The combined adoption of production it and strategic initiatives - Initial considerations for a Lean MES analysis

Today´s economic environment drives the adoption of strategic intitiatives. At one hand there is the interest in different management philosophies, such as Lean manufacturing. On the other hand manufacturers see a greater need to adopt, upgrade or expand their enterprise IT solutions. As real-time information is crucial, the support for the company´s strategic initiatives must be considered in the requirements analysis for and selection procedure of the new or modified production IT. To justify the IT and integration investments, the featured benefits of the company´s strategic initiatives can be used. As both items are so interrelated, it seems obvious to seek methods to combine the adoption of production IT and strategic initiatives. The combination of Lean manufacturing and Manufacturing Execution System adoption is presented as an example. Both items are described and their mutual support possibilities are outlined. First, the ability of the ISA 95 standard to add the Lean support in the requirements analysis is studied. Second, the justification of the MES investment through the featured Lean improvements is analysed. The corresponding steps for a Lean MES analysis are listed. To conclude, further research on the Lean MES adoption and specifically the implementation of an automated Value Stream Mapping tool is mentioned.