What you don’t (but should) know about MESA International

MESA International is an organization dedicated to the promotion and development of driving improvements into the manufacturing industry.

From their website:

MESA (Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association) International is a global community of manufacturers, producers, industry leaders, and solution providers who are focused on driving business results from manufacturing information. MESA helps members formulate strategies to turn plant-floor data into valuable knowledge to be used throughout the enterprise.

• We collect, share, and publish best practices to help drive greater productivity and the overall profitability of the manufacturing enterprise. Over 20 years of valuable information can be found in our Resource Library.
• We educate manufacturing and service providing professionals through the MESA Global Education Program.  
• MESA facilitates innovation and collaboration to enable the real-time enterprise and Plant to Enterprise (P2E) integration.
• Members connect, contribute, cultivate understanding, and exchange strategies to drive business results and to help define the ever-evolving MESA Model.
• Merger with the World Batch Forum (WBF) broadens our knowledge of ISA-95 related standards like B2MML, and ISA-88 related standards like BatchML.

MESA International started in the late 80’s, when companies were struggling with gaining visibility into their operations, managing their workforce effectively, and achieving enterprise-to-plant integration. The founders were vendors of MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) and their ecosystem—systems integrators, industry consultants, and the automation systems supplier, like Rockwell Automation, Schneider, and GE.

In those early days, a lot of our work (yes, I was a member back then) was to educate, validate, and convince manufacturers that MES systems were something they should consider to increase their profitability, operations productivity, and transparency.  The MESA White Papers were an important output of the group—covering fundamentals such as “what is MES,” “Controls Definition & MES to Controls” (white paper 3), determining ROI from MES, etc.  These papers are still being used, and referenced today, because they were created by the same vendors that were executing the systems, building the interfaces, and selling the benefits—ie, the subject matter experts.  The papers allowed user companies to gain the knowledge built by hundreds of man-years of experience.

And MESA’s work continues today to provide ground-breaking knowledge and information to the community at large.  An annual MES Product Survey by Logica is now in its 13^th year, providing invaluable insight into individual MES companies’ offerings, and their compliance to the ISA-95 standard (plant-to-enterprise integration models), as well as a “state of the union” of the health and growth of the MES market as a whole.

Another offering from MESA is their “Metrics that Matter” studies.  Funded by the MESA members, this study offers a view into the real returns that MES is providing users, as well as trends and industry shifts for manufacturers.  Being a member of MESA gives you access to all this material.

So, MESA has not only kept up with the industry as a whole, it has lead its development.  MESA’s Global Education Program gives attendees continuing education credit, and certifications.  Its annual user conferences bring industry thought leaders to the forefront to continue their drive to improve operations and profits. 

MESA membership is open to anyone—so if you haven’t looked at it lately, or you were a member from years ago, it may be time to reconsider—I know I am!