MESA International’s Global Education Program Trains Executives

Manufacturers and producers have been asking for a full MES/MOM education program. They understand the benefits but have concerns about the effectiveness of their deployments without their people being properly trained.

The Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) (www.mesa.org) is the global best practice organization for the manufacturing industry globally. Members come from 82 different countries and include manufacturers/producers, solution providers and system integrators. MESA focuses on sharing standards and best practices for manufacturing execution system (MES) or manufacturing operations management (MOM) software—specifically on Level 3 of the ISA 95 standard, promulgated by the International Society of Automation.

Systems applied at this level are connected to physical shop floor processes and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. The area is undergoing great change and delivering operation efficiency and quality improvements to manufacturers. In other words, a well-deployed MES or MOM platform makes money for manufacturers.

Considering that this is important technology, we realized that there was no cohesive education program. Manufacturers and producers were also asking MESA to consider offering a full MES/MOM education program. They understood the benefits but had genuine concerns about the effectiveness of their deployments without their people being properly trained and educated. But, where could they find the knowledge?

MESA worked closely with a small group of manufacturing executives who summarised their burning MES/MOM questions as follows:

• Why deploy MES/MOM?
• What is the difference between MES/MOM and ERP?
• Steps to deploy MES/MOM?
• How to prepare our people for MES/MOM deployments?
• How do we integrate Lean/Six Sigma program into MES/MOM?