Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES): Optimal Design, Planning, and Deployment

Foreword

When a general business concept becomes absorbed into the mainstream, it sometimes loses some of the sharpness associated with its original formulation. This is a charge that may be leveled with some justification against enterprise resource planning (ERP). On the one hand, an ERP system promises—by the force of its title—to link the entire enterprise together in a comprehensive resource plan. However, ERP systems in real life are far less ambitious. They are equivalent to software to automate a firm’s accounting and administrative systems. This narrowness of outlook has greatly hindered the vital overlap between a firm’s ERP system and the system governing the automation of its production planning and execution functions. The latter ...