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SMART USERS KNOW RIVAL VENDOR GROUPS OFFER UNIQUE STRENGTHS.
When companies look to optimize production, business drivers vary dramatically depending on industry, product, and organization. Typical drivers (not a complete list) include the following:
* Lower production costs
* Increase throughput
* Increase product quality
* Decrease rework
* Reduce waste, material, and human resources
* Decrease time to volume on a new product introduction (NPI)
* Decrease time to theoretical yield and cycle time on an NPI
* Reduce inventory and work in process
* Reduce regulatory reporting costs with electronic history records
* Decrease in-line setup for new product runs a Increase equipment utilization
Vendor solutions for plant optimization traditionally break down into one of the following:
Lean manufacturing techniques (lean): This vendor group uses a systematic approach, based on optimizing human and production workflow practices. Lean vendors base product flow entirely on the direct pull of customer demand, using process and organizational change to eliminate non-value-add activities, from production through continuous improvement.
Computer-based manufacturing execution systems (MESs): This vendor group characterizes and optimizes production by applying the Theory of Constraints through various product control database applications that execute and validate workflow business rules. Subsequent product data collections (genealogy) and analyses optimize workflow and increase productivity efficiency.
During the past 20 years, each of these vendor groups has viewed the other as competition and/or unnecessary. For example, lean vendors see no value in adding MES computer-based work order tracking systems to produce. MES vendors, meanwhile, believe lean techniques are too slow and ineffective-unable to optimize a plant's continually changing environment.
While both approsches use metrics and quantitive analysis, MES technologies contend lean vendor techniques are not able to understand and collect highquantity transactional data needed to optimize new product and process changes. Nor can lean techniques handle scaling or misaligned schedule, capacity, inventory, and maintenance, MES vendors say.
MES vendors also view their solution...