What is the relationship between ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and MES (Manufacturing Execution System) ?

 A manufacturing execution system (MES for short) is a set of production information management system for the execution layer of the manufacturing enterprise workshop. MES can provide companies with manufacturing data management, planning, and scheduling management, production scheduling management, inventory management, quality management, human resource management, work center/equipment management, tooling management, procurement management, cost management, project kanban management, production Process control, bottom-level data integration analysis, upper-level data integration and decomposition, and other management modules, create a solid, reliable, comprehensive, and feasible manufacturing collaborative management platform for the enterprise.

ERP management system is (Enterprise Resource Planning) a supply chain management idea proposed by Gartner Group. Its definition refers to a management platform that is based on information technology and uses systematic management ideas to provide enterprise decision-makers and employees with decision-making operation methods.

 

The functional and technical differences between MES and ERP:

 

1. The positioning of ERP and MES is different

Traditional ERP is positioned in corporate planning. It is mainly for managers, whose data is managed in weekly and daily cycles. When the work order issued by ERP arrives at the production site, ERP cannot effectively control the site in real time, and there is an "information black hole" in the execution of the work order.

The MES system is positioned at the execution level. It transfers work orders issued by ERP and releases them to the production line in real-time. Through on-site data collection, it directly provides production support to front-line operations and workshop management personnel. The data it manages takes the present and the next hour as the time period, and provides real-time information for on-site management personnel to make decisions.

 

2. The functional scope of ERP and MES management is different

ERP mainly manages the planning level functions such as purchasing, finance, sales, production order management, shipping management, and finished product warehousing plan control.

MES mainly provides execution level functions such as workshop work order dispatch, process error prevention, product genealogy, SPC quality analysis, equipment OEE analysis, and process traceability.

 

3. MES and ERP systems have different technical requirements

ERP mainly deals with planning data, with a small amount of data, no interaction with the underlying hardware, and easy management in a centralized manner. More importantly, when ERP is implemented, the planned process is relatively fixed. The data granularity of MES is small and the amount of data is large. It is closely related to the process, workshop management process and degree of automation of the factory. The implementation of different companies is very different, and they need to continuously adapt to the change of workshop management mode. Therefore, the system needs more flexibility and The ability to support group promotion. In addition, the MES system directly records the production process data, so it has higher requirements than ERP in terms of system reliability and stability.

The relationship between MES and ERP is interesting. Some are introduced into MES when the company installs ERP. And some are in the stable function of the ERP system, need MES to realize the digitalization and lean production of the workshop... and so on, the deployment and construction of MES are started. In either case, once every ERP project involves production, MES is essential.

 1. ERP is explained from the perspective of typical corporate strategy and management, while MES is a real-time concept of the production process. One is biased towards management and the other is biased towards production execution. ERP coordination, MES refinement.

 2. A small change in ERP will have a big impact. The impact of strategy and market changes at the ERP level is almost 10 times that of changes at the production level. Therefore, it is very important to build a special production system combined with ERP to manage changes in output and production speed during the production process.

 3. The information provided by ERP is different from the information required by production personnel. Employees with different needs not only have different information, but also different ways of presenting the required information. ERP and MES have their own focus and perform their own duties.

 The interface of the traditional ERP project is designed for analysis and decision-makers. In the production department, since the change is faster, this change should be presented more quickly. In the production process, it is usually not to analyze outdated static data, but to analyze the information and trends that are happening. People in different positions require different types of information, and the way the system presents them is also different.

 4. ERP explains "why", MES knows "what to do", ERP and MES, the former is used for strategy formulation, while the latter is responsible for the operation.

 5. Nowadays, competition between companies is not just a matter between two companies, but a matter between two supply chains. This also means to improve efficiency not only from the strategic or commercial level, but from the entire supply chain. The joint implementation of ERP and MES is very important. Information integration can only be integrated from the various levels of the workshop level. Only with timely and accurate information flow can the supply chain operate efficiently. The supply chain needs to be integrated at the strategic or commercial level.