White Paper: MES vs. ERP Is It All In The Jargon?

Linking shop-floor to top-floor is increasingly being recognised as crucial to securing success in the manufacturing industry. The best way to manage factory floor production and achieve the information flow desired, however, is a hotly debated matter. Vendors of specialist Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) often claim that Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is geared towards office-based tasks, such as accounting and order entry, and as such is of little value to the manufacturing department. ERP advocates, on the other hand, will often point out that the main reason for this argument is historic; ERP software has evolved, with today's solutions offering the functionality manufacturers need alongside the integration crucial for a unified, plant-wide view of production and effective utilisation of shop-floor data.

With today's competitive manufacturing environment, companies will certainly be looking at which technology can help them deliver more quickly, cheaply and efficiently to meet their customer's demands – the question is, can this be achieved through an ERP system or does it require specialist functionality that only MES provides?