HANA-MES: A HMI-awared Manufacturing Execution System

With the rapid development of technologies such as cyber-physical systems, big data, cloud computing and industrial wireless networks, the concept of Industry 4.0 is gradually gaining popularity in the industrial world, in which, manufacturing Execution System (MES) plays an important role in connecting the high-level functions of the enterprise and the production/manufacturing operations. The lack of immediate awareness of the state of the manufacturing system and the human-computer interaction methods with it is the main obstacle to build this intelligent manufacturing environment. In this paper, we propose a data-centric, human machine interaction-aware MES solution: HANA-MES, to visually sense the system (global/local) state to support the capabilities of smart scheduling, dynamic scheduling, precision management of production processes and preventive maintenance of equipment in smart manufacturing environments. We present the HMI-aware design, and the detailed functional implementation of HANA-MES. In addition, the usage data are collected by distributing questionnaires and analyzed to verify the system usability and effectiveness of HMI-aware design. The operators and managers of Zhejiang Yongsheng Co., Ltd, both reported positive feedback on adopting the new MES in their factories. The statistical analysis during the 2018–2020 shows that the new system could obviously save the time and improve the production efficiency.