Bringing data and operations under a standardized information system can elevate enterprise performance to new levels of productivity and profitability. But beyond the technology lies a deeper story: the collective experience of manufacturers learning how to make manufacturing execution systems (MES) work across diverse environments. Even when starting with the same baseline MES package across locations, an approach can lead to significant unnecessary costs, delays, and long-term operational challenges. Avoiding these issues requires centralized governance of the integration, including developing templates, employing advanced IT methods, and selecting implementation and service partners carefully.
Establishing a Center of Excellence (CoE)
One of the first and most critical enablers of successful MES rollout is a strong Center of Excellence (CoE), a core team that blends strategy with operational understanding. A CoE or similar central governing body is crucial for multisite management success. A CoE defines the business case for MES, assembles the core project team, and establishes methods for overseeing both the implementation and ongoing management of the integration.
Critical Manufacturing
The CoE’s responsibilities, which evolve over the project’s lifecycle, include defining roadmaps, managing change, monitoring progress, coordinating the global technical team, and controlling deployment and version updates.
The CoE succeeds not just through policy but through people who understand both the shop floor and strategic goals. The CoE must also address site-specific differences while establishing global policies.
Choosing partners
The CoE also plays a crucial role in selecting vendors and service partners, sometimes involving them as participants in the CoE. The partners bring expertise in areas such as equipment integration and offer scalable resources for global rollouts.
Partners can also help build the business cases, challenge existing practices, and support CoE governance and template development.
Building the template
A standardized template ensures faster implementation, reduced costs, and streamlined operations across sites. Although the template typically covers 70-80% of the project, it allows flexibility for site-specific needs, such as products, equipment, legacy systems, and culture. While standardization offers efficiency, flexibility ensures relevance, each site must see itself in the template to truly adopt it. Plus, this standardization doesn’t just benefit project execution but also enhances process harmonization.
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Implementing the template
The CoE must also oversee the rollout of templates, ensuring a blend of standardization and customization tailored to the company’s structure.
Among the first of many critical discussions the CoE and project teams must make is selecting a pilot site. Some companies select a single, lower-cost project as a pilot to familiarize themselves with general project requirements before investing too much into the next level of detail. Others might start with the most challenging sites, hoping to dredge out the most potential complexities early in the process. Still, others might go by the urgency of the need for integration and the clearest ROI. Some may have two pilot sites.
IT architecture
Ultimately, a multi-site MES deployment is an IT integration effort at its core, linking what were once isolated or inconsistently connected data environments. The right architectural choices can reduce deployment friction, accelerate scale, and simplify long-term governance. Here are some IT advancements and practices that will facilitate the creation of a multi-site IT architecture:
o A library of functions that can turn on or off, to simplify multi-site rollout.
o Containerization with orchestration, which can streamline standardized deployment and reuse of application elements, as well as enable on-prem, cloud, edge or hybrid hosting.
o Master data comparison capabilities that identify deltas.
o Structured MES DevOps, driven from backlogs and user stories, which can speed the delivery of centrally developed configurations
o Use of multiple MES instances for development, staging, training, and live production support, which is essential for multi-site, template-based implementations.
Conclusion
Multi-site MES is a major undertaking, but it remains a critical foundation for companies aiming to advance their Industry 4.0 ambitions. A multi-site MES strategy requires careful planning, governance, and execution to realize its potential. Centralized CoEs, robust templates, and strategic partnerships form the backbone of a successful implementation. These efforts enable manufacturers to achieve consistency, agility, and competitive advantage in an increasingly digital, data-driven world.
