Managing Product Diversity Smartly
How an industrial equipment supplier is optimizing its production with new digital infrastructure and the MES solution MES FLEX
Initial Situation
01 – Staying competitive through digitalization
“How can we strengthen our own competitiveness in the face of globalization?” – A few years ago, a global manufacturer of industrial equipment and services answered this question with a simple solution: Staying competitive through digitalization.
02 – Switching to a new ERP
To strengthen customer focus and profitability, management identified a global software migration to a new ERP system as a key measure. Goal: Harmonize, standardize, and future-proof core processes.
03 – Digitally modernize production
Another strategic lever: a comprehensive digital modernization of production. The decision was made to take the middle ground between “Greenfield” (completely new plants) and “Brownfield” (modernization of existing sites)—in short: “Bluefield.”
Challenge
Ensuring quality
For many decades, the company has been known for its diverse range of high-quality products and highly reliable services. Under no circumstances could this reputation or the brand be compromised.
A key challenge for the digital transformation was therefore to maintain quality across all product lines while digitally modernizing the production network—which had grown over many decades—across all continents.
Finding answers
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What are the specific goals we aim to achieve through digital transformation?
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How can we make production future-proof, especially in a high-wage country like Germany?
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Which software technology promises the greatest benefit for us?
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How do we prepare the workforce for this journey—and how do we support them along the way?
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Where do we start?
Solution Path
Goals
- Flexibility with high product variety
- Reduce cycle time losses
- Higher energy efficiency
- Greater efficiency through automation & robotics
- Informed decisions through data-driven manufacturing
Starting point
We started at the production facility where it made the most economic and technical sense—in other words, where the greatest productivity gains were expected.
Production
Organizing manufacturing more flexibly through matrix production. This type of “checkerboard production” marks a departure from traditional line production.
Workforce
A change management program and CIP processes support all teams:
- Early communication
- Ongoing dialogue with the works council and the workforce
- Culture of reliability
Software: MES FLEX
The company opted for the modular MES software MES FLEX from FORCAM ENISCO.
Key reasons:
- The solution offers a wide range of pre-installed modules, including a real-time planning tool (APS – Advanced Planning and Scheduling), as well as all necessary interfaces for horizontal and vertical integration.
- Production teams can make data-driven, precise decisions on a minute-by-minute basis—which is particularly important given the high product variety.
- The FORCAM ENISCO team impressed with its many years of experience in the shop floor as well as with the planned company-wide ERP migration.
Benefits – MES FLEX
Conclusion
The industrial equipment supplier is strengthening its competitiveness through a company-wide digital transformation with two strategic levers:
- the global transition to a new ERP system and
- the digital modernization of production with MES FLEX.
The goals of greater flexibility, efficiency, and data-driven decisions in manufacturing are achieved with the modular MES FLEX solution.
At the first plant where MES FLEX was implemented, the following was achieved:
- improve turnaround times by up to 50%,
- calculate costs more accurately, and
- ensure seamless communication between ERP and production.
Comprehensive change management and continuous improvement processes ensure employee buy-in. The quality of products and services is ensured during ongoing operations.
Outlook
The rollout of MES FLEX continues to proceed smoothly as needed at each plant.
The solution’s modular and open architecture enables each production site to implement the new software in a way that precisely aligns with its own progress in digital transformation.
It now takes only a few weeks to implement MES FLEX in a plant, where it helps increase efficiency and productivity.
The plan is to have achieved 80 to 90 percent of the company’s production goals within five years—while production continues uninterrupted.
Showroom: MES FLEX – Flexible Platform for AI-Ready Manufacturing Management
MES FLEX is the flexible Manufacturing Execution System for modern production management.
The solution links process information from machines, equipment, and sensors with business data such as order, product, and shift information. MES FLEX converts this into semantically structured production data that accurately reflects the actual production status. This creates a consistent, operationally usable overview of production.
This production data is available both historically and in real time for analyses, automation scenarios, and AI apps. The data can be seamlessly integrated into existing IT and OT system landscapes.
MES FLEX forms the foundation for operational and strategic decisions. The solution creates the conditions for step-by-step automation along the value chain—from production monitoring and process optimization to AI apps and data-driven assistance solutions.
