Mastering Manufacturing Operations: The MOM Revolution

Modern manufacturing faces unprecedented challenges and opportunities. To stay competitive, businesses are constantly seeking ways to enhance productivity, elevate quality, and optimise asset performance. This pursuit often leads to a comprehensive Manufacturing Operations Transformation (MOT), a strategic initiative designed to align manufacturing IT systems across the entire business. At the heart of this transformation lies Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM), a critical framework and set of systems that orchestrate the complex processes of production, ensuring efficiency, consistency, and adaptability in an ever-evolving market. This article delves into what MOM entails, its pivotal role in the digital age, and how it drives significant operational and business improvements for manufacturers globally.

The Drive for Business Transformation

The journey towards business transformation isn't new. Rewind to the nineties, and we saw a significant wave of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementations, with companies investing heavily in systems like SAP to standardise their core business processes. These foundational technology investments are now being leveraged to redefine how organisations operate through global transformation initiatives. The aim is clear: to imbue businesses with the agility required to adapt swiftly to fast-changing markets and competitive pressures. A KPMG survey highlighted this trend, revealing that a staggering 93% of US-based multinational corporations are either initiating or have already implemented such transformations, often involving investments soaring into the US$100 million range. This broader business transformation is intrinsically linked to the pervasive Digital Transformation that is reshaping B2B and B2C relationships, along with evolving expectations in user experience and services. However, a crucial paradox exists: much like ERP implementations before them, these grand business transformation efforts frequently stall at the factory gates – precisely where a business’s primary value creation takes place.

Manufacturing Operations Transformation (MOT) and First-Generation Software

This is where Manufacturing Operations Transformation (MOT) steps in. Industrial manufacturing companies have long embarked on their transformation journey, beginning with plant and machine automation. This initial step brought significant gains in productivity and process repeatability by minimising manual operations and maximising physical throughput. To further optimise equipment utilisation, plant operations have matured, increasingly relying on IT and software applications. This shift has laid the groundwork for advanced improvement strategies, such as replacing cumbersome paper-based work instructions and data collection with streamlined digital alternatives.

The adoption of first-generation software and IT, notably Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), marked a turning point. MES provided more than just increased operational efficiency through its core functionalities. The ability to collect historical data, combined with modern big data analytics, opened up new avenues for optimisation insights and facilitated continuous improvement initiatives. Real-time visibility into operational execution and inventory status, enabled by automatic data exchange with enterprise systems, empowered better decision-making and fostered collaboration between plant and enterprise functions. The return on investment (ROI) from these plant-level MES investments has consistently been driven by improvements in Operational Efficiency and quality, both directly impacting the bottom line. Operational efficiency manifested through increased asset performance, higher plant throughput, faster product changeovers, and overall enhanced productivity. Quality improvements were realised through the rigorous enforcement of product and process specifications, leading to reduced waste and rework, detailed traceability, proactive identification and management of non-conformances, and more effective product recalls.

While Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) and its supporting MES software have made considerable progress in establishing order within manufacturing environments, their full potential can only be unlocked if they are user-friendly and accurately model the real-world dynamics of the plant. MOT, therefore, represents the ongoing evolution of these transformation activities, ensuring that manufacturing IT systems are strategically aligned across the entire business to deliver both operational and overarching business improvements. McKinsey’s research further underscores this, predicting that digital manufacturing technologies will fundamentally transform every link in the manufacturing value chain, from R&D and supply chain to factory operations, marketing, sales, and service. The future envisions a landscape where digital collaboration among designers, managers, workers, consumers, and physical industrial assets will unlock immense value.

Drivers of Digital Transformation and Why Plants Lagged

The accelerating pace of Digital Transformation in manufacturing is fuelled by remarkable technological advancements. Innovations in big data, predictive analytics, business process management, mobile applications, and augmented reality are empowering manufacturers. These tools enable operators and decision-makers to extract meaningful insights from vast quantities of operational data, fostering a more informed and agile workforce. Furthermore, newer platform and integration technologies, including cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), smart devices, and edge computing, are significantly driving down the cost of implementing digital transformation initiatives across the manufacturing sector.

Despite these drivers, plant operations have historically lagged in the digital transformation of business processes. Traditionally, plant operations are structured into multiple functional domains, each managed by separate teams and supported by distinct systems for inventory, production, quality, and maintenance activities – aligning with the ISA-95 segmentation of operational activities. While software exists to manage operations within these individual domains at both plant and enterprise levels, effective collaboration across these silos often relies on ingrained knowledge, experience, or manual approaches. Such traditional methods are inherently inconsistent, isolated, and, upon closer analysis, prove to be highly inefficient. Collaboration becomes particularly challenging, and when experienced experts retire or change roles, their invaluable expertise often departs with them, creating knowledge gaps and operational vulnerabilities.

The Solution: Collaboration Across People and Systems

A pivotal factor for future improvements in manufacturing operations lies in fostering effective collaboration between people and systems, achieved through a digital, automated, and integrated approach. The key element capable of unifying these aspects in industrial operations is Business Process Management (BPM) technology. When integrated with a robust manufacturing IT platform, BPM can seamlessly connect with plant floor processes, people, data, and existing systems.

The digital transformation of operational processes, facilitated by a Business Process Management System (BPMS), offers profound benefits. It can effectively capture and convert best practices into electronic workflows, ensuring consistency and adherence to established procedures. A BPMS connects assets and systems, establishing systematic collaboration between human operators and automated processes. Critically, it empowers the mobile and next-generation workforce by providing accessible, intuitive digital tools. A BPMS can orchestrate processes across various functional domains, enabling seamless horizontal integration, and can also integrate with broader business functions, achieving vertical integration. By enforcing consistency in operational procedures and automating workflows with comprehensive electronic records of manufacturing execution activities and data, a BPMS not only preserves investments in existing plant systems but also unlocks significant potential for operational efficiency improvements.

Multi-Site Manufacturing Operations Transformation

Many manufacturing businesses have expanded through mergers and acquisitions, evolving into vast national, multinational, or even global organisations. These enterprises often operate multiple production plants across diverse regions, manufacturing the same, similar, or variations of products. A common challenge in such multi-site environments is the heterogeneous nature of plant system landscapes and the varying operational practices for similar activities and business targets.

These Multi-Site enterprises are now embracing a broader, transformative view of manufacturing. This holistic approach aims to leverage unique and significant ROI opportunities that are accessible only on a business-wide basis. Such opportunities include establishing business-wide scorecards and consistent Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to provide unparalleled transparency in cost, capacity, and inventory across the entire enterprise. It fosters cultures of operational excellence, lean manufacturing, and continuous improvement, where best practices are shared and collaborated upon across sites. A consistent, documented approach to regulatory compliance becomes feasible, significantly minimising risks. Furthermore, a truly connected enterprise emerges, offering ubiquitous visualisation and accessibility of information, which in turn enhances business agility and accelerates the pace of innovation. Ultimately, this transformation aims to reduce the total cost of ownership by minimising the number of disparate applications across the business, thereby facilitating standardisation in both IT and operational practices.

Standardisation and Ensuring Consistency Across Varied Plants

The primary enabler for an effective Multi-Site Manufacturing Operations Transformation is the enterprise-wide standardisation of operational processes, which is fundamentally supported by the standardisation of information technologies. This IT harmonisation forms the bedrock for digitally modelling, integrating, executing, and governing operational processes and their associated information flow consistently across multiple plants.

Standardisation of operational processes is achievable through a combination of key components. Firstly, an open engineering and runtime platform is essential, leveraging robust Business Process Management capabilities. This platform must be hardened for industrial use and specifically designed to facilitate the integration of business, manufacturing operations, and production processes and data. Secondly, a broad suite of industrial applications is required, capable of scaling from rapid ROI equipment performance optimisation to full manufacturing operations management functionality. Finally, a reusable operations process modelling approach is crucial. This approach standardises all operations, simplifying the deployment of processes to equipment, systems, and people, ensuring uniformity and efficiency.

Even when the physical attributes and automation levels of manufacturing plants within an enterprise vary significantly, standardisation strives for a common method of monitoring and measuring operational efficiency. This provides consistent decision support and ensures uniform interaction with each manufacturing location for process execution. The role of a manufacturing IT platform in this context is to provide adaptability to local plant nuances. It incorporates a plant asset model that applications can utilise to blend human and automated activity seamlessly within the execution of standardised processes and business rules. This platform intelligently adapts to individual local physical equipment and automation, while rigorously maintaining the data and information models of the processes and the flow of data to other applications and, ultimately, towards the broader enterprise. A configurable, model-driven approach to work processes and related user interfaces enables the reusability of captured best practices and enforces operational procedures as corporate standards. These standards can be quickly implemented and sustained, allowing for changes to be adopted in a version-controlled fashion for each plant connected through the manufacturing IT platform. This sophisticated approach ultimately empowers manufacturing industries to implement operational improvements and digitally transform operations consistently across multiple sites, with the necessary adaptability to site-specific nuances abstracted within a digital plant information model.

How to Get Started on Your MOT Journey

Embarking on a multi-site digital and operational transformation is a significant undertaking that must happen incrementally, phased strategically to align with your overall business objectives. When selecting a partner for your MOT journey, several critical factors warrant careful consideration. Firstly, you need a trusted solution provider. Opting for a partner that offers industry-leading technology combined with profound domain expertise will not only expedite deployment times but also help you commence your transformation with minimal business disruption. Remember, this is a journey, so finding a company that provides ongoing services and support for your transformation is paramount.

Connectivity is another non-negotiable aspect. Your chosen solution must feature built-in connectivity to your existing plant floor systems, devices, and equipment automation. Furthermore, it is vital to ensure that the user interface is easy-to-use and accessible, facilitating a process-based approach to manufacturing operations management. For global manufacturing organisations, the criteria expand further. It is imperative to find a supplier with robust global program management capabilities, comprehensive support, and an established system integrator network to ensure seamless implementation and ongoing operation across diverse international locations.

Frequently Asked Questions About Manufacturing Operations Management

What is the primary goal of Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM)?

The primary goal of MOM is to optimise manufacturing processes to enhance efficiency, quality, and productivity. It involves managing and orchestrating all aspects of production from order release to finished goods, ensuring alignment with business objectives and continuous improvement.

How does MOM relate to Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES)?

MES is a key component or subset of MOM. While MES focuses specifically on executing and monitoring production processes on the plant floor in real-time, MOM encompasses a broader range of functions, including production, quality, maintenance, and inventory management, providing a holistic view of manufacturing operations.

Why is digital transformation at the plant level so challenging?

Digital transformation at the plant level faces challenges due to traditional functional silos, reliance on manual processes, disparate legacy systems, and the difficulty in capturing and standardising the implicit knowledge of experienced personnel. This often leads to inconsistent operations and inefficiencies.

What benefits does multi-site MOM implementation offer?

Multi-site MOM implementation offers significant benefits such as enterprise-wide transparency through consistent KPIs, improved operational excellence and best practice sharing, standardised regulatory compliance, increased business agility through connected information, and reduced total cost of ownership by consolidating applications and standardising IT.

What is Business Process Management (BPM) and its role in MOM?

Business Process Management (BPM) is a discipline that uses various methods to discover, model, analyse, measure, improve, optimise, and automate business processes. In MOM, BPM technology integrated with an IT platform helps capture best practices into electronic workflows, connects assets and systems, and facilitates systematic collaboration between people and systems, driving consistency and efficiency.

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