What were the challenges to be solved and what specific benefits were achieved?

The enormous degree of competition that production companies are subjected to and that will continue to increase with Industrie 4.0 requires a maximum amount of efficiency and quality in the production processes. Companies must be able to react flexibly and quickly to unexpected changes in order to totally use all resources as efficiently as possible. These requirements force the companies to use innovative technologies - not least in order to be able to effectively manage the increased amount of complexity resulting from a growing variety of products plus product life cycles that are becoming shorter and shorter. Employees and management alike need reliable information in the form of key figures in order to be able to make both short-term and major long-term decisions. An MES such as HYDRA from MPDV is just the right tool - today and in the future.

"The efficient use of resources of any kind is a critical factor in gaining the competitive advantage in today's environment and will become even more so with Industrie 4.0. An MES system such as HYDRA from MPDV processes existing data (big data) to usable information (smart data) in order to be able to continuously monitor, control and optimize the processes of producing companies. This is the only way that the objective of a profitable Industrie 4.0 can be achieved." Prof. Jürgen Kletti, CEO of MPDV Mikrolab GmbH

How can the Industrie 4.0 approach be described?

MES HYDRA is based on VDI guideline 5600 and completely covers the range of functions required therein. A comprehensive acquisition of data in real time in shop floor in particular ensures that all decision and optimizations are made on the basis of reliable information. State-of-the-art technologies from the fields of big data and business intelligence facilitate the process.

What could be achieved?

MES HYDRA offers many users, such as the producer of molded parts RUCH NOVAPLAST, all of the necessary functions with which to monitor and control internal production processes. MES automatically generates key production figures. Often, key figures such as the OEE index can be improved by more than 15% in the first two years. It is not uncommon for this to equal a savings potential in the high six-figure Euro range. Thus, the investment in HYDRA is recouped many times over after only a very short period of time. Other companies increase their productivity to such an extent that an excess of 20% more orders can be accepted and produced. Typically, production companies take this opportunity to productively use of the additional capacities instead of decreasing staff. Thus, the consistent use of an MES system secures jobs in Germany, because with it, production remains economically efficient and stays within the country.

What measures have been taken to achieve the solution?

MPDV is considered a pioneer of the MES concept and within the scope of the VDI guideline 5600, it contributed decisively to coining the term and defining the MES software category. To this day, MPDV is still among the companies creating the beat for the MES market. With Industrie 4.0, MES will become a central instance in any production company. This is why MPDV continues to be dedicated towards reaching the goal of standardization (e.g. in the VDI/VDE GMA technical committee 7.21 "Industrie 4.0") and towards making companies understand exactly what can be achieved with Industrie 4.0.

What can others learn from it?

In 2011, MPDV in collaboration with other MES providers founded the MES D.A.CH association, which handles the interests of German-speaking companies and currently is also establishing the standardized UMCM machine interface (www.umcm.de) in the market - yet another building block towards networking production in line with Industrie 4.0.

MES HYDRA combines the entire range of competence and practical experience of the MPDV MES experts and today it supports more than 930 companies worldwide in producing more efficiently.