Integrated manufacturing execution system for all

International partnership between three hardware and software companies has developed a totally integrated manufacturing execution system for any user of production CNC machine tools.

As a result of an international partnership between Seiki Systems of Brighton and two manufacturing software companies in Germany and the USA, enabling a pool of manufacturing software expertise to be established involving 16 software development engineers, a totally integrated manufacturing execution system (iMES) has been constructed suitable for any production company using CNC machine tools.

As a result of the partnership and a breakthrough in the development of its production manufacturing software, workloads across all CNC machines in the workplace can now be graphically scheduled following either direct integration with an existing MRP system or, for smaller companies, by Seiki Systems providing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) capability within the software package.

In both cases iMES enables real time feed back and true, live dynamic predictions of machine workloads creating direct information such as projected completion dates and performance reporting in a paperless environment.

The development triangle between Seiki Systems, Munich-based Fauser and JobPack of Chicago in the USA to construct the modular iMES provides from a single source, complementary packages and a series of modular software programs that can be fully integrated to form whatever level of sophistication and manufacturing solution the user requires.

This can be as diverse as the provision of a planning system to help with quotation costing, control of production, via a real time scheduler, display of manufacturing data and DNC for operators, shopfloor data collection through to final despatch and management reporting.

Explains David Trowell, general manager of Seiki Systems: "Larger companies use an MRP system to load the machine shop with a 'requirements' list which generally has no concept of any machine loadings, capacity or working patterns.

Here, the scheduler within iMES integrates to any existing MRP to provide a simple to understand real time graphical view of the work requirement set against the actual working capacity of the machine tools.

For small to medium size companies without MRP, iMES contains an ERP module, which provides control from estimating through to process planning and feeds the real time scheduler with new work.

It is also able to take information from the scheduler for progress reporting and despatch information." As the scheduler module within iMES works in real time it is able to portray the roll-on effects of changes in production through data captured by Seiki Systems Networked Manufacturing Systems (NMS) which is directly integrated to the scheduler.

The NMS module also provides 'up-to-the-minute' feedback on machine tool operations, collation of data, CNC program control, display of manufacturing data and production work queues.

The manufacturing software expertise from Seiki Systems also enables, through NMS, to provide remote status of the activity of each machine, activate alarms and provide performance reports which is already well-proven and fully operational on some 600 machine tools in the UK.

The Fauser AG ERP and real time scheduling software, which is also installed in some 350 German companies, is able to support the entire order management process from quotation costing to work planning, scheduling, stock management, purchase despatch and final costing.

Meanwhile, JobPack has further developed the core communications engine and developed the manufacturing data viewing module to meet the specific requirements of the US market.

This enables iMES to be configured to cater for the world's largest market of installed high technology machine tools.

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