MES Introduction and Activation Plan in Korean Small Manufacturers

Abstract

Manufacturing-oriented small companies have difficulty performing tasks such as production planning, process management, material management, and quality control suitable for small quantity production of various products to respond to diverse customer demands and changing market environments due to a lack of manpower and facilities. To solve these problems, the government is actively promoting smart factory support projects, and many small companies are participating in this project, and are building and operating MES (Manufacturing Execution System). However, most small companies are unable to build a system that suits the characteristics of the company. In other words, the introduced system is a general-purpose platform, and MES is not being utilized properly due to the absence of IT experts, the negative perception by existing personnel, and the CEO's neglect. Accordingly, in this study, we presented the causes of MES construction failure and improvement cases of company O., a small manufacturing company located in Daejeon city, where Root Industries is the main axis. That is, major problems in the introduction and operation of existing MES were identified, and improvements derived from the perspective of production workers were applied to the field. As a result, quantitatively, an improvement of 15% to 57% was achieved in terms of productivity, quality, cost, and delivery date, and qualitatively, the workload of both managers and production workers was reduced and work could be handled more easily. These research results can be used as a practical example for the successful construction and operation of MES in Korean small manufacturers producing a large variety of products. In the future, research will be needed to successfully develop MES from the basic level to the upper level.