information and production data—it should also help you to manage your resources and make sure they’re engaged. This is a large part of how top-performing companies run their businesses effectively.”
As with his counterparts at Epicor, Infor and elsewhere, Farrell thinks advanced analytics—likely powered by AI—will be increasingly necessary as more manufacturers embrace IIoT and Big Data. The resultant “connectivity to everything” will generate vast amounts of transactional data that only a computer can sift through, spotting trends, making predictions and offering recommendations as it goes.
“NetSuite Analytics Warehouse, which is built on the Oracle Analytics cloud, offers traditional data warehousing and business intelligence capabilities, but can also learn from and build models based on that data,” Farrell notes. “We call this intelligent insights, a function that becomes especially important in an environment with active MES, PLM and ERP installations. Here, you have multiple systems sharing data with one other, but it’s information that often intersects and, in some cases, conflicts with that coming from other sources.
“Humans might struggle in this situation,” he continues, “but NetSuite Analytics Warehouse excels at identifying patterns and making sense of the different data types and volumes, so it can proactively provide suggestions for making your business more efficient, profitable and productive. Going forward, capabilities like this will be key to any company’s continuous improvement efforts.
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