The MES Vendor Selection Process
Introduction
In today’s marketplace there are numerous applications and systems that are marketed as MES. There are ERP systems that claim MES functionality. There are SCADA applications that claim MES functionality. There are “best of breed” or point solutions for specific MES functionality, along with “best of suite” products that claim to do it all. Lastly, there are industry focused MES applications. With so many different products, it’s hard to even know where to begin.
MES can be a costly investment; however, it also can offer great returns. The challenge is to make sure that the application in which one invests is the right fit for one’s unique needs. If the wrong product is chosen then a lot of time and money will be wasted in molding that MES to fit one’s specific business requirements.
Without the proper experience and knowledge of MES, it’s hard for manufacturing companies to identify the right solution. Many factors must be addressed; both short term and long term goals, when investing in MES and this is where Engineering offers valuable guidance to our customers.
Engineering is an independent IT consulting firm, which means Engineering can offer a different perspective to our clients than could be obtained working directly with MES vendors. Engineering’s end goal is to always make sure that our clients’ needs are met with the best products for their unique requirements. More often than not, working directly with an MES vendor results in the vendor becoming a “yes man”. The MES vendors will tend to tell you that their product covers all your unique business requirements in order to close the deal. In most cases this is only true with a considerable amount of customization to meet a client’s needs.
Such an effort for custom development can take an extensive amount of time and, therefore, money. Engineering, being MES subject matter experts, allows us to weed out the short comings of each product during the vendor selection process. This enables us to identify a system that best fits our client’s unique business use cases with the least amount of customization. Engineering will take the lead, simplifying the entire process for our clients.
Our client’s team will not have to manage the back and forth activity of working with each candidate vendor.
Engineering knows MES and knows how to work with the vendors, asking the important questions. Our clients can trust that Engineering will decipher who has products that can actually meet the requirements when “smoke and mirror” demos are shown. Below are the steps and a brief description of what is done during each phase of a Engineering lead vendor selection process.
Site Visit
MES Orientation
The MES Orientation shall consist of a workshop to give your MES team members an overview of MES and the S95 standard used to identify what functionalities are covered by MES and how they are implemented. The MES orientation will identify the roles and contributions from the stakeholders, review the proposed vendor selection schedule, review responsibilities, offer a final Q&A session, etc.
Site Survey - Voice Of The Customer
The site survey is when the actual consultancy work begins. During this stage the Engineering MES consultants will collaborate with your team (managers and operators) to identify what your end business targets are such as: reduction in rework, increased throughput, shortened production time, etc.
Engineering defines this in what is called the Voice of the customer (VOC). The VOC is a set of detailed wants and needs, organized into a hierarchical structure, and then prioritized in terms of relative importance (short and long term goals) with regard to our client’s business targets. A critical part of this step is to make sure that your team is heavily involved, as their feedback is critical.
Engineering will also assess your current business process and work flows that relate to different aspects of production. This may mean analyzing currently used software systems, paper based processes, or defining a process where one does not exist today.
Documentation
User Requirements Specification
After the site visit has ended and the VOC has been documented, all other notes and materials will be gathered by the Engineering consultants to be reviewed and transformed into a User Requirements Specification (URS) document.
Such a document will organize the findings from the analysis in such a way that the “points of pain” will be addressed along with the business use cases under different functional areas as they relate to the ISA95 standard.
This work will take place at Engineering’s offices; however frequent collaboration between Engineering and your team is desirable. Once completed, Engineering will present the URS document to your team for final approval. Engineering makes sure that requirements are set based off what our customers’ needs are in order to reach the business targets and not based off what the market software solution can offer. We don’t want to make our clients requirements fit a software product but rather make sure that, in the end, the chosen software products fits your requirements.
Request for Information Documentation
URS documents are not suited for vendors to respond to. Therefore, after the URS is finalized, Engineering will write a Request for Information (RFI) document which will be used to send to the first round of MES vendors.
This document is a standard template that Engineering will provide to each vendor. During this time Engineering will work with your team and suggest a list of MES vendors to whom we will send the RFI.
Vendor Investigation
Once the RFI documents have been distributed, each vendor has the same amount of time to respond. During this time Engineering will manage the communication to each vendor. If they have questions or request more detail, which most often is the case, Engineering will manage such requests. Once the deadline has been reached for the responses Engineering will gather all documents and prepare a presentation.
This presentation will grade each vendor based on the responses to the questions as well as conversations had with them during this process. A “gap analysis” will take place so that Engineering can document the amount of customization each vendor would need to cover your specific needs. Once complete Engineering will reconvene with your team to present the findings and select a “short list” for live demonstrations.
Vendor Demo
Once the short list has been established, the selected vendors will be invited to show a demo to us based on the RFI. During this time Engineering’s MES consultants will be present to make sure the client requirements are addressed during this time. Questions will be asked, and notes will be taken.
Follow Up
Once all vendor demonstrations are completed, Engineering’s MES consultants shall spend time with the client’s team to answer questions and provide clarity on the capabilities of each of the vendors MES. The discussions shall act as a starting point in determining what vendor best satisfies your unique requirements.
Final Analysis
A final presentation shall then be prepared by the Engineering MES consulting team, giving a thorough recommendation of who offers the best MES solution for the client’s needs. The final decision, however, is made by the client.
The end result is that we have helped select the best manufacturing execution system for our client’s manufacturing process. At this point Engineering would look to implement the selected MES product to you and therefore define a project plan for implementation, training, and support.
