Verein Deutscher Ingenieure

Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) - Logic interfaces for machine and plant control
 N VDI 5600 BLATT 3

Annotation

The primary scope of application of this guideline is discrete manufacturing. Discrete manufacturing is expected to fulfil the demand on adaptability. It refers to all levels of the factory – from the sensor at manufacturing level and visualisation of a production at manufacturing control level through to the calculation of key indicators at company management level. Today, diverse heterogeneous software systems exist at every level, which operate with interfaces that are normally proprietary and need to be adapted or re-programmed for each modification. IT systems of the digital factory, in which the planning data of a factory is stored and managed, are provided upstream of those IT systems that control and monitor the operational processes of a factory. Often, changes are introduced here and then transferred to the real world. For some time now, these system worlds between planning and near-production IT have merged.

In practice, modifications implemented in production plants do not only result in physical "moving" of plants within a factory, but rather in an increasing number of software adaptations, i.e.

• due to software embedded in field devices that are connected via the field bus, for example in sensors, actuators, drives, valves, etc.

• on the controlling software of machines and systems, for example programmable logic controllers (PLCs),

• on the software that is at a higher level than the direct system controls, for example MES.

Until now, we have worked on a pyramid-like structure of information technology in production companies (Figure 1) [7].