Justifying MES
We once had a MES project with a large medical devices company. This was a great project, that started well, and then the project sponsor went on vacation. After a week he did not return, then two weeks, then three….
Then, not at all.
We all (Flexware and the customer) found out the way he had justified the MES project was by using some budget left over from another project. They certainly needed the MES, and we all knew this was going to be a great solution. These games get played with capital money sometimes, but this one got some real scrutiny when this guy left the company. The project manager we were working for (she worked for the sponsor that left) called us and asked us to stop our work immediately.
The big meeting….
So here we are, a small company with this large project, stalled. The Plant Manager called a meeting and asked us (now this was our problem) how we were going to justify this project. He said “If you can’t tell me right now how much this project is going save me, we are not going to do it.” Of course, he meant finish it. I replied by saying “Justifying MES systems is very difficult and requires good data, great understanding of the problems and opportunities, and will take some time. I can have the project finished in the amount of time it will take to do the justification.”
After some more flaming hoops, we got to finish the project and it all ended well. It is a constant reminder that sometimes MES takes vision and faith. I liken it to on-line banking. There were probably many “old-school” banks that probably scoffed when someone said “you better get online banking up and running here or you may be out of business.” “Where is the ROI? Prove it to me!”, they said. I hope they took the leap of faith and invested in these improvements, because if not, they may be watching from the sidelines.
Same goes for manufacturing and MES investments. Sometimes it is ROI, vision, and faith combined that gets these projects done. Sometimes it is leftover capital budget.
