Who owns MES? Who cares, just communicate

The age old question reared its ugly head once again: Who should support MES, IT or Engineering?
A fellow at consulting company Ordina, Bianca Scholten asked that question during her talk at the 15th annual WBF Conference in King of Prussia, Penn.
Not being one to just fly by the seat of her pants, Scholten conducted a “small unscientific survey” among some of her customers. When she asked the audience who should support MES, only one or two in the audience voted for IT, and the rest voted for engineering. However, by the time she pointed out the pros and cons of both, she asked the audience again and they agreed both departments should work together to support MES.
Before anyone could give an informed answer, Scholten discussed the results of her survey. One question asked if IT and Engineering worked together. The top answer was the two departments worked together on a project basis, the second most popular answer was they worked together on a daily basis, the third most popular answer was they hardly ever worked together.
“The technical gap is getting smaller, but personality issues remain the same,” she said.
She pointed out some of the strong points of the IT side. One of the positives is the IT folks are beginning to understand the engineering side a bit more. Also, the centralization of IT has a much better overview of the entire IT picture.
On the other hand, Scholten pointed out the positives for engineers controlling MES.
“They know the process and the limitations of the process equipment,” she said. She also pointed out engineering support is very local and always available 24 hours a day.
She also raised the question if the two areas should merge into one.
“There is not a lot of information out there about what to do. Actually, there is no information,” she said. “There is no proof that one way or the other is better to merge engineering and IT together, or have them work together on a project basis.”
“One way or the other, it is all about good communication,” Scholten said. “Communication is very important when it comes to MES projects.”

Feds want to help manufacturers

When it comes to manufacturing, the federal government wants to help small to medium businesses. “We want to be the federal resource for you,” said Roger Kilmer, director of the Manufacturing Extension Partnership during today’s keynote address at WBF’s 15th Annual 2008 North American Conference in King of Prussia, Penn.
The Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), a subsidiary of the National Institute of Standards, is a national network with hundreds of specialists who work with manufacturers. MEP provides companies with services and access to public and private resources to enhance growth, improve productivity, and expand capacity.
The organization is not about creating an end product. “We are about the basic science and engineering that gets into products,” Kilmer said. “We are designed to support industry.”
MEP, started in 1988, is a nationwide network of resources helping smaller manufacturers compete on a global basis.
“Our big focus has been in lean manufacturing,” Kilmer said. “Not only have we helped reduce costs for manufacturers, but we have been also able to help increase sales.”
Increasing productivity has been the focus area for MEP, but they are looking to help manufacturers grow from there.
“We are expanding and looking at how to make companies more competitive, things like product development,” Kilmer said. “Then we are going to talk about how to bring new technology into it.”

Process, yes; innovation, of course

It seems everyone is talking about processes these days.
You hear things like the way to add to the bottom line is through a more complete and productive process. Or, if we can squeeze more out of this process, we will generate more product which will add to the bottom line.
That all makes sense. The more productive a company, is the more it can produce and that will add to the bottom line. Very smart; very effective.
But that is all with existing products and existing technology. My question is where is all the new product innovation? New ideas and new sources of revenue.
Two of the world’s biggest innovators must be thinking the same thing because Intel and Microsoft are planning to finance two groups of university researchers to start over and design a new generation of computing systems.
If the research succeeds it would enable the development of new kinds of portable computers and would help computer engineers tackle areas as diverse as speech recognition, image processing, health care systems and music.
The research grant, worth $20 million over five years, will create independent labs at Berkeley and at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, that can reinvent computing. Each will work on hardware, software and a new generation of applications powered by computer chips containing multiple processors. The University of Illinois plans to contribute an additional $8 million to the project and the Berkeley project is applying for an additional $7 million from a state-supported program to match the industry grants.
The new research came in part from an increasing sense the industry is in a crisis of a sort because advanced parallel software has failed to emerge quickly. Most programmers today still write programs that solve problems in a serial fashion.
Where is the automation industry’s next great innovation going to come from?
Talk to me.