MESA 2.0 supports execs, managers pushing for innovative IT in plant operations

The Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) International recently announced initiatives meant to deliver more value to its members. Its broad-spectrum approach includes recasting its basic plant-to-enterprise (P2E) process model to align it with key business initiatives; developing guidebooks focused on those same initiatives; and offering basic membership free to individuals.

A newly unveiled manufacturing enterprise model positions production processes and supporting technologies within a greater business context. Integral to that effort, MESA is creating blueprints for five strategic initiatives common to many enterprises, and how IT supports them. A key blueprint component includes critical business and production metrics resulting from major findings of the second phase of a metrics study begun last year.

“Corporations that want to differentiate themselves in today's business environment can't afford to operate as an assortment of individual departments, plants, or supply chain partners,” said Matt Bauer, MESA chairman, in announcing the new model. “They need to stimulate innovation across a highly orchestrated set of business processes that are part of a global value network.”

MESA says its new model depicts the inherent linkages and interdependencies of plantwide information technologies with larger corporate initiatives (see diagram). The five initiatives incorporated within the MESA model are as follows:

• Lean manufacturing;
• Quality and regulatory compliance;
• Product life-cycle management (PLM);
• Real-time enterprise (RTE); and
• Total productive maintenance.

The new MESA model seeks to demonstrate how interconnected today operational systems are with the ruling management concepts such as lean and quality, which managers use to drive strategic initiatives.

The guidebooks “address the specifics behind the vision,” says Bauer. “[They] fill a hole in the market, outlining the systems that support each of these corporate business initiatives.”

Ralf Sonnefeld, business unit manager, Simatic IT, Siemens Energy and Automation, and a MESA board member, worked on the initiatives project, calling it “a game changer” for the organization because it delivers practical advice to those struggling to move strategic initiatives forward.

Says another MESA board member, Boeing's Doug Weaver, “The vision is to provide a resource for executives that ask how a proposed system is going to support [a company's] corporate initiatives.”

Recognizing the powerful role these initiatives play in operations management, the guidebooks comprise powerful support for those urging management to take advantage of opportunities to improve productivity through right use of IT.

Each guidebook will offer these details:

• Expected return-on-investment from applying plant-to-enterprise (P2E) solutions to corporate initiatives;
• Common dependencies among plant and enterprise solutions;
• Issues related to implementations and rollouts;
• Common risks, and how to mitigate them; and
• Standard metrics for measuring solution success.

To learn more about MESA's free basic membership—enabling access to these and other MESA resources—visit www.mesa.org.