Manufacturing Execution System (MES) - do it yourself

Hi my name is Adam. For over 20 years I have been dealing with broadly understood process improvement. I have worked (and still work) in large and medium-sized corporations.

Manufacturing Execution System (MES) allows you to collect various signals from machines or production lines, thanks to which you can gain information about cycle times, product quality, downtime, etc. Data is collected in real time and is also immediately available, to allow decision-makers to react.

A very brief description MES found on Wikipedia . However, I will write something about MES again from my perspective and experience.

I have not yet met a company that would not like to have MES. In the same way, I have not met a company that would spend arbitrarily large amounts of money to have MES. Such willingness will always collide with the financial possibilities, expected benefits and the pace of implementation and the scale of the system.

In a large corporation, I was a witness of implementation that lasted 4 years. The waiting period was very long, but the scale was huge, because ultimately MES was to connect all the machines. In each plant it could be at least several dozen devices. All data was available from anywhere in the world. In the nutshell, a good system for millions of dollars. I think it had one more disadvantage – it was slowly from time to time.

A simple MES can now be purchased even for several dozen of thousands PLN or even in a subscription, taking into account the number of machines and the duration of the subscription.

At Macopharama we made MES in 2009 according to our needs, i.e. it was not very extensive, but it included key machines such as filling machines and packaging machines. I gracefully named our MES MIS - Maco Information System. The division of tasks was as follows:

Technicians found places in the machines to collect signals from, and put cables between the machines and the main PLC of the system.
The PLC programmer programmed the main program for collecting signals, including the counting of signals from the flow meters by fast counters (several hundred pulses had to be counted within 2 seconds). The PLC program also could send the signal to the filling machine valves, to block another filling when the filling tolerance is exceeded.
IT specialist set up Apache, PHP and MySQL server.
My tasks were:
- Creation of the whole MES concept.
- Database programming and data collection of filling and packing process. In the case of filling, it was the filling time and the number of counted pulses from the flow meters, the level of which is proportional to the volume of solution that has been introduced into the container. In the case of packaging machines, it was only the time of packing individual pieces.
- User interface programming.
- Product parameters database programming.
- Programming the system for downloading data from the PLC to the database.
- Programming of various analyzes, reports, etc.
- Determine the pulse-to-volume formulas by regression and ANOVA.
- User training.

What was the effect of our MES?

We have improved OEE on the packaging machines. I proved that by slowing down the machines slightly, we can increase the number of packed products per shift, because we reduced the number of micro-stoppages caused by packaging errors, which were related to the haste of employees.

We obtained more spectacular results on filling machines, where we resigned from labor-intensive off-line filling checks in favor of continuous impulse level control. In addition, we increased the process capability and MES enabled the detection of defective flow meters on an ongoing basis.

This simple MES has been in operation for 12 years (as of September 2021) and so far it does not seem to stop working. Even though I have been not working at Macopharma for several years, I had the pleasure of adding of a new line of filling machines in March 2021 to my self-made MES.

I will explain you selected MIS functions.

Determining the setting of flow meters based on product characteristics and filling machines characteristics. The setting depends on the volume, diameter and length of the inflow tubes, additionally, each filling machine requires individual parameters related to the location of the filling machine in relation to the main tank, the characteristics of the flow meter, the speed of the valves, etc. The setting of the flow meters is necessary before the start of each production lot, where each lot is usually a different product reference.
Convert grams tolerance to pulse tolerance.
Records each filled volume in pulses and grams and time.
Filling correctness monitoring. Exceeding the tolerance blocks the filling machine to resolve the event. 99.9% of the exceedances are caused by an operator error, i.e. kinking of the inflow tube.
Draw SPC charts in real time.
Creation of reports necessary for production dossier (pharmaceutical requirements).
A series of comparative analyzes, reports, graphs of various types: pulse level, volume level, cycle times, average filling speed, shift results etc.
Collecting data from off-line mass measurement.
Filling machine calibration module.

I would not like to reveal company secrets, so I will stop there when it comes to technical details. My recommendation for MES. Now you can find MES solutions on the market at a reasonable price and this may be the best way to get the effect quickly. But if that would be too expensive, all you need is some programming skills, a PLC specialist and you can do something by yourself. MES at Macopharma was ready after several months of work by 3 people.

In my opinion, a simple MES implemented quickly is better than no MES or some system that will be implemented in a few years.

Please use the form if you have questions about MES .

Author: Adam Cetera (LeanSigma.pl)
Creation date: 2021-09-26
Modification date: 2021-10-04

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