A lean MES analysis to provide automated Value Stream Mapping

Real-time production information is crucial to make important business decisions. The support for the company's strategic initiatives must be considered in the requirements analysis and selection procedure of the new or modified production IT. Within this paper the combined adoption of Lean practices and a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is presented as a Lean MES analysis. The featured Lean improvements help to justify the MES investments. Based on the different object models of the ISA 95 standard, the Value Stream Map (VSM) can be integrated in MES. In a specific example, the automated generation of the VSM through automatic data collection is illustrated. A real-time VSM is now accessible to track the progress and further improvement areas of the Lean transformation. Further research mentions the possibilities to include other Lean tools in the proposed Lean MES analysis