INDUSTRY CHALLENGE
With the increased public concern and legislation around product safety, Consumer Products Manufacturers are looking for ways to improve quality, ensure safety, and provide traceability throughout the entire manufacturing process.  However, due to the current economic climate, they are also being tasked to reduce costs while still meeting customer demand.  Often times, Operational Excellence initiatives like Lean and Six Sigma are leveraged to achieve these goals.     
This requires innovative solutions that leverage existing investments in both their core enterprise business systems as well as the IT infrastructure. How can they extend the control and visibility that exist within the enterprise to the effort that takes place on the plant floor?

Defined as “Production Execution”, the work-steps and events taken on the shop floor, isn’t robust functionality that resides within the traditional ERP system. Until now, organizations have been forced to work with traditional MES solutions to fill this gap. Thus requiring a much higher Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) with too much functional overlap and integration challenges between the existing back-end ERP, Laboratory Information Systems (LIMS), Maintenance Systems and Process Historians.