From SCDigest's On-Target E-Magazine
June 19, 2012
Supply Chain News: Leading Discrete and Process Manufacturing Associations Combine, as MESA and WBF Complete Merger
MESA Making Big Push to Gain Members and Influence in Manufacturing; WBF's Communications Standards a Nice Fit with MESA Focus on "Plant to Enterprise"
SCDigest Editorial Staff
The planned merger of two manufacturing-related associations first announced a few weeks ago was recently finalized, as the discrete and process focused organizations MESA International and WBF, respectively, decided to join forces.
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Combining MESA with WBF to form a single association across discrete, hybrid and process manufacturing needs would seem to make clear sense, especially as so many companies today have elements of two or even all three types of manufacturing processes within their operations. |
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MESA was initially formed years ago to provide support for manufacturing execution system (MES) software providers, expanding its focus a bit over the years to more broadly cover manufacturing best practices and a broader overall scope. Some time back, MESA changed its acronym to stand for the "Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association" instead of Manufacturing Execution Systems.
Following from its MES roots, MESA has been generally oriented more towards discrete and hybrid manufacturing than process, though it does boast a number of process industry members such as Dow Chemical and Dupont.
WBF was originally an acronym for the World Batch Forum, and was founded to support the needs of process manufacturers (e.g., chemicals, steel, paper, etc.). It has more recently tag lined itself as "the organization for production technology," and tried to expand its presence, influence and membership to other types of manufacturers and vendors outside of process, with at best modest success.
The new organization will maintain the MESA international name. There will be a several month effort to integrated web sites and content to www.mesa.org, MESA's existing web site.
WBF had of late been hanging its hat on development of standards (known as B2MML) for communications between ERP and other supply chain software with industrial control systems and MES software used by manufacturers. The B2MML standard provides common data definitions for such communications.
As such, there is a synergy of sorts in the merger.
"MESA's focus is P2E - Plant to Enterprise; B2MML is the standard that makes that happen," said Dennis Brandl, then WBF Secretary, at the time the merger was announced. "In essence, MESA brings the what and why of operations management; WBF provides the how. Together, we are able to link enterprise goals with plant floor realities."
(Manufacturing article continued below)
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