8.1 Quality in Practice

Quality assurance has been and today still is an independent branch in many manufacturing companies. The historically caused division between quality assurance and production management has often resulted in an inhomogeneous system landscape. The consequence is separate message dialogs such as, for example, in production data acquisition and in production inspection. Production orders and inspection orders are in separate systems and not infrequently defects and scrap recording is carried out in both systems. What should also be prevented is the user being unnecessarily confronted with two systems, especially as production data are also quality data. Not only that but integrating two different systems is only possible with a great deal of effort and expense. Monolithic standard products may be inexpensive but they do have clearly recognizable limits. Integration of two systems is only the case at defined locations and subsequent expansions are bound up with considerable costs.

In an MES system quality assurance is integrated into production management. The result is a reduction in message dialogs, interfaces are avoided and there is greater acceptance on the part of the users. A further advantage of integration within an MES system emerges in auditing and certification activities. Then there is also, particularly in the food and pharmaceutical industries, the requirement for FDA conformity. As regards meeting FDA requirements, best use can be made of the synergies arising from integration within an MES. Ideally these requirements will be satisfied by means of the basic functions provided by leading MES...