ARC
on PEC's MES Strategy
By
David Humphrey, ARC Advisory Group
PEC is a manufacturing technology supplier with offices in both Europe
and North America as well as partnerships in Asia. In addition to its
focus on production management solutions, the company also manufactures
battery test equipment and industrial computers. PEC's management recently
updated ARC analysts on the status of its MES solutions.
PEC's MES solution, called "MWare", supports four pillars of
functionality: quality control, flow control, logistics control and maintenance
control. The solution is tailored to discrete processes such as component
manufacturing, assembly and construction and for repetitive tasks such
as the manufacturing of batteries, lighting or tobacco. In addition, MWare
also addresses the discrete side of applications in hybrid industries
such as metals, pharmaceutical, printing and food & beverage.
MWare allows the user to carry out planning in MES instead of ERP, allowing
finer control over just-in-time and optimization at the shop floor level.
MWare integrates capacity planning with materials planning and automates
the splitting of shop orders in parallel or consecutive batches. Having
this tight level of control over shop floor events allows the user to
optimize setup times and sequences while maintaining real-time control
over WIP and inventory. Finally, MWare helps users realize their "paperless
factory" vision by defining tasks and access control between operator-level
and supervisor-level functions through a close integration of operator
interface devices.
On the logistics side, MWare enables logical and physical inventory management
at the sub-lot level and supports common warehouse configurations and
classifications such as FIFO, LIFO and random access. Barcode and now
RF tag identification are supported while automated material handling
systems can be linked through an interface. PEC rounds out its logistical
support by offering its own Windows CE terminals as mobile user interfaces
for lift trucks and warehouse employees.
MWare also contains several performance monitoring and management features.
These include automated monitoring of abnormal behavior and quality and
planning deviations. Managers can monitor plant performance in real-time
thanks to online performance display scoreboards. Other monitoring features
are drill-down analysis to the individual equipment and tools as well
as automated reporting of Overall Equipment Effective (OEE), MTBF - MTTR
and equipment availability.
MWare is now compatible with Microsoft's .net architecture and supports
.net features such as smart client technology. This facilitates a no-touch
deployment of the user interfaces throughout the complete factory and
makes the complete system server managed. The intranet management reporting
includes online and historical information, full integration with MS Office,
and drill-down reports.