Communication management (MES in vehicle manufacturing)

In vehicle manufacturing, MES is a very complicated system, covering functions of planning/production/process/equipment/quality, relates to lots of process, and needs to cooperate with lots of departments.

Besides that, for a large vehicle company, it’s also required to handle the relationship between corporate departments and plant departments.

Below chart shows a typical MES organization architecture of a vehicle plant.

Diagram 4.1-1 MES organization architecture

 

We can see that, from MES point of view, as an execution system, MES’ direct customers are production executors(operators and machines), the other departments of plant should support production, and all departments of corporate should support local departments accordingly.

Besides that, while building a new plant, it’s designed by corporate departments on early stages, and then designed by plant departments later, and there will be gaps between corporate and plant regarding some process or requirement.

So during MES implementation, we will face these 2 challenges.

 

Challenge 1: how to understand business?

In recent years as concept of Industry 4.0 has been introduced to public, MES market is expanded, and more and more talents joined into MES area. But the fact is, there’re still not many people understand the process and requirement of vehicle manufacturing.

So it’s inevitable that lots of gaps between business and IT on requirements will happen.

To reach high understanding, we need to innovate in organization architecture.

Now let me introduce a best practice: Cummins MES.

Cummins MES is a corporate system, developed by one team globally, implemented by one team globally, operated by one team globally.

The develop team is based in headquarter, team members include IT talents(architect, technical experts, vendor experts) and business talents(business experts, control experts), running as a virtual team.

The business experts have 10+ years of experience in engine building, they’re very familiar with building process and quality standards. They will talk with process engineers and quality engineers to understand all details of any new requirement, and try to align between different plants. So the requirements submitted by business experts are really the thoughts of plants.

The control experts know how to control lineside devices and how they are interact with MES. They will talk with control engineers and vendor engineers, to define standard control protocols.

IT team members are working in same office with business experts and control experts, so IT can work closely with business and avoid misunderstanding during communication.

 

Challenge 2: how to align business?

Now lots of vehicle makers are large companies, with plants located worldwide. So even on implementing universal MES, there will be gaps for different plants.

From corporate’s perspective, MES should be designed to be standard solution, and to use one team to develop, deploy and support.

So how to balance corporate standards and plant customization?

Here I introduce a method for reference.

We can setup 2 expert committees, MES business experts committee, MES control experts committee. The team members should be experts from corporate and plants. Each expert has vote right, while corporate experts have more vote weight.

So while one requirement cannot reach alignment, we can arrange a vote inside experts committee, and get an agreement with highest vote score. The develop team should develop based on it as standard template. If a plant still need customization, then develop team can realize it during implementation with lower priority.