MES Software for Manufacturing
The layer between the plan and the machine: operations dispatched, quantities and scrap reported, inspection recorded where the work happened.
A manufacturing execution system sits between the planning system and the machine — Level 3 in the ISA-95 and IEC 62264 hierarchy. It dispatches operations to the floor, collects what actually happened at each one, tracks work in process, and keeps the genealogy linking finished units to the material and labor that made them.
Operator terminals reporting quantities, scrap, and status at the machine.
MES is defined by where it sits. Above it, a planning system decides what should be made. Below it, controls and machines do the cutting. MES is the layer that turns a released job into a dispatched operation, then records the answer: who ran it, how long it took, how many came off good, how many were scrapped, and what the inspection found. WorkCell does that work on the same database as the job and the ledger, so an operator clocking on is also posting labor cost and building the traceability record in one action. The usual MES problem — an execution system whose numbers disagree with the ERP it feeds — cannot arise when there is only one set of tables.
Shops where the real cost and the real quality record are created at the machine — high-mix machining, fabrication, and assembly operations still running paper travelers, clipboard tally sheets, or a clock-in system that knows nothing about the job.
Quantities, setup times, and sign-offs are written on a paper traveler that rides with the job, then keyed in days later by someone who cannot read the handwriting. Work in process is wherever the paper is, and a job's status is a question you answer by walking the floor.
Labor comes off a time clock that tracks attendance rather than operations, so hours cannot be attributed to a job, let alone to an operation within it. Standards never get corrected, estimates stay wrong in the same direction, and the shop keeps bidding the parts it loses money on.
Parts are counted good until final inspection says otherwise. By then the material is consumed, the downstream operations have run, and the only record of what went wrong is a verbal account. The scrap rate used for quoting is an average nobody can trace to an operation.
The operator writes dimensions on a sheet, quality transcribes them into a workbook, and a first article packet is assembled from both weeks later. Two transcriptions mean two chances to introduce an error into the one record a customer may audit.
Without a dispatch list at the machine, the next job is chosen by whoever shouted loudest this morning. Setups that should have been grouped are broken apart, the schedule that was published Monday is fiction by Wednesday, and the planner finds out at the daily meeting.
Shop floor terminals at the machine
Operators clock on to a specific operation, report quantities completed and scrapped, and move the job along. Status changes where the work happens rather than in a batch of data entry the next morning, so work in process is current.
Labor captured against the operation
Time is attributed to the job and the operation it was spent on, not to a shift. That is what makes actual versus standard comparable at the operation level, and it is the posting that gives job cost its labor component as the work proceeds.
Inspection recorded where the part is
Inspection results are entered at the machine against the template and AQL sampling plan that applies, so the result is attached to the job, the operation, and the lot it judged. A failure raises a severity-classified nonconformance from the same screen.
Genealogy as a by-product of the transactions
Receipts record lots, issues to a job preserve the link, and completions assign serials. The as-built genealogy is maintained by the transactions themselves, so a serial resolves backward to the heat lot, the operator, and the revision without a parallel log.
Dispatch from a finite capacity schedule
The operation list at each work center comes from a schedule planned against real machine and labor capacity, and proposal runs let a planner test a sequence before committing it. The floor sees a sequence, not a pile of open jobs.
One database with the job and the ledger
Execution data does not get interfaced anywhere. The clock-on, the quantity, and the inspection write to the same tables the job cost and the general ledger read, and every posting carries the Job it belongs to.
Operator terminals, operation dispatch, and work-in-process status at the machine.
QualityInspection templates, AQL sampling, nonconformances, and 8-D corrective action.
WorkforceLabor clocked against the operation rather than against the shift.
InventoryLot and serial genealogy carried by the issues and completions themselves.
ERP is the plan and the money: the order, the cost, the ledger. MES is the execution record: the operation dispatched, the clock-on, the quantity, the scrap, the inspection. Run them as separate products and the reconciliation between them becomes somebody's weekly job.
MES vs MRPMRP is arithmetic performed before the work: explode, net, offset, emit planned orders. MES is capture during the work. MRP is also the system most dependent on MES being honest, because every netted balance assumes the floor reported what it really produced.
MES vs APSAPS decides the sequence against finite capacity; MES executes whatever sequence it is handed and reports back. The scheduler needs MES actuals — real run times, real scrap rates — or it keeps planning against standards nobody has met in two years.
MES vs OEEOEE is a metric computed from availability, performance, and quality. MES is the system that captures the events the metric is computed from. An OEE tool without execution data is a dashboard over estimates, which is why OEE is usually a report inside an MES rather than a product beside it.
Operation-level sign-off and genealogy that has to hold up years after the build.
Medical DevicesDevice history records built from what the operator actually recorded at the machine.
Metal ManufacturingMachining and fabrication where setup and run time per operation drive the whole cost.
Plastics & RubberCycle-driven work where scrap counted at the press is the number that matters.
The system of record MES feeds: the job, its cost, and the ledger behind it.
APSFinite capacity scheduling that produces the sequence the floor is dispatched from.
QMSInspection, nonconformance, and corrective action recorded at the operation.
OEEThe metric computed from execution data, and what it costs you without machine signals.
Do I need MES if I have ERP?
You need the execution layer; whether it is separate software depends on your ERP. If the ERP cannot take a clock-on at an operation, a quantity, a scrap count, and an inspection result from the machine, you need an MES beside it. WorkCell includes those terminals, so there is nothing to interface.
What is the difference between MES and SCADA?
SCADA and PLCs are ISA-95 Level 2: supervising and controlling the process in real time, in seconds. MES is Level 3, working in shifts and jobs — dispatching operations, collecting results, tracking work in process. SCADA talks to equipment; MES talks to the plan and to people.
Can WorkCell collect data directly from my machines?
Yes. Every resource can hold its own connection with a token and an endpoint that accepts JSON over HTTPS, so a PLC gateway, an MTConnect adapter or an OPC UA client publishes counts, cycles and meter readings straight onto the machine record. Operators also enter quantities, scrap and time at a shop floor terminal, and both land on the same operation, so an automated count and a human correction are reconciled on one record instead of two.
Does MES give me OEE?
Yes, from the events it already captures. Clocked time against the operation gives you availability, the setup and run standards on the routing give you the rate performance is measured against, and good and scrap quantities at the operation give you quality, so the three terms come out of the same transactions rather than from three systems. Where a machine publishes its own state over the API, availability rests on the signal instead of on a recollection.
What is ISA-95 Level 3?
ISA-95, published internationally as IEC 62264, divides enterprise and control systems into levels. Level 4 is business planning, Level 3 is manufacturing operations management, Levels 2 and below are supervisory control and the process itself. MES is the Level 3 layer and the vocabulary for integrating it upward.
Does MES replace paper travelers?
That is the main thing it does. The operation list, the quantities, the scrap, the labor, and the inspection results are entered at the terminal instead of written down and keyed in later. The traveler stops being the system of record, which also stops the second transcription of every number.
One system instead of a standalone MES.
Show us the paper traveler your floor runs on today and we will walk through exactly what a terminal at the machine would capture instead.