The MBOM is the gateway to the MES!
A much-discussed topic in industry is the position of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) in relation to ERP and PLM. Up to now, it has been common practice to supply MES with the necessary information from ERP. In addition to the production orders from ERP, a basic skeleton of master data is necessary to fulfill the tasks of MES. The foundation is the MBOM. Assuming that in the future master data and thus also the MBOM will be created and further developed in a lifecycle management system, the question arises why MES is not directly supplied with the necessary master data from there.
This discussion is currently being held intensively in many companies. It has been made possible because many PLM systems have now implemented the necessary functionality for modeling MBOMs.
(a first excerpt to part 2 of my article ERP, PLM, MES and CRM - Part 2 - a look into the future (Part 1 can be found at here and here).
What is the bottom line?
Without MBOM in PLM, direct supply from PLM to MES is not possible
Whoever holds the MBOM has the key to the MES!
Imagine you were a PLM vendor and also had MES systems in your program. Would you have to locate MBOM in PLM in order for your consistent story to be credible?
Now imagine if you were an ERP vendor, you wanted to emphasize your special position with the customer and also had an MES system in the program. Wouldn't you then have to insist that the MBOM can only be in the ERP?
I think this discussion is good for us. The longer we discuss the topic, the more questions arise and a future picture crystallizes.
From my perspective, we should go deeper in the discussion and compare the MBOM's in ERP and those in PLM.
There is a question we must then ask ourselves.
"Is the MBOM in PLM even the MBOM in ERP?"
What do you think?
