Integrated Operational Platforms vs MES: Key Differences and Business Benefits

One of the most important challenges for economic development is process automation. Its use makes it possible to optimise production and invest human talent in activities where its value is much higher.

Global automation systems are production management systems that work with the information collected in the plant. They exploit and extract the value of the data in order to identify areas where there is a margin to reduce costs and improve results.

Their benefits include increased business profitability, informed decision making and maximised productivity.

This mechanisation system makes feedback possible. The system regulates itself, so that each result of the process affects the whole process, integrating and modifying it. The system evaluates, compares and makes adjustments and corrections in real time, without human intervention.

New technologies provide companies with systems and engineering solutions to meet their operational needs, increase their productivity and create efficiencies across a wide variety of platforms. There are several opportunities capable of transforming and improving a company’s business model, and today we are going to talk about it, differentiating MES systems from integrated operational platforms.

What is a MES system?

The MES (Manufacturing Execution System) is one of the most common systems of execution and control of production. It interconnects people, machines and systems within the same production plant. Its focus is on production and product, so it assists in the decisions relevant to the plant.

On the other hand, it facilitates a management very close to real time, focusing on two main user profiles: the operator (who manages his production center) and the production manager (who seeks to increase production efficiency).

It is used to execute improvements in productivity and maintenance, see costs in real time, identify the origin of deviations, or analyse efficiency losses and their costs in the management of human resources. Its main objectives are to shorten delivery times, productivity and increase plant efficiency. An MES system is the most effective tool to control and optimise OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness).

What is an integrated operational platform?

An integrated operations platform is a comprehensive management model that provides complete visibility into the manufacturing processes in an enterprise, and the vertical systems or applications. All this data and information is integrated from the company’s different manufacturing plants, and is structured and unified in a single platform. It allows the design, configuration, management, operation and integration, comparison and interconnection of all the information captured by the different systems with complete autonomy, remotely and in real time. This helps to have all the data of the productive process and vertical applications visible and interconnected.

This is possible thanks to the implementation of a system like Nexus Integra. All the unification, transversality, interconnection and exploitation of the data is achieved through its three layers.

1. Nexus Connect: is in charge of joining all the data that the company generates through control and monitoring elements (sensors, PLC, SCADA, ERP, MES etc.) and databases that are dispersed. Once it has gathered this data, it unifies it and stores it so that it can be visualised and exploited.

2. Nexus Core: deals with the standardisation and unification of all data captured by the connectors. It is in charge of structuring the information and translating the different languages so that companies can take advantage of all this data.

3. Nexus Applications: is the third layer of Nexus Integra and assumes the functions of integrating native vertical applications or external applications: ERP, MES, SAP, CMMS, Machine Learning, etc. on Nexus Core. The connection between the different applications is made through a public Rest API that enables a bi-directional connection with Nexus Core.

How does an MES differ from an integrated operational platform?

Here are the main differences:

• An MES system has a limited and more local vision, focusing on the plant and on production-only decisions. An integrated operations platform, on the other hand, encompasses the production processes in a comprehensive manner and therefore has a much more global vision of the strategy and business decisions.
• Unlike the MES system, the integrated operations platform allows remote management of facilities. With the platform, it is possible to visualise, control or monitor processes and assets at all times regardless of where you are, while the MES system requires you to be physically on site to manage production control.
• The implementation and management of an MES system is complex and requires experts who are able to configure and integrate it with all other management systems of the company. However, an integrated operations platform gives full autonomy and independence to organisations and eliminates their dependency, being able to configure any aspect of acquisition, management or visualization on their own.
• The MES system, more traditional, is a system that is to some extent manual, more tedious in the way it is handled and therefore takes much more time to become fully effective. On the contrary, the platform is automated and its architecture is flexible and modular, so it is a completely open and autonomous solution that allows you to manage a large amount of assets on one screen.
• The integrated operations platform creates real-time data sets for agile decision making using Big Data. Its data visualization layer is configurable and allows users to visualize the information they consider most relevant such as equipment performance, OEE or alerts. The MES system, is infinitely more manual that, although it evaluates the performance of the plants, provides information in a more limited way.

An integrated operations platform such as Nexus Integra, unlike an MES, enables the interconnection between computer systems and processes, achieving a complete view of all data. In addition, its scalability and capacity to analyse large amounts of data gives the machines enormous automation power. Any MES system can be fed by Nexus Integra to have traceability analysis and production performance in real time.

Nexus Integra integrated operational platform

To maintain and reinforce the productivity and performance levels of the company, we propose Nexus Integra, an integrated operations platform that includes an IoT and Big Data solution that allows you to have a global operations environment based on 4 key points:

• Have a global operations environment from the integration of all process data, digitize it and extract its value.
• It allows you to manage the company’s information efficiently.
• It facilitates decision making.
• It is a competitive advantage in the market, since Nexus Integra offers 100% flexibility and autonomy for the company.
• As for its accessibility, it is a web application accessible from any platform.