Design and development of a cost-effective fault-tolerant execution and control system for discrete manufacturing

This paper presents a cost effective fault-tolerant manufacturing execution and control system (MECS) which has been designed, developed and implemented for a multi-national company's (MNC) discrete precision metal part manufacturing operations in Singapore. The authors aim to share with other researchers and industrial practitioners the challenges, scope, architecture, design rules, and key technologies in implementing the system. Specific reference is made to the technical approaches to automated data collection and fault-tolerance with minimal network hardware redundancy. Being seamlessly integrated with other enterprise systems including quality, engineering, inventory, store, planning and scheduling, the implemented MECS dramatically improved the visibility, accountability, tracking, and traceability (VATT) of manufacturing operations.