MES Features Introduction

Quality Management:Provide timely product and manufacturing process dimension analysis to ensure quality control and identify issues that require attention. It can recommend measures to correct problems. It may also include SPC/SQC tracking, offline testing operations, and analysis within the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS).

Process Management:Monitor production processes, automatically correct deviations, or provide decision support for operators to correct and improve in-process activities. This may include alarm management. It may provide an interface between intelligent devices and MES through data collection/acquisition. (NIST considers process management activities to be described under allocation and quality management; MESA lists it separately because this activity may be executed by a standalone system.)

Maintenance Management:Track and guide maintenance activities for equipment and tools to ensure the availability of these resources in the manufacturing process, schedule periodic or preventive maintenance, respond to emergency issues (alarms), and maintain historical information on events or issues to support fault diagnosis.

Product Tracking and Lineage:Provide visibility into all periods of work and their disposal. Status information may include: who is performing the work; parts, materials, batches, and serial numbers provided by suppliers; any warnings, reworks, or other exceptions related to the product. The online tracking feature also creates a history record, providing traceability for the parts and each end product used.

Performance Analysis:Provide reports on actual manufacturing operational activities, along with comparisons to historical records and anticipated business outcomes. Performance results include measurements of indicators such as resource utilization, resource availability, product unit cycles, consistency with schedules, and alignment with standards.

Material Management:Manage the movement, buffering, and storage of materials (raw materials, components, tools) and consumables. These movements may directly support process operations or other functions, such as equipment maintenance or assembly adjustments. (This feature was added by NIST, which believes the relationship between the above material management activities and resource allocation and tracking functions is not clearly defined.)