Here we are about 5 weeks since MES got approved and purchased and I have good news and bad news.
Good News: It was pretty easy to get the basic features of the product up and running in the application. Pretty much you run a couple concurrent requests, setup a few items as dispensable, setup a dispensing area and a dispensing booth and there you go. Okay, maybe its a little more complex then that but not by much.
Bad News: We use scales from Mettler Toledo. A few years ago we purchased their ID30 weigh station solution which is essentially a scale, a monitor, what they call an 'indicator', and a little pc. The monitor runs their ScaleXplorer software which uses an ActiveX control to communicate with the scales.
This week I spoke with Mettler about how to use their scales with MES and the answer is that we still have to use their ELO box (which is the indicator and the little pc) but in order to use them on a network we would have to write a listening app and install it on each ELO box and then also write an app that would use the ActiveX control to communicate with the scales. (FYI I'm not a developer nor do I do much with networks so I'm definitely pushing past anything I know and understand).
So here we are today. We have some internal developers who could probably create these two apps for us but they are swamped with other projects right now and probably wouldn't be able to get to it for another couple months. Next option is to check out a product offered by Kepware which an Oracle developer recommended that apparently is an all in one solution for integrating devices with MES. If that doesn't work or is too expensive I guess I go back to Mettler and see what they can offer.
Wish me luck.
Interesting Article on the different philosophies of Oracle and SAP pertaining to manufacturing execution systems.
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