ERP Integration in MES Systems
ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning in Turkish, has become indispensable for the majority of businesses today. Thanks to ERP, many departments such as production planning, supply chain, human resources, customer relations, financial management can be used as integrated systems. These top systems are managed with ERP software that employees of the organization can now use easily from their computers and are familiar with.
However, there is another department that ERP systems cannot reach: the Production Area. Production planning can be made with which product will be produced with which operations, but the division of this production into machines and the efficient execution of this production is carried out by the company's competent engineers or experienced craftsmen in the production area. At this level, the control of the production site is provided by MES, literally Production Execution System in Turkish.
MES allows the production to be monitored instantly. MES enables the organization to discover how long a product can be produced on which machine, what kind of disruptions, stoppages and errors there are in the production process, and how efficiently the organization can use its potential.
Just as ERP software manages many departments together, integrating the production area into this system ensures that production data is transferred by minimizing human error and reduces the processing load. It ensures that the work order opened through ERP is directly in front of the operator at the machine and the operator can access the details and guides related to this production.
ERP-MES Integrations are carried out in two directions as the transfer of stock information and work orders from ERP to MES and the transfer of production confirmations from MES to ERP. In addition to these transfers, it is also used to meet requirements such as Personnel, Quality Control, Maintenance, Lot Tracking, Document Management.
In ERP-MES Integration software, this data transfer is carried out by the software developers of two different programs by agreeing on a common data structure. The transfer of this data can be done by collecting it in a pool in the data base, by transferring it over an ftp server with xml format files, or more securely and widely with Web APIs. APIs provide an interface to the user (client) side, regardless of the language and content of the application written, and return information/response (responce) in response to the data/request sent in specified formats. Since it uses common http methods, it also allows the stakeholders of the integration work to develop using independent methods.
After the data exchange, the other software developer has nothing to do with how this data will be used and how it will be transferred to a database on the ERP or MES side. For example; in work order transfer, a data containing the information of the work order is sent to the API on the MES side and a response is returned from the API about whether the work order was received successfully or not. The structure and required content of this work order data (such as Work Order code, Stock to be Produced, Stock to be Consumed, Production Quantity, Cycle times, etc.) are predetermined by the software developers. After the work order transfer is realized, processes such as transferring the plan suitable for this work order to the stations suitable for the opening operations are carried out within the MES software itself. Similarly, if the Production Confirmation sent as a request to the API on the ERP side is in accordance with the specified structure and there is no problem in its transfer, it informs the MES integration that the production information has been received, and if there is a problem, it informs the MES integration why it is caused. Afterwards, how the successfully transferred production will be evaluated is managed on the ERP software.
As trex, we have integration that meets the basic needs with the experience we have gained from the integrations we have made with many ERP systems. Regardless of which ERP software is used in the organization, they can exchange data with our TrexIntegrationService. We first share the documentation of our integration service with the ERP system software developers of our customers who will work on ERP-MES. Then, depending on the special requests and needs of the organization, work is carried out together with the stakeholders in this process.