Siemens MES Solution simatic it in the dairy industry small test sledgehammer

The fierce competition, the tightening of product profits, food safety and security, increasingly stringent regulatory requirements and the importance of global market and brand maintenance have put higher demands on enterprises in the dairy industry, and implementing MES will be the only way out for enterprises. Since the "Eleven-Five" manufacturing informatization for the MES, the domestic demand for MES gradually heating up, I am afraid now do not know the information technology mes is not much. MES (manufacturing execution System) was first appeared in the 1992 Advanced Manufacturing Research Institute (AMR) three-tier enterprise integration model (Figure 1), a sound enterprise production management system, need to be composed of the following three parts: ERP, MRPII as the representative of the Enterprise management planning layer, The production process Control layer, represented by SCADA (data acquisition and monitoring), HMI (Human machine Interface), and the MES execution layer that automates the operation process and enables the enterprise to fully integrate.

Figure 1 AMR three-tier enterprise integration model [/ALIGN]

As can be seen from the model, MES has built a bridge between the plan management and the bottom control, filling the gap between the two. On the one hand, MES can refine and decompose the production management information from MRPII and ERP software, and pass the operation instruction from the plan layer to the bottom control layer. On the other hand, MES can collect the state data of the field equipment and meter to monitor the running state of the underlying equipment in real time, then analyze, calculate and process , so that the control system and information system can be conveniently and reliably integrated, and the production status can be fed back to the planning layer in time.

At present, the domestic user's understanding of MES began to enter the practical stage, mes successively in petrochemical, steel, tobacco, semiconductor and other industries have been promoted, and gradually play the important role of its connecting link. However, according to a survey of 2004 global MES projects provided by the Boston consulting firm (Boston Consulting Group), the number of installed MES systems ranked in the first few are food and beverage, chemical, pharmaceutical, automotive parts and electronics assembly industry. Dairy products belong to the food and beverage industry is ranked top. Therefore, this paper selects the food and beverage industry representative of dairy processing, from the characteristics of the industry, user demand, through the vivid MES success story to analyze the application of MES in the dairy industry and enterprise users benefit, and finally to the MES system selection to make some pertinent suggestions.

The dairy industry needs mes dairy industry competition more and more fierce, enterprise competition, has erupted "milk source war", "Cow price war", "advertising war" and so on, the competition for milk source, the competition for marketing market, virtually make the cost of enterprise manufacturing costs substantially increased, but the enterprise " 　　 Milk price war "continuous, the result of promotion is the major enterprises dairy competition price reduction, some even lose money sales, enterprise profit space is increasingly tight. 　　　　 How to reduce manufacturing cost through internal optimization of process and process, and to improve the efficiency of equipment use, is a topic of great concern to dairy enterprises. People to eat for the day, the pursuit of healthy life is the common pursuit of all mankind. All FMCG companies have a bottom limit, which is safety. Dairy products, short shelf life, is very prone to deterioration of food, if the quality of raw milk, production, circulation, marketing links can not be guaranteed, a slight careless may appear individual product safety problems, its risk is conceivable. The quality of assured milk to consumers, but also to ensure its taste and nutrition, which requires enterprises to adopt a more rapid and reliable system to manage the process.

Enterprises in addition to meet the food industry's existing food safety, quality assurance System HACCP standards, the pharmaceutical industry has been promoted by stricter laws and regulations, such as GMP, gradually introduced to the food industry. This requires the manufacturer's system to have electronic signatures, electronic records, audit trails, automatic, standard reporting functions. and the continuous introduction of higher standards around the world to ensure that the provision of higher quality products to consumers will become a trend.

Large enterprises in the fierce competition environment is more easy to survive, in the enterprise scale is growing at the same time, enterprises are also very concerned about through the merger, acquisition of Milk factory how to integrate into the entire enterprise quality management system, to ensure that different factories produce the same brand product quality is the same. The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games "any product retrospective accountability function" requirements will redefine the Chinese Food industry safety control standards. According to international standards and developed country standards for the Olympic Food Safety guidelines, food are required to affix electronic labels, to achieve full tracking. This also means that from the raw milk acceptance, the finished product out of the library to enter the market must have a perfect product tracking system, from the consumer's hands of a packet of milk, can be quickly traced back to production, sales of every link.

Danone's MES solution   Danone Group is known for its brand vitality and strength. Its three core businesses – fresh dairy products, healthy drinks, biscuits and cereal fast food – have made it more and more important to cater to consumers ' tastes. Danone is well-known worldwide and has always taken the lead because it can adapt quickly to changing markets. In Spain, Danone is also the largest dairy manufacturer in the region. After implementing SAP, Spanish Danone has been looking to optimize existing production processes and data streams to ensure efficient integration and communication between management and production. At the same time, through the integration of different processes and systems in the factory to achieve pre-processing, post-processing integration, to avoid the same information in different systems are manually transferred and processed, resulting in errors, delays and inefficiencies. On the other hand, the company wants to improve the real-time visibility of production processes to reduce costs, improve scheduling, and optimize resource utilization. All of these needs have to be met by a standardized solution, which can be easily modified and maintained even if future business growth changes, and a small effort is needed to reach the group's other plants. Siemens ' MES solution, simatic it, ultimately helps to achieve this important mission. In the first stage, SIMATIC it integrates filling lines to achieve factory area monitoring, production data acquisition, KPI calculation of key performance indicators, production order management, batch analysis, personnel management, maintenance management and quality data sharing. In the second phase, SIMATIC it became the data integration platform between SAP and different plant areas, raw milk processing, finished product filling and yogurt fermentation. Today, the necessary production data for the entire production line is imported into the SAP system through simatic it. Daily production start, all production-related master data (product data, BOM, production data, etc.) from ERP to Mes,mes and then distribute the data to other systems in the factory; SIMATIC It is also responsible for the production orders from the ERP system to download and transfer to the production system; Order status real-time refresh , from simatic It feedback to the ERP, each filling line order status changes (such as the order to start or end), ERP will receive from simatic it on performance, time, quality and other order information, each production of a pallet product, the system will generate confirmation information for internal logistics orders, 　　　　Includes real-time messages about this pallet from MES to SAP.

In Spanish Danone, production data and KPI KPIs are now available online. The automation of information flow provides the possibility to optimize the production process and process management. The integration of automated real-time data between factory systems ensures factory visibility from top to bottom. Automated sample sampling, quality data sharing, and maintenance management help achieve a significant advantage in compliance. Danone users finally added that the SIMATIC IT solution was so flexible, modified on the basis of the existing plant, that it could soon be implemented on the new production line, which meant that only a small reconfiguration was needed to meet the new functionality requirements.

Figure 2 Spanish Danone based on simatic it's MES system architecture

the MES of SIMATIC it Siemens SIMATIC It is the advanced MES solution introduced by Siemens, and its implementation in Danone gives us a vivid demonstration of a new paradigm of manufacturing execution system, which can provide better and more economical integration way for early IT system. SIMATIC it strictly adheres to ISA-95 international standards and provides the most authoritative and complete MES functions. Thanks to its strong ability to model production processes, manufacturing processes, and a platform-based, modular architecture, it can be adapted to the good performance of other plants through simple configuration and modification. The rich reusable "library" combines flexible custom solutions with products that provide stable standardization, enabling simatic it to meet the specific quality and production requirements of Danone.

SIMATIC It now serves as a platform to model the collaboration and production processes of different Danone plants. It seamlessly connects the factory automation layer to the ERP layer of the enterprise and achieves the goal of optimizing production management and control. From the factory's automation layer, SIMATIC IT collects field data in real-time and uses unified storage for future analysis. Real-time monitoring of KPI KPIs can improve the responsiveness of plant anomalies, thus improving the management of the entire process. SIMATIC IT Server integrates with ERP layer, ensures the continuous and transparent information flow between different factory production systems and SAP, and becomes the only bridge to communicate enterprise-level business system (make high-level decision of production) and production process (production realization).

SIMATIC it provides top-to-bottom visibility for the Danone plant and production process by tracking the flow of materials in the factory, establishing a complete family map for each material, allowing for traceability of the product family forward and backward to identify and immediately accurately answer any quality-related issues. This feature tracks which batch of raw materials a particular product is made from, and which batches of the specific raw material are used in the finished batch. Dairy enterprises can use the system, from the consumer's hands of any milk batch, fast back to raw milk acceptance, PAP, UHT, canned production of every link. Once a product recall is encountered, product family traceability can help identify liability risks and take effective measures to minimize business losses. SIMATIC IT assistance to Danone Spain has enhanced its ability to meet future challenges, satisfy consumer needs and respond to changing laws and regulations.

The implementation case introduction of simatic it-based MES solution in Danone is just a start, and the benefits of applying Siemens simatic it are:

• Improve production efficiency and schedule scheduling

• Optimize resource utilization, reduce downtime and increase output

• Enhanced visibility of plant and production processes

• Improved real-time responsiveness to plant anomalies

• Improve material flow performance and provide comprehensive product traceability

• Improve operator interactions and standardize operation processes

• Accurate calculation of key performance indicators and analysis of optimization processes

some suggestions on MES selection there are still many MES projects that are determined by bidding to determine products and suppliers, in fact, the price alone is not applicable to such management software. Because the price is not decisive, if the cost is not good, buy instead useless. Therefore, the choice of MES system, not only focus on price, technology, but also need to consider a multi-factor, such as company strength, product features to meet the needs of the degree of implementation capacity and so on.

1. Defining the needs of the enterprise is the first step towards success. Understanding the purpose of implementing MES is the precondition for enterprises to make correct purchasing decision. If there is no clear demand, will be the product supplier led by the nose, the selection process into a software evaluation exposition. Most of the time, users choose the MES system will refer to the computer, the opinion of the control center, and IT staff due to professional limitations will be more value system integration, maintenance performance, including two times development technology, interface style is compatible with personal preferences, resulting in Mes purchase trifles. On the other hand, to clear the investment, MES covers a wide range, only a clear understanding of the budget situation can accurately define the system function, to find an immediate solution. 　　With a clear need, enterprises can choose the right product according to the demand and the matching degree of the product to provide the function.

2. Choose the best cost-effective product selection, you can not only look at the part of the one-time investment, but also carefully examine the product structure, flexibility and openness. A bad technical architecture can lead to expensive TCO. And the company's manufacturing process will not be static, the changes in market demand, the advent of new products, production will require the modification process, so the MES system will often adjust. If the MES system architecture is not good, the flexibility is low, it will leave hidden trouble in the system interface, the configuration, the integration between functions, make the system modification, maintenance cost straight up. 　　 Finally, before implementing the MES system, the enterprise has used some small and fine, the use of more mature computer-aided system, then can not choose Mes and abandon the existing investment, so the MES and the existing system compatibility, integration, is also a factor to be concerned with the MES selection. 3. Choose a professional project implementation team to avoid project risk if the choice of products by a good reputation in the industry, capital, technical strength of the manufacturers to provide, many users seem relieved. In fact, the product is important, no good implementation project team, also will lead to project failure. MES is an enterprise application management software, the implementation process is not simple software installation, there are user requirements refinement, functional design, System setup and a lot of training work. Now there are many management informatization project implementation, the early project objectives are vague, the scope of the implementation process is constantly spreading, the implementation cycle is difficult to control, and ultimately lead to project failure, so the project implementation team and implementation methods are also key. 　　 In particular, the MES project, it needs a professional project implementation team, not only have deep industry knowledge (know-how), but also have rich experience in project implementation, so that the implementation process has been guaranteed to effectively evade project risk. Concluding remarks finally remember that any software system is not omnipotent, MES is the same, its real meaning is to help enterprises improve the level of manufacturing management, through the standardization process, to reduce costs and improve efficiency. System use of good and bad, not entirely in implementation, but also in the enterprise of this advanced management ideas and application of understanding!

Siemens MES Solution simatic it in the dairy industry small test sledgehammer