Industry Case Studies, Food and CPG

Pushing Decision Support Throughout the Enterprise

Background:
A Fortune 500 manufacturer of Food Products collaborated to develop a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) data warehouse system. This system was developed to provide the capability to interface with a large number of MES products in order to monitor and control key enterprise-wide manufacturing operations.

Situation:
For years this world-class Food Products manufacturer utilized MES products to most effectively monitor operational systems and support by performing several integral manufacturing functions. Over this period of time, the number of MES components became rather large, and the client employed diverse technologies to implement these operational systems. Most notable of these were Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) software, Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) such as Oracle®, and its integrated user interface and reporting tools, and custom-developed software products. This led, however, to the same key manufacturing functions being implemented in more than one way at different locations, for different product lines, or on different platforms. The client clearly understood the value of a MES, but needed to find a way to more efficiently implement the data found within these systems. Therefore, the client sought to develop a system that would allow MES products to be functional from the plant floor to management, and to also allow for compliance in data standards across the business.

Solution:
The client had a long-standing relationship with EnteGreat, and collaborated with EnteGreat to produce a MES data warehouse system. Prior success on other MES-related projects led EnteGreat to the development of a single system that would act as a storehouse for multiple MES products. The primary function of the data warehouse is to provide a correlated reporting function to support the client's internal business and production needs. The data warehouse implemented an Oracle RDBMS for storing historical MES information. The architecture for the database was multi-tiered, producing a more robust and scalable design and allowed the system to adapt to emerging technologies and systems.

In order to ensure that fair and accurate reporting and comparisons can be made, some method must be implemented to provide coherency in the client's manufacturing execution environment. ANSI/ISA (American National Standards Institute/ISA) has developed an information model that is specifically tailored to the Food Products industry, commonly referred to as the ANSI/ISA S.88-1 Standard. The client's data warehouse adopted this standard as an integral part of the common solution to these problems.

Benefits:
The data warehouse system gave a clear roll-up from the plant-floor to management, and was able to identify plant-floor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The system also gave analytical ability to easily compare different manufacturing data. Likewise it gave the means to identify trouble spots more readily than by using the MES systems exclusively. The data warehouse system was passive, that is, it simply stored data sent to it by the various MES products; it was not an invasive product. In addition, the entire data warehouse system had been retooled and updated during a compliancy project, bringing the system up to the latest plant-floor standards, as well as meeting operating system and RDBMS requirements.