MESA paper recommends manufacturing master data management

This is the Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association 37th publication – this time looking at the data architecture required for an effective MOM (manufacturing operations management) environment, handling issues such as dispatching, route execution, and alarm and event management. MESA makes the point that manufacturing companies' ability to adapt quickly to changing business requirements depends mainly on "the agility of their corporate cultures, flexibility of their business processes and interoperability of their IT systems". However, with ageing systems, the latter two are in trouble, and the white paper's suggested solution is a centralised MOM-based system, achieved through a manufacturing master data management (mMDM) approach – which it describes as different to older MDM. "Many organizations have difficulty managing the data associated with their manufacturing operations," it observes. "Data ownership, fragmentation across systems, multiple points of failure and data inconsistency are among the problems that lead to product quality and recall situations. Manufacturing master data management patterns, and best practices that have been successfully used for MDM, resolve these problems." One pattern is the 'Canonical Data Model Pattern', which recommends use of ISA-95 and associated MOM standards to build a manufacturing operations model for the master data – and this is the approach taken by MESA. The new paper also describes typical data management problems and provides what it describes as "an effective architectural and governance approach to resolve them". It was originally produced as part of the MESA/ISA-95 Best Practices Working Group publication, through an international peer review process. The White Paper will now also be published in one of two methodology best practices collections – Book 2.0, 'When Worlds Collide in Manufacturing Operations'.