One MES does not fit all.

Many enterprises make one major mistake when implementing MES:
assuming that simply purchasing an MES system will solve their factory digitalisation challenges.
But those who have truly worked on manufacturing digitalisation will find that:
even within the same discrete manufacturing category,
machining enterprises and sheet metal enterprises are fundamentally different.
If you try to apply a generic MES to both, the likely outcome is:
the system goes live,
data is entered,
but the factory is still managed by people.
Why?
Because these two industries solve completely different problems.

01Machining: The Core Is Capturing Process Expertise

Let's start with machining.
Many assume the biggest pain point for machining enterprises is the number of machines.
That is not the case.
What truly matters in machining is the process expertise hidden in engineers' minds.
How should a part be machined?
Rough turning first or precision milling first?
How should cutting parameters be set?
When should tools be changed?
How should different materials be handled?
These things are often not written in any system – they reside in the minds of master craftsmen.

So for machining enterprises, the core purpose of MES is not simply to record:
"where this order is in production."
It is to solve:
how to turn decades of machining experience into digital assets.
A truly advanced machining factory of the future will not just have connected equipment.
It will have:
equipment that knows its own status,
systems that know optimal processes,
and AI that knows when problems are likely to occur.

02Sheet Metal: The Core Is Speed of Order Response

But the sheet metal industry is completely different.
The biggest challenge for sheet metal enterprises is not process complexity.
It is:
orders change too fast.
A customer may order 100 cabinets today,
add another 50 tomorrow,
and request early delivery the day after.
Every day, the enterprise faces:
how to arrange materials?
how to schedule laser cutters?
how to allocate bending personnel?
which order takes priority?

So the core of sheet metal MES is not about capturing master craftsmen's experience.
It is about:
equipping the factory with the ability to respond rapidly to order changes.
An excellent sheet metal factory of the future will function more like an intelligent dispatch centre.
When an order comes in:
automatically identify drawings,
automatically calculate materials,
automatically generate processes,
automatically optimise production scheduling.

03Same MES, Why Such Different Results?

This is also why many MES vendors encounter a puzzling question:
They sell the same product,
yet its performance varies dramatically across different factories.
The reason is simple:
Manufacturing is not the software industry.
Software cannot be decoupled from production logic.

Machining focuses on:
"How can this part be made better?"
Sheet metal focuses on:
"With so many orders, how can we deliver faster?"
One is about optimising the manufacturing process,
the other is about optimising production organisation.

The future competition in industrial software will not be about who has more features.It will be about who understands the industry better.

04The Future of MES: Industry-Specific, Not One-Size-Fits-All

MES will not disappear,
but the era of "big and all-encompassing" MES is passing.
In the future, we will definitely see:
MES that understands machining better,
MES that understands sheet metal better,
MES that understands automotive parts better.
Because the essence of industrial digitalisation
is not about moving the factory into software.
It is about enabling software to truly understand the factory.

This is the true direction of industrial digitalisation.