Cloud Manufacturing Execution Systems and Product Data Management in the Spotlight at 2023 Modern Manufacturing Expo

Cloud-based Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) software can help process, discrete, and mixed-environment manufacturers of any size to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) up to 30%, decrease maintenance, and improve security. They are also able to lower capital
expenditures (CAPEX) and operating expenses (OPEX) compared to on-premises
implementations.

“With MES as a Service, manufacturers can achieve a fast-track to modern manufacturing operations and frontline guidance, enabling connected workers across the enterprise,” said David Berridge, Senior Manager – ANZ of GE Digital’s Manufacturing and Digital Plant business.

“By reducing the costs and human power needed to deploy and maintain an MES, any
manufacturer can implement an adaptable production system and gain the real-time operations optimization to support digital transformation, continuous improvement, and lean initiatives,” he adds.

GE Digital is a Silver Sponsor at the upcoming Modern Manufacturing Expo, where they will showcase their cutting-edge software solutions and other leading products with manufacturers and other industry decision-makers. The Modern Manufacturing Expo will take place from 20-21 September 2023 at the Sydney Showground in Sydney Olympic Park and is a free event showcasing leading companies in advanced manufacturing, processes,
products and technologies to help transition traditional manufacturers into modern manufacturers, such as cloud MES and manufacturing product data management.

Fully hosted as a managed service, cloud MES provides companies with the robust, composable no-code technology to improve their operations in real-time, along with the flexibility to deploy in a way that best suits their needs. Manufacturers can decrease maintenance resource overhead and increase performance with the latest features and newest software releases provided quickly through the cloud infrastructure.

With a cloud-based, managed MES solution, manufacturers will no longer have to worry about patching the OS and supporting software; additionally, manufacturers can increase security through software managed at scale including vendor-managed security updates.

Unifying Manufacturing Product Data Management Across the Enterprise: On-Prem or Cloud 

Whether on-prem or cloud, today’s digital transformation can unify manufacturing
product information from disparate data systems, transform and organize raw
business-oriented information into production-ready formats, and orchestrate
the information across factory floor systems at a single site or multiple
sites.

Manufacturers need to stay in sync with constant updates to manufacturing product data to
provide higher quality and throughput. Digitized manufacturing product data management can enable faster time to market with accurate product data based on unified information mapping data from different systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) into MES.

Accurate product manufacturing data, that is readily available during production execution, decreases waste by about 10% per plant annually from less rework and rejects. It also reduces production delays and compliance issues, leading to approximately 5% improvement in on-time delivery and 1% decrease in compliance-related costs.

Overcoming Manufacturing-Specific Administration Challenges

“One of our priority focus areas for the upcoming Modern Manufacturing Expo is to address the practical, administrative challenges that local manufacturers face in their day-to-day
operations,” explains Marie Kinsella, CEO of the International Exhibition & Conference (IEC) Group who is organising the Expo. “We’re excited to have GE Digital onboard as a sponsor for their expertise and wide range of products that address these manufacturing-specific challenges that will be showcased to attendees at the Expo in September.”

With supply chain issues, more products and/or regulatory standards, production can
get out of sync with the latest manufacturing product data, resulting in lower quality, increased waste, and operations headaches.

Digitized manufacturing product data management records and allows users to analyse the updates to manufacturing product data at a given plant. It also stores deviations and comments, recorded as variances, to provide visibility into a plant’s adoption of the changes. This allows manufacturers to decrease quality variability due to ad-hoc modifications as well as the non-productive time and manual efforts trying to execute standard production work.

Companies have been struggling with various manufacturing product data orchestration
issues such as spreadsheets with tens of tabs and thousands of rows, paper records that can be inconsistent and overwhelming, and multiple recipe changes that have to be coordinated across production lines. The “new normal” with its supply chain issues has acerbated these traditional challenges as companies are forced to modify recipes to work around shortages.

“Digitized manufacturing product data management helps companies solve common challenges such as inefficiencies in production due to inaccurate product data, siloed and custom approaches to product data, compliance risks, and lack of quality standardization,” says GE Digital’s David Berridge.

“For companies that are tired of cobbling together plant systems or manually trying
to capture the right product manufacturing data on paper, digitized manufacturing product data management can help increase throughput, reduce waste, and improve quality with the right information at their fingertips,” he concludes.