Increasing competitive pressure, growing globalisation, adherence to quality standards, legal obligations to provide electronic documents ...

Nonetheless, the production of food and goods has actually become easier due to the increasing automation of manufacturing processes.

But this is also the reason why it has become easier for other companies to produce similar products to the same or better quality and at lower costs. Brand manufacturers, in particular, are faced with increasing competitive pressure. This situation is further exacerbated by increasingly strict regulations and legislation, e.g. the legal obligation to provide supporting documents for batch and product traceability. Many companies are overwhelmed by an irresistible flood of information, as their core competency is the actual production process and not the optimisation of accompanying production processes.

However, if manufacturing companies wish to retain or strengthen their market position, they must focus, in particular, on efficient production and process procedures. Production processes and product information have to be fully monitored and weaknesses minimised continuously. This is the only way to reduce manufacturing costs and maintain product quality. Nevertheless, a seamless data environment is essential to supply the right information for process optimisation.

In recent years, manufacturing execution systems have become the established solution for these complex tasks. MES solutions can act as the data hub for a company, realising vertical and horizontal integration in real time. However, there is not always unanimous agreement on what MES actually means in each individual case and on the best way to implement MES solutions.

The following pages take a brief look at MES – and show how we understand it and which MES functionalities we offer our customers.