How Oden Fits Into The Manufacturing Process Alongside Your MES

We’re often asked by manufacturers if Oden is a manufacturing execution system (MES). The quick answer is no. While Oden has functionality to monitor production in real-time and react with alerting, our technology also complements and enhances existing MES frameworks, but it is not an MES offering.

So, what is the difference between Oden and an MES? In this post, we’re going to answer this question and outline how Oden fits into the factory technology ecosystem alongside your MES.

Accelerating the full value from your MES

Many manufacturers use an MES because they want to capture data throughout a production lifecycle and make processes more repeatable. Having access to this kind of high-level information enables manufacturers to identify bottlenecks, work faster, saving both time and money.

However, a typical MES has limitations around the depth and breadth of data and analytics, and this is why many manufacturers are turning to Oden. In terms of functionality, Oden uses advanced analytics and machine learning to improve quality and efficiency in real-time. In the future, by understanding the root-cause of process issues, the Oden platform actively learns and suggests optimized setpoint improvements, while an MES typically focuses on helping people on the factory floor with day-to-day processes.

Using Oden alongside your MES allows you to release more value from your MES data and get to those money-saving efficiencies that you wouldn’t be able to access without Oden.

How Oden and MES work together

When it comes to optimizing production quality and efficiency, we like to think of Oden as the central hub with MES’, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and offline quality systems as spokes within that hub.

Information from all these systems stream into the Oden platform, providing a comprehensive view of your operations and processes. As you’d expect, the more high-quality data the Oden platform has to work with, the more precise the recommendations will be.

It’s within these finely-tuned insights that manufacturers find their greatest savings.

Your MES can give you instructions to help you execute a job, and the Oden platform can take that information and layer it on top of detailed process data. By doing this, you can improve process performance, quality and perform root-cause analysis on issues impacting your OEE, such as unplanned downtime or quality.

Quality and maintenance are two key priorities for manufacturers, so let’s take a quick look at how an MES and Oden could combine to make improvements in these areas:

1. Combining your MES with Oden to improve quality 

When data from an MES and machine metrics are fed into the Oden platform, real-time metrics can be accessed by anyone on the factory floor. With predictive quality, engineers are quickly alerted to any potential issues around quality, so they can act fast, make adjustments and improve results.

Of course, improving quality reduces costs associated with waste, so these insights from Oden mean that manufacturers save money on materials and scrap. When you consider the environmental benefits of reducing waste, the effect of improving quality spreads even further, which is great news for manufacturers that are looking to work more sustainably.

Combining an MES with Oden essentially means that manufacturers can gain even more value from their MES data by enhancing it with Oden’s detailed process metrics and analytics. Working with an MES alone would be unlikely to produce the same cost-saving insights and opportunities.

2. Combining MES and Oden to gain benefits from preventative maintenance

Wear and tear is a reality of manufacturing and operators are all too aware of the costs associated with machine breakdowns and unplanned downtime.

Drawing on data-sets from your MES, Oden’s predictive maintenance can anticipate impending problems, so they can be addressed before they occur. And again, these are insights that you would be unlikely to gain from your MES system alone.

3. Improving day-to-day processes on the factory floor

An MES will provide an operator with changeover instructions and tell them how to get the line ready. When this information is combined with the added functionality that Oden brings, manufacturers can learn how to reduce the time it takes to set up, so they can reach the required setpoints much faster and more consistently across lines and shifts.

So, while and an MES will capture the qualitative aspects of, “hey, I had a machine breakdown,” or “hey, I’m doing a changeover,” the Oden platform can layer the quantitative aspects of process data to deliver real-time information and insights about these processes.

For example, if the set-up instructions from an MES system say that the temperature should be set to 150 degrees, Oden will show the targeted temperature for that product, show the temperature change happening in real-time and alert you if the temperature is not within the desired range.

Faster problem-solving and clearer insights

Manufacturers can access important data with an MES. Oden technologies takes that data to the next level. This “supercharging” of your data allows you to save time, increase productivity, reduce wastage, improve your environmental footprint and save significant dollar amounts.

Adding Oden to your tech ecosystem, gives you the ability to identify insights and efficiencies that you would not have found with MES alone. If you would like to find out more about using Oden in your operation, get in touch with us today!

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