WHAT IS MES / LIMS?
DATA DRIVEN PRODUCTIVITY

Explore ToolTrack MES Explore ToolTrack LIMS

Manufacturing Execution Software
Lab Information Management Software

An MES, or Manufacturing Execution System, is a category of manufacturing software used to control both engineering and production environments (also known as the line, shopfloor, fab, job shop, factory, lab etc). Other common phrases used to describe MES software are Operations Management, Production Control and Scheduling, Shopfloor Control, Manufacturing Information System (MIS) and Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). The most immediate payoff: one system, one source of truth, no paper travelers.

LIMS applies the same track-and-trace discipline to lab and R&D environments — and that dual capability is built into ToolTrack from the ground up. Our company came from high-tech R&D and manufacturing, and we're uniquely experienced in addressing the needs of both disciplines simultaneously. With ToolTrack, you don't have to choose between engineering flexibility and production control. You get both.
Lean Manufacturing

At its core, an MES is a real-time system that provides direction and instruction to the factory floor to make sure the right processes are being done at the right time, by the right people (hence the "execution" moniker). The primary unit of track-and-trace is called Work In Progress, or WIP (the widgets you're making), and is often grouped into a logical and/or physical container called a Lot/Work Order. All activity in the manufacturing environment is captured including performance and quality measurements of the WIP to ensure a good finished product.

A good MES will also track the usage and efficiency of industrial equipment and many auxiliary items such as consumable materials (e.g. chemicals, reticles, tooling fixtures), spare parts, and even productivity metrics for operators / technicians.
The MES should always be able to answer the questions of "Who, What, Where, When and How": "Who" performed the activity? "What" data was captured as part of the activity? "Where" did the activity occur, or on which equipment? "When" did this happen and how long did it take? "How" was the activity performed; which recipe was run and/or which work instruction was followed?

An MES will also provide significant insight on factory performance through operational dashboards and KPI reports (Key Performance Indicators), the most common of which include yield, throughput and cycle time. These feed directly into lean manufacturing initiatives designed to reduce scrap, and therefore cost. The data is directly useful: pain points become visible, inefficiencies have a number attached to them.

Analytics MES
While every manufacturing line is different, the MES must accurately model how your WIP physically flows through the process.
An MES can receive input from a planning group or Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application, capture production activities, and provide detailed and high-level views of factory health. The throughput data provided by the MES can then be fed back to the planning group in order to scale at an appropriate rate. But Manufacturing Execution Systems are not just for mature processes with known cycle times, they are also invaluable during the R&D and ramp-up stages of a company. It all comes down to data integrity and visibility; how much time are you losing because engineers are looking at disparate data sources and have to search multiple spreadsheets (or various paper travelers) for information?
MES and ERP serve different purposes, though they integrate closely. ERP handles upstream supply chain management and financial reporting; MES provides granular insight into how something is manufactured on the floor, and how to execute and control that process.
Full equipment automation via SECS/GEM or OPC — sometimes referred to as Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) or Host Controller — lets the MES communicate with equipment at the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) level, enabling remote start and fault detection. While this is often viewed as the ultimate achievement vision for high-volume manufacturing, and ToolTrack MES can support this level of equipment integration, it's usually cost-prohibitive for most small to medium-sized businesses, with diminishing returns at lower production volumes. Hence the need for a flexible and comprehensive system that supports manual input as well as varying degrees of data collection integration.
At Chain Reaction Systems, we believe an MES can bring significant value to SMB manufacturers, particularly in lean operations and paperless tracking. We also believe it doesn’t have to cost a fortune, take 6+ months to implement, or require an entire department to maintain. ToolTrack delivers the flexibility and visibility to do this without the enterprise price tag — for less than 50% of what other vendors charge, in under 8 weeks. Put us to the test.