1.4.1 Emergence of the MES Concept

The origins of the MES concept are to be found in the data collection systems of the early 1980s. The various disciplines in corporate management such as production planning, personnel, and quality assurance were furnished with dedicated data collection systems. This situation is shown in the following diagram: task areas which are almost mutually independent are equipped with special data collection systems.

With the rise of the CIM concept (Computer Integrated Manufacturing) a start was made on reproducing the interdependencies of these task areas in the IT systems as well. Production, personnel and quality were no longer seen as completely independent but rather data crossovers were permitted from one task to another. Unfortunately this approach, correct as it was in principle, did not emerge as a real and strong IT discipline. Trivialization of the problem definition and a misuse of the term by smaller system vendors in the sense that with time every data collection terminal was labeled a CIM system. In this way CIM had spoiled its standardization potential as a problem-solving IT discipline for production.

Figure 1.3: Each area of activity in corporate management has a particular data collection method assigned to it which is also independent of the others

In the early and mid-1990s the manufacturers of data collection systems commenced upgrading their in some cases specialized systems (labor time, PDA, CAQ, DNC, and so on) by adding features from associated fields (for example: staff work...