MES delivers 5% more productivity from people-based manufacturing

Optal, a new shop floor information exchange software and systems company, says it can save manufacturers serious money. It’s all about improving plant and factory asset utilisation – and that includes people – through real time communication and the better management that that allows. It’s one of today’s most sensible mantras – getting best return on investment from your resources by managing them more intelligently and efficiently. “Working smarter not harder,” as John Sharp, Optal’s director says, by harnessing “electronic communication, using tried and tested technology to optimise communication, both formal and informal, with the factory floor labour force.” Says Sharp: “Just think what the impact would be on your company if the shop floor staff spent an extra 25 minutes per day each on doing constructive work, instead of, for example, making sure they had the latest drawing to hand, having to wait for the right tool, team mate, material, inspection instructions, etc. “If you were told that there was available a tool, that would more than pay for itself if it just saved two and a half minutes time per employee daily, would you not be interested in learning more?” The advantage of improving business in this way, he says, is that it involves minimum personnel change while improving the lot of everyone involved. And it means getting the factory right before exposing it directly to the ‘e’ world and all that entails in terms of increased pressure for efficiency, flexibility and responsiveness on the factory floor. It makes sense. But Sharp believes the cost of implementing ERP systems in the past decade has had a negative effect on companies’ willingness to invest further in other applications. He notes that this is in spite of the fact that “up to 70% of a product’s price is added during the manufacturing process.” This, he says, has affected the inclination of many companies to take the next step of full integration with the shop floor. He urges manufacturers to think carefully about “the shop floor, potentially the most critical and certainly the most costly aspect of any manufacturing business… By [implementing MES] it would help the company to service the needs of customers better and give an improved working relationship with suppliers.” His hope has to be that the Optal-MES (manufacturing execution system) pricing model will overcome these difficulties. The product will be launched at the inaugural MESA Exposition in Amsterdam on November 19 to 20.