4.1 Introduction and Motivation

It was explained in Chap.2 why real-time information is so important to those operational departments working close to the manufacturing event, such as production planning, production control, maintenance, quality assurance and especially the foremen. But if we look at the actual situation in the companies, it will be noticed in many cases that even today, in an age of modern, IT-supported systems, the procurement of information still leads a shadowy existence. Employees working in the above-mentioned departments are, if need be, provided with information from isolated island solutions, if at all. To get the necessary "all-round view" of all resources involved in production, the information must be brought together and supplemented by manually collected data. For today's production processes with their short control cycles the consequences are fatal: information is often incomplete or even erroneous, it comes too late and the action which is taken is often based on hunches or guesswork in other words, on findings which are not irreproachably grounded. To close this gap is one of the most important tasks of MES systems.

However, the acquisition and evaluation of data only covers one direction of action. Modern management approaches assume that the relevant information must also be available at the machines, installations and workplaces in other words, be directly accessible to the workers. Without being kept comprehensively informed, the employee will not be able to do his job in production to the benefit of the company. Today this means not only...