Discrete industries refer to a type of manufacturing enterprises. Their main characteristics are: there is basically no material change in the production process, only the shape and combination of materials change, that is, the final product is assembled from various materials, and There is a definite quantity ratio between the product and the required materials, such as how many parts a product has and how many parts a part has, and these materials cannot be more or less. According to the usual industries, the typical industries that belong to discrete industries include machinery manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, home appliance manufacturing and so on. Production characteristics and production management problems faced by discrete manufacturing enterprises:

Discrete manufacturing enterprises mainly add value by changing the physical shape of raw materials and assembling them into products, mainly including machining and assembly industries such as machining and machine tools.

The production characteristics of this type of enterprise are obviously different from those of process industry enterprises, mainly as follows:

(1) Production mode - production to order, production to stock;

(2) Batch characteristics - multi-variety, small batch or single-piece production;

(3) Emphasis on production and research, mixed production;

(4) The quality and productivity of products largely depend on the technical level of workers, automation is mainly concentrated at the unit level (such as CNC machine tools), and the level of automation is relatively low;

(5) It is necessary to inspect the processing quality of each single piece and each process;

(6) The technological process of the product is often changed.

The multi-variety and small-batch manufacturing methods of discrete manufacturing enterprises have increased the complexity of production, logistics, and quality management. Managers are busy with daily production management, and management bottlenecks such as lagging and poor information flow have largely restricted production. efficiency, increasing production costs and reducing product quality.

The main problems faced in production management are:

(1) The production preparation cycle is long. Due to the backward optimization and scheduling methods of manufacturing resources, the production preparation cycle is relatively long. In the single-piece and small-batch production mode, the production preparation time is often greater than the cutting processing time, resulting in a great waste of equipment.

(2) The coordination of the production plan is poor, and the job scheduling is difficult. The production operation plan mainly relies on the experience of the dispatcher, and the coordination of the plan is not good, resulting in low equipment utilization rate and insufficient equipment performance; it is difficult to monitor the progress of task execution, and it is difficult to track the status of materials. Inserting orders is common and the production process has many uncertainties, which leads to the fact that the operation schedule cannot keep up with the changes, and the execution of planned tasks is seriously out of control.

(3) Difficulty in management of work-in-progress. Due to the large variety of parts and the long process route, it brings many difficulties to the manual management of WIP, and the on-site production situation cannot be given timely feedback.

(4) The quality management adopts the management method based on post-mortem inspection, and the rejection rate cannot be effectively controlled. Therefore, the application of MES technology in enterprises can free managers from the fatigue battle of constantly manually tracking parts and adjusting plans, and devote more energy to thinking about decision-making issues and optimizing on-site management, so that managers can be more Playing the role of "prevention" and realizing the effective coordination of "prevention" and "elimination" is an effective means to improve the production management level and manufacturing execution capability of discrete industrial enterprises. In recent years, more and more domestic enterprises have attached great importance to them.

How to deal with and solve the production characteristics and production management problems faced by discrete manufacturing enterprises?

Using ROCKWELL's integrated architecture system can improve the following goals

- Increase productivity

‒ Low cost and high quality

‒ Safe and reliable production

‒ Easy operation and maintenance

‒ Fast supply of raw materials and low cost

‒ Customer satisfaction, high loyalty

- other…

The use of an integrated architecture system enables a unified control engine – Logix control system platform to realize discrete control, process control, batch control, transmission control, safety control, and motion control, further reducing the number of spare parts for enterprises, and reducing the time and cost of system maintenance .