During the last five years, manufacturing companies have widely invested in Information Technology systems in order to better manage their operations. Applications such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), CRM (Customer Relationship Management) or SCM (Supply Chain Management) are now well known and implemented. These systems require a great deal of data input from their manufacturing operations in real-time to be able to make full use of their capabilities.

A genre of software, called Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), exists to help manufacturers to link their production floor to their corporate systems. It represents a set of functions not included in the systems mentioned above (ERP, SCM, CRM). The main functions of an MES include production planning and scheduling, dispatching and workflow management, management of resources, data collection, lot and work order tracking and genealogy, process management, performance analysis, reporting and maintenance management.

An MES solution provides the necessary information required in order to optimize the production process from the Work Order to the finished good. Thanks to the utilisation of real-time and accurate data, the MES is able to guide the user, to initiate actions, to answer and report all events related to the plant floor activity in real-time. The fast response time to process changes and the emphasis put on the reduction of non-productive tasks allow for drastic improvement of the overall production efficiency.

Only an MES system can provide the critical information related to the production activity in order to integrate it into the global enterprise information system.