For those familiar with Spruik Technologies and our product Libré, you know we are passionate about building fully connected manufacturing solutions – from Libré’s open-source continuous improvement tool to a full-blown suite of tools for an MES. For those new here, there has been an ongoing debate for years about building or buying manufacturing software. The debate is over, building and assembling manufacturing solutions using low code and pre-built, interoperable accelerators win. Accelerators do the hard work by being preloaded with APIs to integrate with your current data structure and process. Think of them as the pieces of an erector set – you get the main sections and then get to build and assemble what suits your company best. But before we try to convince you further, let’s look back and see how we got here.

A Look at the Past to Better Understand the Future

Industry 4.0 fundamentally changed what MES applications need to do, particularly regarding IT/OT integration. Many new technologies are becoming mainstream in industrial applications, challenging the traditional concept of what MES applications are. Frameworks–like design thinking–from outside of manufacturing have crept into the industry and will continue to drive innovation and rapid advancement in the field. With innovation, speed is vital. Rapid deployment of new features based on user feedback is critical. Accelerators and low-code platforms enable quick and efficient feature updates (because that is what they are designed for) while off the shelf enterprise systems will give you at best, quarterly updates that are most relevant to the largest number of customers. Are you willing to put your operations on the line in hoping the features most relevant to your company’s needs are released by your enterprise provider? The industrial worker’s role is evolving along with technology, requiring the worker to be proficient in more than one functional area. The evolving role also makes the employee critical in the feedback loop because they are closest to where the software and manufacturing intersect.

What is an MES, Really?

Many are familiar with the MES model developed by MESA that defined MES and provided structure to its growing complexity. The model was a great, open standard way of getting things organized. The problem is, it was developed in the 90s, over 20 years ago. Technology and infrastructure have changed. There are functions in the MESA model that are performed better by different systems and don’t need to be a part of your MES. The new standards for the ‘Digital Twin Manufacturing Framework’ ISO 23247 have reinforced this truth. ISO 23247 embodies an approach with Autonomy, Mixed Reality Interaction, Machine Learning, Artificial Inteligence, Industrial Internet of Things, Digital Twins, and Simulation. These new technologies leave us with a revised concept of what an MES should be and why packages based on old ideas might have features you don’t need.

Design Thinking…In Manufacturing?

When you hear ‘design thinking,’ I bet your mind doesn’t go to industrial applications. Design thinking is a methodology primarily credited to Stanford University’s d.School and IDEO for its development. IDEO defines design thinking as “a process for creative problem-solving.” It focuses on user-centricity. Everything is designed from the “point of view” of a person and how that person achieves a task. Design thinking also encourages ideas to be rapidly prototyped and validated. In the case of industrial applications, ideas could be wide-ranging, so the software platform needs to be completely flexible. Traditional MES applications are designed to do one specific job and are not easily customized. This exact problem has led to the rise of the term ‘Innovation Platform’ to distinguish between traditional MES applications and new, flexible, rapid development platforms.

Industrial Roles are Evolving

Modern Industrial workers are expected to be highly qualified and perform a range of tasks across multiple IT systems. Traditional roles are being merged into new multi-function roles more and more. For example, management asks Operators to maintain their equipment, combining the usual operations and maintenance technician roles into new Operations-Technicians. In some factories, operators also perform quality control tasks. The combination of functions leads to the blending of IT applications into a single User Interface. Paolo Rosado writes about the need for plasticity in workers and software in his InfoWorld article-no longer will siloed systems be the norm. The new Digital Manufacturing User Interface (UI) needs to interact with Maintenance, Quality, Operations, Inventory, Warehousing, Planning, and Personnel systems. Previously these systems were separate applications with separate UIs for different people managing the tasks in each. Now, with one person executing multiple roles, it is impossible to find a single off-the-shelf application that combines all of these functions into a single interface.

But What About the Enterprise Apologists?

In the past, enterprise software apologists would center their arguments around these two ideas:

• “If you build, you’re setting yourself up for failure if your lead engineer walks. Who is going to reverse engineer the Frankenstein network?”

Building is not what it used to be. Buying a low-code powered platform and subject matter expertise rolled into accelerators designed to be agile, is vastly different from developing software line by line of code. 

When markets change, and margins tighten, business models and products must adjust for a company to survive. Long gone are the days of creating a widget and expecting sustained market share without any disruption. Because of this, innovation is the key to continued relevance. Innovation is about speed, and speed comes with two things. First, you need to be able to develop, test, and deploy code quickly. Exceptional developers can do that without a low-code platform, although most developers can’t. Second, you need to be close to the software end-users to learn from an idea and build it into an update. Enterprise packages can do this quarterly, at best.

• “You are a manufacturing firm, making widgets is your core competency, not writing code.”

These arguments are based on outdated thinking. Low-code / no-code applications and accelerators have changed software development. No longer are you held hostage to one developer nor results left in a complicated mess of code.

In the past, when manufacturers built, it took a long time and cost a lot of money. Today it isn’t expensive nor time-intensive because of the automation in the low-code platform and the accelerators. The beauty of building and assembling using low-code and accelerators is that you, the manufacturer, are in complete control of what you get. The alternative is receiving what the lowest common denominator of the customer base of the vendor wants. I bet your operations are unique to your organization. Isn’t that what drives your competitive edge?

It is the rare case that the software you choose to buy will stand alone. More than likely, you are promised that the pre-built “solution” will save you time and play nicely your other platforms. This is where the “work-around” reveals itself and sucks up time from your team. How many times do you have to do something in an illogical manner because the software had a different opinion on how your workflow should go?

When you buy off the shelf systems, you are also buying somebody else’s opinions about how to manage your operations. Workflows and data structures have assumptions programmed in that may have made sense for the first customer, but certainly not all. Not many manufacturing enterprises have the same workflows and processes. Even more importantly, if you are a multi-site operation, how many can say their workflows are IDENTICAL at site A and site B? If they are, you need to give your Operations Manager a considerable bonus. But, the likelihood that there is variance is high.

Traditionally, firms buy pre-built software when they have a pain point or are looking to expand their in-house solutions (think spreadsheets upon spreadsheets). Firms that chose to build in the past had a particular use case and needed the software to fit their needs exactly. We think that every manufacturer should have a system that exactly meets their needs. And it turns out; there is a way to get the best of custom-built software without having to hire out a 30 person team of engineers to accomplish it.

The build vs. buy debate isn’t binary like previously thought. There is a middle ground that involves assembling pre-built accelerators that are highly customizable. It is the shift to a technology stack instead of an enterprise suite, using systems design for your solution. The rise of the Rapid / Low-code application development platform eradicates previously held beliefs about building your own software. With these technologies, it now means that it is feasible to build a system because these platforms make it up to 10 times faster than traditional application development approaches. They provide agility and speed to market, allowing the buyer to reap the rewards of the investment sooner.

Back to the Future

When you combine low-code application development platforms with a set of pre-built accelerators that cover the essential functions that all systems need, we can transform manufacturing companies into Digital Manufacturing Companies in months rather than years. The Libré MES Suite for Low-Code Platforms like OutSystems and Mendix gives you the freedom and power to build a system that precisely suits your needs. If you are ready for a solution that can be up and running quickly and at a fraction of the price, contact us here, we’d love to chat about Libré.