ERP Integration in MES Systems

When integration is mentioned, only ERP integration should not be considered. It can be integrated with all 3rd party software such as predictive maintenance software used in planning, quality, workflow management, production area. It should be. MES-ERP integration is very important. This integration is very important for the success of your ERP system in use. As it is known, ERP success rates are around 40%. The reason why it is so low is clearly shown below;

1) Reporting and visibility; imagine that the ERP system is blind and deaf in the production area. Information entry is dependent on declarations and manual entries. Moreover, today, when every device, every station, every work center, every machine, every sensor is constantly generating data, it is no longer possible to collect this data manually in a primitive way and to be competitive.

2) Operational efficiency; Since the production facility cannot instantly and accurately access information such as production, quality, efficiency, energy consumption, labor force spent, etc. in the production area with the ERP it uses, the expectations of ERP users for an increase in operational efficiency remain very low. Implemented mir MES-ERP integration will increase the potential and realization.

3) They expect their ERP Systems to evolve and adapt to new technologies, but the availability is very low. Why is this?

Since adaptation in ERP systems is technically very difficult and requires a long time, and adaptation is limited in very costly ERP, ERP systems that are blind and deaf to your production site and ERP systems that do not fit your business have to give low success rates with their cumbersomeness.

A semi-finished product is moving on the conveyor and will turn into a final product with the sub-operation. How many products are on the conveyor, what are their sub-operation cycle times in reality, what is the theoretical one in ERP? Comparison of this, the information on which work order I am working on is transmitted from your ERP system stuck in the engineering office to the electronic scale at the end of the conveyor. By tracking the unit weight on the scale, when the desired quality-approved quantity is reached, it automatically writes a barcode and transmits this information to the ERP autonomously from where the information originates.

MES is the nervous system of the production facility.

In the global theoretical constructs put forward in the digital transformation of production areas, MES has assumed the responsibility not only for field process management but also for the coordination of production between systems. Considering a field where production is in progress; the machine produces, but it produces without knowing which order, which work order and often even which stock it produces. ERP systems, on the other hand, know what needs to be produced, but are unaware of whether what needs to be produced is being produced at that moment. When systems such as quality, maintenance, barcoding, storage, attendance, image processing are added to this production area, only MES has all the information required for the autonomous operation of all these systems. As important as the coordinated and autonomous operation of the aforementioned systems is for a production facility, integration in MES applications is just as important, because it is the MES System that will realize this.

If we talk at the ideal Industry 4.0 level, integration with MES should be in the field of data collection, which will save you from every manual operation. The transfer of basic planning and production information must be with systems such as ERP, ICRON. Integrations of systems such as Boysweb, QDMS will be in the category that will add value to your business area.

The most basic communication between ERP and MES systems is the transfer of work orders to MES and the transfer of production data to ERP. In addition to these, more comprehensive communication can be established such as transferring the details of stock data required for planning and production; transferring this data if raw material LOT tracking is to be done, employee information, maintenance and quality processes can be carried out simultaneously between ERP and MES.

ERP and MES systems are very diverse today. Both have used different infrastructures and developed in different software languages. Therefore, regardless of the ERP or MES used in integration systems, communications that can follow common protocols are preferred.

In early integration solutions, these systems were used by sending data to each other's databases or accumulating information in a pool, but these are not preferred for both security and ease of use. Currently, systems with HTTP protocols are widely used. Among these, APIs with REST architecture are among the most preferred. This architecture allows us to transfer data in a common language regardless of the structure of the server and the user.

It makes no difference which ERP system is used for integration services. The important thing is that this ERP request is open to data communication and can be integrated. The information that MES systems expect and transmit from the upper system is basically certain. It does not matter which ERP is preferred in transferring this information between ERP and MES.

Even if it is operated with such a setup, it can be executed because MES systems are not dependent on a special ERP. In this kind of use, integration may not be considered with the approach that we do not already have an ERP program. However, instead of transferring data to another program, it can be approached with the idea of an integration that will transfer data to excel tables. The data you receive from the MES system with integration can be used as desired.

Is there a danger that the integration to an ERP system owned today will be garbage when the ERP system is changed tomorrow?

We have encountered this kind of ERP system change many times. Since our integration system is independent from the ERP used, there is no garbage situation. However, if an integration work has been done only on that organization and its system, such as transferring data to each other's databases, these integrations are renewed and made suitable for REST API architecture.

Considering a basic integration project where two systems talk, we can conclude that at least four different applications, two different core applications and two different integration applications, must communicate with each other. In order for the integrated systems to work together in a healthy way, not only the integration applications but also the four different applications need to be compatible with each other at all times. In this scenario, a change in one of the primary systems can disrupt the data exchange between systems in the current versions, even if there is no change in the integration applications. As with any software application, this problem can be managed by performing adequate testing. However, assuming that there are two different systems and two different software manufacturers, it is not possible to check with 100% certainty whether the functions of the software of different manufacturers have changed in pre-release testing processes. Therefore, a test environment should be created by taking a replica of the live system and all version changes should be uploaded to the test environment first, and only after the necessary checks are made, they should be transferred to the live system.

At the center of the work is naturally the main business partner, the customer. Considering that two different software systems will be integrated, it can be said that at least two more stakeholders are involved in the project in the position of the software manufacturer and a new stakeholder will be added to the equation for each new system to be integrated. Of course, there may be exceptions such as a software manufacturer having more than one system or realizing the project with third party developers other than the manufacturer.

As in every project, the scope of the project determines the cost. After the scope is determined, an effort time is analyzed.

If the MES partner to be selected has field experience with different ERP systems from different sectors and geographies, the integration process can be conceptualized more accurately and becomes more predictable.

In trex, there is a system independent ready integration module for ERP integration. This reduces a serious workload in integration. It is constantly being developed according to the needs of our business partners and improvements are offered to all our customers who have a license. For the developments that are not included in the module, the scope is determined and an effort time is calculated as stated at the beginning.

In the acceptable man/day durations section; the ultimate goal is not integration. The goal is to obtain the benefits of successful ERP and successful MES and to ensure their continuity. Integration is one of the stages on this path. When I take the framework draft created by our project consultant teams based on their inferences from the projects and meticulous studies; a standard project to collect data from 50 machines is commissioned with 30-35 man/day effort in 4-5 months. This also includes ERP integration.