6 Common Barriers to Adopting a Traditional MES Solution

There is a longstanding perception among manufacturers that a manufacturing execution system (MES) is the most direct path to a fully paperless shop floor. However, for most production environments, the barriers to adopting a traditional MES have kept many organizations from digitizing and automating their manufacturing environment.

Today, new manufacturing technologies are providing smarter, faster, and more affordable paperless shop floor opportunities than traditional MES.

A new industry brief by MasterControl explores commonly perceived barriers to adopting a traditional MES solution and how the path to digitization in manufacturing is easier than manufacturers might think.

MES Solution Barrier #1: Long, Costly Implementation

A traditional MES solution can take years to complete internal requirements gathering, budgeting, selection, and actual MES implementation, depending on complexity. Custom-built MES configurations based on MES toolkits can run a license-to-service-dollars ratio upwards of 1:5. A commercial-off-the-shelf MES solution can be in the range of 1:2.¹

However, a modern manufacturing execution solution like MasterControl Manufacturing Excellence is typically implemented in less than six months, from planning to go-live, without upfront hardware costs or a huge team of IT and external consultants draining resources. The cloud-based solution’s license-to-services ratio of 3:1 is much better than a custom-built MES configuration or a commercial off-the-shelf configuration of MES software.

MES Solution Barrier #2: Rigid Process Configurations

A traditional MES solution is typically a rigid system, built for a specific set of requirements and architectures. An off-the-shelf MES can be customizable, but that’s because it is hard-coded, making the MES difficult to adapt when processes, products, product parameters, or volumes must change. Making changes to the system is time intensive and involves costly process re-engineering.

A modern manufacturing solution like MasterControl’s offers no-code configuration that allows organizations to quickly adapt processes and parameters. The purpose-built manufacturing solution easily supports existing processes and workflows, eliminating costly process re-engineering. A configurable no-code master record builder and product family tool let manufacturers quickly create and templatize master records and easily manage product recipes and variations.

MES Solution Barrier #3: Slow User Adoption

People's natural resistance to change coupled with the complexity of a traditional MES tends to make the barrier to acceptance of a paperless shop floor solution quite high. One of the things inherent in the machine-centric design of systems like an MES is that the software was set up to highly automate, often at the expense of the user, making adoption and use even more challenging.

A simplified MES solution like MasterControl Manufacturing Excellence is user-friendly and designed for any manufacturing environment, easily mapping to and supporting existing processes and workflows. The solution is configured to digitally resemble the manufacturer’s current paper batch record or device history record, but with a user interface designed specifically for mobile technology on the shop floor, so it is familiar to the worker and easier to adopt.

MES Solution Barrier #4: Difficulty Scaling

Most MES implementations have a stall point where the system gets rolled out onto certain lines or at certain sites, and cost justification becomes a significant challenge. A traditional MES is expensive, and often the cost is justified only on certain high-volume or high-margin product lines, meaning the MES is rarely deployed across all product lines and sites.

Once implemented, a modern manufacturing solution like MasterControl’s is cost-effective enough to eliminate paper-based processes for all production lines. The flexible, cloud-based solution can quickly scale up and out across production lines and sites to meet the demand of changing environments and markets. Manufacturing Excellence is ideal for lines that a traditional MES has difficulty serving: high-mix, high-variability, low-volume, or batch-of-one lines.

MES Solution Barrier #5: Burdensome Validation

Because a traditional MES tends to be so highly configured, tailored, even customized, the software validation process can be very difficult to complete. And when an upgrade or change must be introduced, validation of the paperless shop floor system becomes even more of a challenge, with change control requiring extensive people hours to make approved changes.

A modern manufacturing solution like MasterControl’s employs a risk-based, automated approach to validation that focuses on a manufacturer’s critical business processes. Leveraging internal validation testing reduces the overall system validation time from months down to hours. For change control, advanced patented technology is used to present changes that need to be reviewed, limiting the risk and cost to upgrade and allowing for sustainable validation in the cloud.

MES Solution Barrier #6: Long Time to Value

A traditional MES solution is a major investment, with the total price tag often starting at $1 million to $2 million and even exceeding that range, depending on the scale and complexity of the manufacturing environment. The combined price tag plus slow time to value can put traditional MES solutions out of reach for many manufacturers, particularly small and midsized manufacturers.

Implementation of a modern manufacturing solution like MasterControl’s is fast and, once implemented, can deliver results quickly. Manufacturing Excellence customers typically see initial return on investment within four to eight months, driven by labor efficiency, error reduction, and accelerated good manufacturing practice review. Robust, sustainable process and operational improvements drive measurable long-term value well beyond initial payback.

Reference:

1. “Top 5 Risks You Need to Know Before Selecting a Manufacturing Execution System,” Naveen Poonian, iBASEt, January 2016.