Why always make it a Mes(s)? Allan Schmidt, COWI A/S (Denmark) KEEPING MES SIMPLE Where is Denmark? It's a small country in Europe...just below Norway and Sweden and on top of Germany. Maybe we don't all need a full blown MES system... Avoid the Big Bang implementation of a full-blown MES...maybe not all manufacturing companies need MES to make their life easier, for the short term, anyway. Keep it simple and start small. Start with core MES functionality, and integrate between the planning layer and the control layer. I-cubed (Intelligent Integration Interface) originated in the "eternal software dilemma." Integration between Level 4 and Level 2 of the ISA-95 model. Layer 3: Handling exceptions. Layer 2: separate real-time from transaction based Layer 1: the interface layer communicates with Hardware and surrounding systems, visualiation, alarm handling and data acquisition and is based on standard software (SCADA and OPC). Layer 2: the queue, separates the realtime world of PLCs and SCADA systems from the more slow world of business logic transactiosn, keeping sequence of the messages and buffering the queue. Using S95 Production Schedule you can build a queue. Using S95 Production Performance you can manage the queue. Layer 3, the business logic layer, handles the communication with ERP and is the most difficulut part to integrate. Error detection is a serious issue with S-95.