Modern Materials Handling - April 2011

modern information managementMesat acrossroadsBy Bob Trebilcock, Executive EditorLast December, Congress passedthe Food Safety ModernizationAct. The new law gives the Foodand Drug Administration theauthority to directly issue aproduct recall—no ifs, andsor buts about it.Potentially, that’s bad news for foodand beverage manufacturers, who onceissued recalls on a voluntary basis. Now,they have an entirely new level of compliancerequirements to meet if theywant to narrow the scope of a recall.It’s potentially good news for theNew compliance and regulatory requirementsare driving interest in manufacturingexecution systems.developers of manufacturing executionsystems, or MES—the supply chainexecution software systems that directand report on shop floor activities.“Food and beverage companies arevery conscious of getting their namesin the paper for the right reasons andnot the wrong reasons, like a productrecall,” says John Southcott, co-CEOof Brock Solutions (www.brocksolutions.com),an MES systems integrator.Southcott is also the internationalchairman of the board of directorsfor the Manufacturing EnterpriseSolutions Association (MESA,www.mesa.org), an organizationfor MES solution providersand users (see page 58 for 60Seconds with John Southcott).“MES provides the traceabilityof the materials that went intomaking a product that can preventa recall or limit the scope ofa product recall.”The question is whethermanufacturers are ready togive up their homegrown legacymanufacturing systemsand implement packaged MESsolutions, just as warehousesand distribution centers havebeen doing with warehousemanagement systems (WMS) for thepast decade?The short answer may be: Yes, theyare. “I was involved in 40 MES acquisitionslast year and they were acrossindustries,” says Simon Jacobson, directorof research for manufacturing operationsat Gartner (www.gartner.com).“The common theme was that theircurrent IT systems could no longersupport their needs, they wanted fasterimplementations, and they needed abetter way to connect their manufacturingsystems to the enterprise.”MES at a crossroadsIn that sense, manufacturing executionsystems are at a crossroads, thatpoint where the reasons for businessto adopt a technology intersect withthe ability of that technology to delivera real solution.If that sounds like a familiar refrainabout MES, well, it should. “The MESmarket has been at a crossroads in thepast,” says Jacobson, who is a supporterof the technology. “Everyone wants tooptimize cycle times and MES is goodat managing production processes andgetting rid of paper.”While those benefits are all well andgood, Jacobson adds, the stumbling26 A p r i l 2 0 1 1 / Modern Materials Handling mmh.com