MES in Industry 4.0. Move from Corrective-Preventive to Predictive Action

When software was introduced in manufacturing, it initially contributed to proper resource management and later with the advent of MES, in process execution, slowly moving towards planned and documented quality and maintenance. However, until recently process softwares have concentrated more on corrective and preventive actions, both in quality and maintenance. Current technology records, measures and reports any OOS event or breakdown and then allows the triggering of containment actions, thereby helping reduce the impact of the event which has already occurred.

Why the Current Approach Won’t be Successful

With Industry 4.0 fast approaching, the current way will no longer be as beneficial to manufacturers. Each product might vary in specifications and if corrections need to be made after an issue is detected, the damage is already done. Similarly with dynamic demand and everchanging spec, process equipment needs to be geared for maximum uptime, thereby maintenance events triggered after a breakdown would invariably lead to loss of productivity.

Now, depending on the industrial segment the requirement of predictive actions triggered through the MES might vary a bit. In industries like the semiconductor and medical devices, it is absolutely critical to have predictive information which would allow process owners to take timely action and prevent an event from happening.

Manufacturing Maintenance: How Does an MES Help?

The most modern MES applications, equipped with the dynamic execution engine and ability to deploy advance analytics, might just be able to save the day here. An I 4.0 ready MES acts like a large information funnel, where raw data enters in large amounts from the shop-floor and beyond and gets further processed to become actionable information, which allows respective stakeholders to take action before it is too late.

The modern MES is capable of studying trends from the data it obtains from the shop-floor and detecting a possible OOS event or breakdown. The MES not only informs concerned personnel to take action, but also has the ability to change schedules dynamically for the period of time it might take to repair a piece of equipment or resolve the quality issue with a product on the floor.

I 4.0 ready MES, detects patterns and trends from the large amount of data collected from the shop-floor and uses it to provide information pertaining to predictive actions, where issues are detected before they even take place.

Consider a manufacturing plant where every product should go through a mandatory chemical wash, and depending on the configuration of the product, the wash and chemicals may vary, needless to say so do the process equipment. An I 4.0 ready MES would continually receive data from the product (CPS) and the process equipment (CPPS). While receiving the data, the MES would automatically compare it with requisite parameters to ascertain that the process equipment is performing as required and that the product is within acceptable limits.

However, even if all is well and under the limits, the MES would continue to apply advanced analytics and derive information, which would signal whether or not there is any development toward a possible event. Once any such development is recorded it is escalated to the requisite staff, which allows for implementation of predictive actions.

We will visit the topic of predictive maintenance, predictive quality, predictive performance and predictive manufacturing as we move further. We will also try to zero-in to specific industries, where benefits from the predictive maintenance and predictive quality have already begin to manifest themselves. More on this in the weeks to come!!