Now manufacturing intelligence...

The Industry Automation division of Siemens has added Manufacturing Intelligence (MI) capabilities to its Manufacturing Execution System Simatic IT. Simatic IT for Manufacturing Execution and Intelligence offers customers in the process, discrete and life sciences industries a completely new depth and quality of information from shop floor production data to top floor management level. The key benefits are faster and more targeted access to information such as production, quality assurance and maintenance data, because it is now available in a fully integrated system. The MI accesses the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) database directly. The database contains real-time information from the production processes of one or more production plants, enabling companies to identify performance fluctuations quickly and to take the necessary remedial action efficiently.

Users at production and management level need meaningful information to support their optimisation processes.

This includes data relating to orders, materials, plant capacity utilisation and production quality and costs. Role-based information that is easy to interpret forms the basis for making reliable, fast decisions, and is vital for making continuous improvements. To achieve this, Business Intelligence (BI) information needs to be combined with Manufacturing Intelligence (MI). Since BI solutions cannot be used at production level, companies have an interest in creating added value through the operational advantages of an MES system. Simatic IT achieves this added value by integrating the functions from the Manufacturing Execution and Manufacturing Intelligence systems. This facilitates communication between production and management level without the need for additional interfaces. Companies in all industries should benefit from this flexible, customizable, structured, role-based, industry-specific intelligence from production to management level.

Simatic IT for Manufacturing Execution and Intelligence brings together information from a wide range of data sources, even from more than one location. Users can create balanced scorecards with the help of industry-specific KPIs, set the parameters to be analysed, define the drill-down level of the information required and access tried and tested industry-specific libraries. Simatic IT for Manufacturing Execution and Intelligence records, structures and visualizes production, quality and maintenance data in one view in line with users’ specifications. Visual representations of relevant information provide users at production, plant and management levels with the necessary decision-making resources for their area of responsibility.

The information can be accessed centrally or remotely via a mobile device like a Microsoft Windows phone. Wherever users are located, they can call up scorecards, analyse faults and check production options.

Simatic IT for Manufacturing Execution and Intelligence bridges the gap between the different IT layers in production and management, thereby increasing the efficiency of a company’s production process and creating direct added value.