Manufacturing Execution System (MES)

MES

MES is a term that is used to encapsulate the broad area of software which focuses on the manufacturing process. This can be further broken up into the areas of Production, Monitoring, Tracking and Reporting. Each of these areas has been implemented for customers by Automation Mechatronics. The key to success in each area is first understanding the customer needs, and then designing a solution that has inherent cohesion with other parts of the MES System. This has been AMI's approach by delivering solutions that are consistent in its code structure and in its interfacing between Devices, PLC's, SCADA and Databases.

Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)

OEE is used to measure the performance of an area/cell/unit in relation to its theoretical max throughput. This is often implemented on critical parts of the plant where suspected bottlenecks may exists. The calculation of OEE is simple, however the implementation requires an in depth knowledge of the process and also where the measurements are required to satisfy the equation. This ability to critically analyse the process and the IO where the measurements will originate from, often increase the complexity of an OEE system and if done poorly can present false reporting around OEE as well.

Recipe Management

Recipe Management System

The Recipe System has been implemented on multiple platforms, such as Ignition, Citect, and other Web Platforms. The Recipe Management follows the ISA88 Model, which outlines guidelines for how to functionally implement Batch Control. The Recipe Management was designed around ISA88 guidelines in order to establish a system that can integrate alongside other ISA88 designed systems. In addition it allows for the standards across PLC and other platforms to adhere to a common standard. The Standardisation of data structures (Udt, Classes, Tables) within all parts has been key to reduce the software complexity and enable easy transition between all three parts. The success behind the Recipe System has been largely due to this design philosophy that seeks to simplify and reduce the moving parts within the system as a whole.

Recipe Actions

Recipe Actions are the building blocks of a Recipe. Each Action serves the role of articulating a basic action that needs to be performed in a batch. Actions also support parameters that allow for the reuse of Actions and Recipes across Batches. The parameters that are applied can be applied from a Recipe, Action or Location. Configuring or building these actions have in the past been implemented withing SCADA systems, however due to the flexible architecture this can be implemented from other web based platforms as well as SCADA platforms.

Reporting

These reports have in the been developed in SSRS and Ignition Reporting. Each report has the ability to filtered according to customer needs. When needed an Data Warehousing solution can be implemented to for long term aggregations across raw data. This increases the reporting and dashboard performance and reduce overall strain on the Reporting System.

Cleaning-In-Place (CIP) Report

CIP Report is captures the key metrics such as Conductivity, Supply Flow Rate and Line Temperature through out the cleaning process. This report is necessary in relation the QA checks as it ensure that the cleaning process has been adequately documented and can indicate a root cause around some potential issues around the Factory.

Batch Report

The Batch Report shows the all the information related to Batches, including Batch Recipe, Batch History, and Alarms during the batching process that pertains to the Batch.

Historian

Developed Historian

Automation Mechatronics has in the past developed their own in-house Historian that comprised of multiple levels of redundancy to ensure that data was reliably captured. This has granted us insight into the critical considerations when choosing the ideal historian.

Main Stream Historians

Automation Mechatronics has worked extensively using the main stream historians developed by Ignition, Citect, Wondeware, and more. We've also built other solutions upon the historian data, such as an aggregation and reporting layer. In addition, we also extended the Historian to an event driven historical account such as what is used in the Recipe Management System.

Alarm Management

Alarming has been setup for customers using the inbuilt Alarming functionality. However the approach to how these alarms are driven by an ISA95 model. In addition Automation Mechatronics uses alarm generation tools that allows for quick delivery of Alarms and an ability to roll out late changes to the project alarm system. We have also delivered an alarming solution on Node-Red platform as well one that was integrated with our own in-house Historian Solution.