Oracle goes for new manufacturing execution system software world

“We’re renewing attention to core manufacturing processes,” says Andrew Zoldan, Oracle’s group vice president of the manufacturing and distribution business unit. “Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12, due out this year, has its own on-board MES.” That development won’t initially be available on its former JD Edwards Enterprise One or World suites or PeopleSoft ERP – despite the Oracle’s Applications Unlimited programme – although Zoldan is quick to say that this is the first wave for Oracle MES. “Those products might have their own MES. This is the first chapter in a more comprehensive book and details of that are yet to be publicly talked about,” he says. And he adds: “We’re thinking about fusing these suites together over the next several years as part of our much larger strategy that blends best functionality into the new Fusion product beginning next year.” Some of Oracle’s MES software is home grown, some developed with partners and some acquired, and this is a changing picture. At the moment, the precise nature of Oracle MES is unclear. All Zoldan says is: “There are no large global MES vendors: they’re by industry and by country.” Beyond that, they’re also founded on proprietary operating systems and technology, he says. Neither is an observation unlikely to please the likes of Rockwell, Siemens and Wonderware, but the Oracle view is that current MES developers are “hyper specialised, maybe focusing on SQC, or formulations for process industries, time and attendance and the shopfloor.” Says Zoldan: “Big software vendors have avoided MES because of the hyper specialisation in this cottage industry. One of the leverages a company like Oracle brings is scale, resources and global support. The other thing is core enabling technology: we’re the largest provider of real time database technology, with 10g and Times Ten as well as Fusion Middleware.” He believes that to date, the remaining big ERP vendors haven’t had the technology to acquire data fast enough or do anything with it – much less deal with the sheer variety of industrial sector MES requirements. Why this big push on MES now from Oracle? “Think about offshoring of manufacturing,” says Zoldan. “Look at global companies moving production to wherever they need to for resources, economics etc. One of the issues they have is can this £5m MES company I’m using in the UK support me wherever? And the answer is no. They need to standardise and get a global partner.” This is the driver that will reshape the MES community worldwide, he believes. First, MES will emerge as a serious global market, then there will be consolidation as the big players vie with one another for domination and technologies. And then? Zoldan predicts a measure of absorption and collaboration with the likes of Rockwell and Siemens, with initial MES technology centring on analytics and data acquisition and integration. “We will provide the technology and the applications,” he says. “We’ll take those three things and build out of the box applications for companies. That’s what we’ve begun with our MES offering now in Release 12.”