Get With the Program: Controlling the shop floor

Thinking of purchasing shop floor control software but don’t know where to start? You’ve likely heard the terms MOM (manufacturing operations management) and MES (manufacturing execution system), but a quick internet search returns a confusing range of definitions. It doesn’t help that their standards, as defined in ISA-95 and the Purdue Enterprise Reference Architecture, are filled with terms such as object models, process control levels, physical and logical architectures, data flows and other technobabble.

Kathie Poindexter, senior product marketing manager at Epicor Software Corp., Austin, Texas, said the confusion is understandable. “Certainly within the ERP [enterprise resource planning] world, the terms MOM and MES tend to get used interchangeably. Many people think they are synonymous, that we should stick with one term and eliminate the other, but they do actually mean different things.”

To her, MES is a subset of MOM. While MES collects shop floor data and presents a real-time view of what’s going on in a shop, MOM looks at the bigger picture and is more concerned with the end-to-end manufacturing process. A number of ERP systems contain features that put them squarely into MES and even MOM territory.

Virtually all MES software can be run on mobile devices, including Epicor’s Mattec MES software, which integrates with the company’s core ERP product. Image courtesy of Epicor Software.

MOM often offers QC and overall equipment efficiency functionality, advanced planning and scheduling, and a range of analytical tools, giving management the information necessary to make better decisions.

Meanwhile, the ERP umbrella covers both, pulling in accounting, purchasing, warehousing and engineering for a complete enterprise management solution.