March 25th, 2008: Survey
For the ninth time, Jan Snoeij of Logica's MES Centre of Excellence published the MES Product Survey report. It includes extensive information of 39 products from 36 MES...
July 31st, 2007: White Paper
Do you want to dramatically lower total cost of ownership (TCO) for manufacturing IT architectures and manufacturing, as well as reduce supply chain operational costs? The...
April 18th, 2008 : Case Study
Takeda Ireland Limited has successfully deployed an electronic batch record system on a key production line. Read about it here.
March 25th, 2008 : Survey
For the ninth time, Jan Snoeij of Logica's MES Centre of Excellence published the MES Product Survey report. It includes extensive information of 39 products from 36 MES Vendors in order to determine how their product’s features map against different types of industries, the MESA-11 functionalities, the ANSI/ISA-95 activity models, architectural and various technical aspects, etc.
March 13th, 2008 : Case Study
The Changing Face of Manufacturing “Visibility is essential to collaboration
across the supply chain.”
Players in the manufacturing industry may be facing their
greatest challenge yet. Global competition is only increasing,
innovation has become the byword of success and issues around sustainability are being taken much more seriously than in the past. Companies in this sector must meet the demands that all these challenges bring and at the same time increase flexibility and efficiency to fulfill the desires of ever more demanding consumers.
Although manufacturers have invested heavily in ERP solutions
with the hope of gaining much-needed visibility in production,
many still suffer disparate data sources and a lack of cohesion. Indeed, many businesses have failed to integrate web-based channels effectively and connect them to legacy systems, and are striving for adaptive cross-functional processes to unite the silos created by their ERP systems.
Visibility is not only important for internal efficiency but also
essential to collaboration across the supply chain, now seen as providing real value to the manufacturing business.
Atos Origin’s ground-breaking study, in conjunction with IDC
and entitled, “Collaborative Excellence in the Consumer
Products Value Chain,” found that the key benefits perceived by some main players in this sector when ‘going collaborative’ are now really impacting their business models and strategies.
To build collaborative relationships, manufacturers need to
focus on internal capability and effectiveness as well aligning
service offerings, business rules, organization design,
processes and IT with their surrounding supply chain partners.
In this issue of Manufacturing Matters, we explore many of
these topics and look at the ways Atos Origin is using its
experience in the industry and innovative IT solutions to provide
the answers to meet our manufacturing clients’ needs around
the world.
Specifically, we hear from a number of industry experts about
the trends impacting those in the manufacturing world,
including the need to be lean, how to reduce a company’s
carbon footprint and how manufacturers in the high-tech sector
are setting the pace. We also look at Atos Origin’s partnership
with leading players in this sector, such as ChemChina, Philips
and L’Oréal, discover the company’s manufacturing history in
Spain and learn some lessons about doing business in one of
the world’s fastest growing economies, China.
Manufacturing is one of the largest global markets that
Atos Origin serves and we are constantly striving to help our
clients not only meet new challenges but capitalize on the
opportunities they bring.
Philippe Germond
Chairman of the Management Board
and CEO Atos Origin
February 1st, 2008 : White Paper
For discrete manufacturing to remain a viable industry worldwide, executives must grasp the opportunity to radically improve business performance. Improvement lies in creating integrated manufacturing operations and ensuring plant operations stay in tune with the rest of the enterprise. Download this white paper from Industry Directions to learn how manufacturing execution systems (MES) can directly influence operational and financial performance of an enterprise.
November 14th, 2007 : White Paper
Industrial manufacturers face many challenges related to the execution of their manufacturing operations: typically logistical optimisation, cost cutting, and strengthening the position in the supply chain. Moreover, manufacturers must have the quality of their products and processes under control and, sometimes, provide evidence of this control as required by government regulations.
To handle these challenges in the manufacturing environment, IT systems of a specific nature are required: close to execution of the operations, able to handle near real-time information, and able to work with information from and to many other IT systems and installations.
Manufacturing execution systems (MES) are built to do exactly this, with functionality to support shop floor operation and integration facilities for the connection to planning systems and the actual machine controls on the shop floor.