Toward a cloud-based manufacturing execution system for distributed manufacturing

• A six company interview of manufacturing companies.
• Current ERP and MES solutions do not cover requirements for distributed production.
• Cloud based manufacturing presents technical solution for the need.
• A prototype system has been developed to support distributed manufacturing.

This paper illustrates the needs and challenges for the management of distributed manufacturing in a multi-company supply chain and processes these further as features of new IT systems. Requirements are collected from manufacturing companies and combined with insights from literature in the field of current ERP/MES system drawbacks, advantages, needs and challenges. The findings show that the needs and challenges in data integration inside SME networks are closely related to the limitations of current supply chain solutions. Current ERP-solutions lack extended enterprise support and a shared cloud-based approach. On the other hand, current MES solutions can operate the manufacturing process, but not for distributed manufacturing. As an answer to the requirements, we made a proposal for the core of architecture for next generation of MES solution in this position paper. Moreover, a pilot software tool has been developed to support the needs related to real time, cloud-based, light weight operation.