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Smart Manufacturing

This peer-reviewed educational content is developed by MESA's Smart Manufacturing Working Group to help manufacturers add value to their role and their enterprise. Join them today!

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Members can join this working group in the InfoHub.

Follow MESA’s Smart Manufacturing Roadmap from project planning through completion for best practices, standards and more.

Additional Smart Manufacturing Resources

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Improving Trust in the Smart Manufacturing Supply Chain

In order to meet customer demands, meet traceability requirements and comply with regulations, food manufacturers are turning to technology solutions to modernize the supply chain communication, coordination, and data flow. Lessons learned from this example in the food industry can be applied to other industry supply chains.

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Five Hurdles to Smart Manufacturing

The implementation of Smart Manufacturing information technology frameworks and applications will be essential to achieving the goals but obstacles to delivering the vision include:

  1. Data contextualization
  2. Underfunded and overwhelmed IT:
  3. Change Management practices
  4. Legacy IT and OT separation
  5. Disparate silo systems
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Smart Manufacturing Isn’t So Smart Without Standards

Communications and messaging standards spur the adoption of new technologies, products and manufacturing methods. Standards allow a more dynamic and competitive marketplace, without hampering the opportunity to differentiate. Development of standards reduces the risks for enterprises developing and implementing solutions to accelerate adoption of new manufactured products and manufacturing methods. Several contributors from NIST (National Institute of Standards) give us a summary of the state of standards needed to support Smart Manufacturing initiatives.

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WHITE PAPER
WHITE PAPER

The State of MES in the Age of Smart Manufacturing

MES continues to evolve to address the challenge of more real-time data, integration and automation. Auto-ID technologies, cloud computing, mobile, augmented reality, and advanced analytics are all being integrated into MES. For these manufacturers, MES has become a foundational element of Smart Manufacturing enabling enhanced digital thread, cost analysis, repeatable processes, and assisted decision making. The state of MES is better than it has ever been, and the next 20 years are going to be spectacular.

MESA White Paper #60: Smart Manufacturing and Cloud Computing

MES continues to evolve to address the challenge of more real-time data, integration and automation. Auto-ID technologies, cloud computing, mobile, augmented reality, and advanced analytics are all being integrated into MES. For these manufacturers, MES has become a foundational element of Smart Manufacturing enabling enhanced digital thread, cost analysis, repeatable processes, and assisted decision making. The state of MES is better than it has ever been, and the next 20 years are going to be spectacular.

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The Value of MES to Your Smart Manufacturing Transformation

This article discusses how MES fits into the Smart Manufacturing journey as a foundational enterprise system, along with PLM and ERP, integrated into one digital thread and one system of systems.

Benefits achieved with MES within Smart Manufacturing and the Digital Thread include:

  1. Automatic data collection
  2. Repeatability
  3. Control
  4. Digitized records
  5. Making better-informed decisions
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How “Smart” are We in Manufacturing Today?

A prior article discussed that Smart Manufacturing is not very "smart" if not using communication standards to connect equipment, people and processes in the manufacturing enterprise. This article discusses the reality of adoption of integration standards in manufacturing based on a MESA and IDC Manufacturing Insights survey. The survey was sent to both manufacturers and vendors that provide equipment and software to manufacturing, and the results are shared below.

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A Checklist for Cybersecurity in Industrial Internet of Things

To realize the vision of Smart Manufacturing and Industrial IoT (IIoT) organizations recognize that information created by connecting industrial control systems to the enterprise business systems is achieving greater visibility into their operations, all helping to make significant operational improvements.  These initiatives require seamless and secure flow of information from the machines and equipment, to the lines, to the people, to the plants, and to the enterprise levels.  This article discusses the challenges and approaches being worked by several industry consortia groups to tackle this convergence and connected enterprise.

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Why and How to Use Production Process Management in Smart Manufacturing

Business processes in today's typical manufacturing environment is, at best, full of information gaps.  Within the major enterprise level systems such as ERP or PLM most processes are based or focused on departmental issues which means the processes are not cross-functional. Business Process Management (BPM) and workflow solutions are a missing link to support Smart Manufacturing across the enterprise.

CASE STUDY
CASE STUDY
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Smart Story Awards

Browse MESA’s Smart Story Awards archive to learn how IT solutions and data can be used to make smart decisions throughout a product value chain.

Additional Resources

Visit our Online Learning & Resource Center for additional content on Smart Manufacturing.