Customization in MES Systems

The targeted goal is for companies to adapt to MES Systems more quickly.

Customizations play an active role in the acceptance of the program by the operators, who are the most important people for collecting data from the field. We can define the coming together of two different systems that do not know each other as a tissue harmony. One of the systems here can be defined as MES Systems and the other as the established production culture of the factory. Without changing the established culture of the factory, factories should be implemented with customizations that will make their work easier, on the contrary, without creating additional burden on people.

This does not mean that if there are mistakes in the culture, it will accept them as they are and the MES System will be customized on these mistakes. In this section, the experience of your MES solution partner comes to the fore. Identifying the well-known mistakes that have settled in the factory culture and taking precautions for them rather than making improvements on them will protect organizations from loss of time and money. These wrong customizations to be made during the installation process can be called a stillborn project investment.

In the second question "Are privatizations a sectoral need or a demand?" it would be better to elaborate this question as to whether the needs are the same for all production sites in the same sector, or whether the demands of firms in the same sector are different.

Sectoral needs are shaped in line with the requests we receive from customers". To explain with an example, there is a "Forklift Notification" development to be used in all sectors, which we remotely commissioned in a company during the Covid-19 pandemic. Its purpose is to meet the operator's raw material needs as soon as possible, to remove the produced product from the environment without occupying the production area, to record and report information such as request time-job acceptance time-delivery time, etc.

The request is the same in all sectors, but customizations are requested such as usage, screen appearance, type of notification (for example, instant notification of the forklift operator via sms, mail or a tablet on the forklift).

What are the obstacles to these privatizations?

Are the production sites that cannot fully digitize their own production in MES standards alone? Should suppliers or parners be chosen and what should be the pole star understanding of organizations?

Privatizations are based on two different values. These are

Experience: The ability to formulate and adapt the software for the processes and operations in the production area should be sought. The ability to bring the conceptual to the field must be developed. This is based on having conducted one-to-one or similar studies. It is important to combine theory and practice in customizations. The wide sectoral range of technology producers is a proof of their competence and ability to customize and adapt.

Staff Infrastructure: The field experience of the project managers providing customization services gains importance. Another issue is the segmentation of the staff that will provide customization services.

A person with experience in filling lines should be evaluated in a parallel process, and people with experience in injection molding or hair shaping processes should be assigned as project managers to companies that produce one-to-one or in similar processes.

Hardware development capability: There is only one of each machine and process in the world and it is unique.

Although thousands of the same model machines are put on the field by machine manufacturers, the machines differentiate and become different in their own specialty due to the specific difference in the raw material they work with, the operator qualification they use, and the sequence of operations in the factory layout.

In these processes, beyond being able to integrate with peripherals, the ability to transform them is a must.

To date, no privatization request submitted to us has been met negatively. In privatizations, the biggest problem we face is that the other party does not allocate enough budget for this work. The reason for this is that the person who wants privatization does not make a detailed study and does not analyze correctly what this privatization will add to the company. But with the right work, they can find enough budget for themselves. The fact that the person who wants to customize does not transfer the information during the departure of the person who wants to customize may also cause the customization to be stillborn. We also encounter situations where newcomers later ask us for the same customization. Companies cannot use their existing power, let alone use it, they are not even aware of it. Our humble suggestion is that just as we can document all the work we do and see it retrospectively, the MES Systems responsible in the company will make this documentation with the same care.

All companies using MES Systems can request customization.

According to the current work, the operator was manually entering the information on a work order paper into the system. Since inkjet screens are small and there are many different characters and different cursors in the text, it is a process that requires high attention to be written correctly. If this process was not done correctly, it was a great burden for the companies. The material to be ordered is transferred to the reel and then the existing text is printed correctly again.

In order to perform these operations automatically, an integration was created between the two systems and when the work order was loaded, only the printer selection was left to the personnel and the correct text was printed.

In addition to customizations suitable for the internal flow of companies, there are also sector-independent common demands that overlap with each other. These requests can generally be grouped as data visualization, reporting, integration requests with other systems and customization requests in user interfaces.

We offer an independent and flexible interface where users can design their own changes in andon and reporting.

The demand for privatization comes to us primarily from the production area. After the factory starts to assimilate the MES System and see what it adds to the company, requests from each unit are increasing. For an extreme example, the human resources expert of a company wants to select the employee of the month and even show the picture of the personnel in the current andon. A different perspective can be interpreted as a different source of motivation. Apart from this example, there may also be quality, maintenance, occupational safety units.

There are also requests from units using software such as QDMS. Since data is entered manually into the existing system, it cannot be said that they are used effectively because they cannot be fed from the field. When these software are integrated with MES, their functionality increases just like ERP. To summarize, the units of the companies request customization for all conceivable data that can be collected from the production site. It both significantly reduces the workload of these people and provides the right information instantly.

First of all, success in MES Systems applied to companies depends on a correctly designed architecture and functionality. Therefore, it would be better to talk about our architecture first and then touch upon our customization solutions.

Thanks to these tools, you can instantly query and track all losses on machine, equipment, line, personnel and work order basis. In addition, since we support mobile and web platforms, we provide companies with remote access to the MES System.

Our MES System, data collection system from the field can work integrated with many upper systems. The table in the image shows the contents of the integration works we have done with some companies with top systems.

It is a software-supported electronic system developed for the enterprise to see and minimize manufacturing costs.

After the companies send us their requests and the result they want to achieve with this request, they create a requirement document as seen on the screen. The purpose of this document is to ensure that the requests of the other party and what we offer match exactly. During these customizations, it is necessary to work on other systems together with us, in such cases, we need to include the people who will do this work in this process. After this requirement document is approved by both parties, the work is started. The reporting of the requests until the approval process is briefly provided in this way. Then these requests are transferred to the software department and the work starts.

Sustainability is ensured through documentation. The customizations and improvements we have made are recorded with our document management system, and when additions are requested to the customizations we have made, we proceed on the basis of our document management system.

We can sincerely answer no to this question.

In order to avoid problems in version transitions, many tests and verifications are carried out starting from the software department until it is commissioned in the field. The testing process starts with the verification and optimization of the development by different personnel within the software department. The new version is then tested by the independent test team of the software department. The excel spreadsheets passed by this team are tested by the customer consultant before being uploaded to the customer.

As the most crucial point in this testing process, it is a simulated example of the live environment offered to us by the customers. In this test environment, situations arise that we cannot test in the office and that no one can foresee. The reason for their emergence at this stage is that we know that MES programs can be integrated with more than one side program and we do not have the chance to provide these integrations in the office. If there is a problem in the testing we do at this stage, the scenario goes back to the beginning and all stages are repeated.

If there is no problem, our version update is made and our go-live process is realized.

Sectoral experience is actually know-how. The experience gained in different plants creates a leverage effect in fields that have not yet experienced it. The support for bringing this know-how to the field and adapting it to the corporate culture is the value that cannot be measured numerically in the background. Being a partner involves acting in synchronization with the company in line with the same goals. The purpose of the MES partner is to increase the efficiency of the institution it serves rather than digitalizing it. In the light of the data of the digitalized field, it should also support which engineering works will increase its efficiency. It must also have the infrastructure to provide theoretical and technical support to the personnel appointed as MES responsible in the organization in a sustainable way. For example, it should include an academy where it can transfer the theory of operational studies. Likewise, by providing the technical infrastructure, it should include an application center or school that can put into practice the operations such as kaizen, 5s, smed given in the academy. It is more accurate to describe an MES manufacturer that does not include these infrastructures, namely the academy and the application center, as a supplier, not as a partner. Because the digitalization journey with a partner is a journey that continues to develop from the starting point to reaching the goals and always doing better, while the supplier approach is as shallow as installing the MES System on the field and providing systematic support.

Platforms and events to be provided for sharing sectoral MES experiences among organizations are another value offered.

Rather than meeting the demands, the MES partner should offer the experience it has gained and the improvements and customizations it can offer. It should be a priority to solve many needs in the organizations it has experience in, and to reflect this to the companies in the partner sector it serves.