Rockwell Automation Technologies Incorporated

Crisler Moor

Kevin Chao

Richard W Sze

Suryanarayana Murthy Bobba

Keith Chambers

Brandon E Henning

David Cooper

John Joseph Baier

Robert Joseph McGreevy

Lance Christopher Rodenfels

Richard Lee Ryan

An Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) gateway is provided for routing of ERP messages to Manufacturing Execution System (MES) applications. The gateway can receive a message from an ERP system via a manufacturing services bus specifying a business objective requiring action at a control level of an enterprise. The received message can be routed to a selected MES application capable of carrying out the business objective based on attributes within the message. Message routing can be based on location tags contained in the message. The message can also be routed to a selected subset of MES applications based on an analysis of respective capabilities and control contexts of the MES applications. Messages can be routed between the ERP system and the MES applications via the manufacturing services bus, which can manage protocol transformations for a heterogeneous set of applications.

Routing of enterprise resource planning messages

A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is provided that leverages industry-specific workflows to process business requests. The MES system can maintain activity sets representing industry-specific workflows that can be selected and executed in order to satisfy business-driven goals. The activity sets can comprise both business-level and control-level operations, and can be configured using an intuitive graphical interface that mitigates the need for low-level programming by the end user. Some features of the MES system are enabled or disabled based on data type compatibility with devices in communication with the MES system.

Industry-specific workflows in a manufacturing execution system with premier integration

A Manufacturing Execution System (MES) is provided for execution of workflows in response to specified business objectives. The MES system can maintain a library of activity sets representing industry-specific workflows that can be selected and executed in order to satisfy business-driven goals. The activity sets can comprise both business-level and control-level operations, and can be configured using an intuitive graphical interface that mitigates the need for low-level programming by the end user. In response to receipt of a request from a business-level system such as an ERP system, the MES system can match the request to an activity set, and subsequently execute the workflow defined by the activity set to facilitate satisfying the request.

Activity set management in a Manufacturing Execution System

A goal or desired output can be stated in terms of a high-level overview in a natural language or other format. The high-level overview can be automatically partitioned into steps to be performed in order to achieve the stated goal, such as by interpreting terms within the overview, analyzing definitions, historical data or other information. Each step can be dynamically assigned to various resources distributed throughout an environment. Such resources can include agents or other machinery that are selected based on a multitude of criteria including location, availability, performance level as well as other factors. If needed, the resources can be dynamically balanced in order to achieve the desired output while mitigating wasted resources.

Discoverable services

A simulation that integrates historical data and real-time data as a test or simulation tool can capture an entry that relates to a desired output as function points. A determination can intellectually be made as to which activities can achieve the desired output. The activities can be process steps that can represent a workflow that can be automatically implemented by an MES Appliance or other enterprise components. If a simulation reveals that the desired output might not be achieved, a change to one or more function points can be analyzed in an attempt to achieve the desired result. This change can be input into a simulation tool through a feedback loop, for example. Another simulation can performed on the modified data until a determination is made that the desired output can be achieved.

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Crisler Moor