APS & MES: What each one offers

We're living through a moment where the manufacturing market becomes more competitive and dynamic every day, leading companies to seek solutions that give them better control of their production, increase productive efficiency and reduce losses. From this need comes the desire to find technologies that help us produce faster, cheaper, better and more effectively.

When starting the search for specialist tools to support management, planning, scheduling and control of production, many companies end up wondering which type of solution is the most appropriate to meet their needs and actually solve their problems. As they begin researching, different options pop up and we often can't translate in practice the role of each tool and how they can help us.

Within this context, two types of tools stand out as capable of helping companies improve monitoring of the production process and achieve a competitive advantage through PPC: MES software and APS software.

MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) software focuses on execution and control of production. The main goal of an MES is to enable effective execution of production orders and the monitoring of equipment and production reports. Some benefits you can expect from an MES are: reduction of scrap and rework, reduction of maintenance cost, better machine efficiency, reduction of material losses and better production information quality.

Among the main MES features we can list:

• Automation of production data collection;
• Online production management;
• Equipment performance analysis (OEE - Overall Equipment Effectiveness);
• Automation of material and inventory control;
• Support to quality control;
• Real cost data capture;
• Online maintenance control.

On the other hand, APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) software is widely used in production planning and scheduling. Its focus is on sequencing and planning with finite capacity, taking into account several shop-floor constraints such as resources, labor, production calendars, tooling and others. Among the benefits an APS software can bring, we highlight: reduction of factory throughput time (lead time), inventory reduction, setup reduction, better resource utilization and improvements in meeting delivery dates.

APS, in turn, has its main features listed below:

• Production planning generating the master production schedule;
• Inventory policy planning;
• Production order generation;
• Sequencing of production orders with finite capacity;
• Simulation of different sequencing scenarios;
• Material management.

In general, we can say MES is used at the operational level, responsible for monitoring work in progress and ensuring its execution, while also generating a complete historical diagnosis of your production — important input for tactical company decisions. On the other side, APS works at the operational and tactical levels, drawing up plans with a short- and medium-term future view to meet industrial goals, and long-term to support strategic decisions related to production capacity and resource sizing. Both systems work alongside the company's ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), maintaining constant communication and providing decision makers with the information they need to be more assertive.

In the image below we try to illustrate, on a timeline, the scope of action of each solution:

MES and APS: distinct scopes that complement each other.

It's worth noting that, despite their clearly distinct scopes, the line between MES and APS isn't always so clear. Each software has its peculiarities and range of functions, but you may find some overlap in the proposed functionalities. Some MES software can provide functions that are generally APS scope, and vice versa.

But the question remains: which one do I need? Well, we're sorry to say there's no ready answer to that question. Each tool's feature list can be quite attractive, but the answer will depend on your company's short- and long-term needs and goals. Often the answer is both — far from being competitor systems, they are actually complementary. And it's the combination of both that gives us complete production control, that is, planning, scheduling and control.