Step 1: What a hybrid cloud manufacturing execution system means for manufacturing.

Posted: August 19, 2024

Should MES be on the cloud?

Cloud computing is widely considered the essential catalyst of industrial transformation, improving operational efficiencies across industries with AI/ML innovations. According to a McKinsey analysis, large enterprises are on the way to moving roughly 60% of their IT environments to the cloud by 2025, primarily to benefit from the innovative data technology available there.

On the shop floor, manufacturing execution system (MES) applications ensure regulatory compliance and quality by controlling operational execution and capturing a detailed electronic execution record in real time. MES applications are interconnected with control networks and critical to plant operations. However, concerns about latency, cyber security and business continuity have long prevented — and are currently preventing — the migration of MES applications to the cloud.

As a result, the operational data captured and managed on the shop floor in each plant represents an untapped source of value for the business — especially for manufacturing organizations with a distributed network of plants and data sources. Modern industrial cloud services introduce a solution to this problem as they enable organizations to take the long-term production history data out of the plant systems without compromising safety or plant performance. With this new cloud environment, only the data moves to the cloud while the critical manufacturing execution functionalities are kept, safely and securely, on-premises.

Hybrid cloud MES architecture: combining the best of both worlds

A hybrid cloud MES architecture combines on-premises application functionality with cloud-based industrial data services. By moving the non-critical manufacturing execution data management aspects to the cloud, MES data from all plants can merge into a single repository, ready to be enriched with other operational data and connected effortlessly with BI, AI/ML and other analyses and visualization services (SaaS).

Unlocking the value of the data with the cloud

Connecting and analyzing the MES data across a fleet of plants in the cloud offers several strategic advantages for manufacturers, including:

• Continuous improvement collaboration — share data and insights within your own organizations and teams, and with trusted partners, enabling problem solving and identification of best practices.
• Supply chain visibility — contribute manufacturing network insights and KPIs to the supply chain control tower.
• Faster innovation — accelerate the advanced and predictive analyses (AI/ML) technology adoption and rapid scaling of successful use cases across the business.

The strategic benefits of AVEVA™ Manufacturing Execution System

AVEVA provides a flexible and hybrid approach to manufacturing operations solutions on premises and with our industrial intelligence platform in the cloud. AVEVA Manufacturing Execution System provides support for a hybrid cloud MES solution architecture based on production data and visualization services added to our cloud platform. Existing AVEVA Manufacturing Execution System users can now easily and quickly turn their on-premises deployments into a hybrid cloud solution with secure cloud integration capabilities and ready-to-use cloud services. 

We are enabling our customers to build operational digital twins in the cloud and scale as needed with a market leading software portfolio for collecting, consolidating, aggregating, and analyzing production, asset, and process operations data in context. Quickly transform data into actionable insight for optimizing your operational efficiency and sustainability. Link it with AI/ML models and advanced analytics for prescriptive guidance.

Moving your MES data to the cloud is the first step in — and the foundation for — harnessing such strategic benefits as I have begun to discuss in this blog and which I will discuss in more detail in my next installments.

Read more about AVEVA Manufacturing Execution System and how it connects to the cloud.