Work orders into the MES without a second keyboard

The question this file answersWe pay for an ERP and an MES — why is someone retyping every released order from one into the other?

Fits: mid-size manufacturers handling 50–500+ POs a day and the paperwork around them.

Typical day

What the desk looks like today

Typical pattern, not a measured desk; the manufacturing playbook's volumes are for purchase orders, not work-order releases. Planning releases in the ERP; because ERP and MES do not share a shop calendar, someone retypes it into the MES. It hurts when the release list is long and the shift underway.

What changes

What Monday looks like after

When the shift supervisor opens the MES, the morning's clean releases are already there, and the list beside them shows only the orders with a missing kit or a routing question. The supervisor still decides the hot job and the sequence; what has stopped is the copying.

Typical, not a measured client result. Every figure here comes from the playbook source named below.

Released

the same validate-and-write build as PO intake — no published figure for work-order release

Before: someone retypes every released order from ERP into MES. After: releases are validated against routing and kit and written into the MES; missing components wait for a person. We show no percentage here — Deloitte's figure is about POs and sits on that file.

No published figure for this desk. The range lives on the parent file: POs checked against the catalogue, certificates against the spec →

How this file is built

Deloitte Procurement Analytics (2022) measures purchase-order handling; work-order release between ERP and MES is not in it, so the 40–55% stays on the PO file and this one carries no percentage. Not a schedule-adherence claim.

What we install

What we put in front of the systems you already run

Your ERP and MES stay — SAP S/4HANA, Infor, Siemens Opcenter, Plex or the ones you run. This is the same validate-and-write build as our PO-and-certificate file, pointed at the release:

released orders are read from the ERP through its interface or a scheduled extract
routing, materials and the shop calendar are validated against the MES — does the routing exist, is the kit available
clean orders are written into the MES for the supervisor's release, and orders with a missing component or an unknown routing go to a person with the gap named.

What stays human — and what this will not do

Hot jobs. Missing kits. Disputes over routings. The conversation on the floor.

Not a schedule-adherence claim.

What can go wrong — and what we do about it

If routings in the MES and the ERP have drifted apart, most orders fail validation at first and the review list is long until the two are reconciled — plan for that. Where the MES has no interface, writes go through import files or a screen-level bridge, slower and dependent on your IT; hot jobs and kit shortages remain the supervisor's call.

What it costs to get there

The path: free 60-second estimate → free 20-minute review → paid audit of this one process (€1.5–3K, typically two weeks) → pilot with your people in the loop (€10–20K, weeks, not quarters). No transformation programme. Prices are public, on the services page →

Scoped in the audit — the playbook has no estimate for this exact desk.

This is about you if…

Is a released order still typed into the MES by hand after it exists in the ERP?
Do your ERP and MES both expose an interface or import your IT has used before?

What does this mean in euros?

That depends on your volumes and wage costs — this page will not invent the number. The free 60-second estimate runs that calculation from your answers, with every multiplier sourced.

Get your free savings estimate 60 seconds · no sales call Or write first → Map a manufacturing process like this one — free, 60 seconds →

Not a named Aperanda client. Process file · Manufacturing.

Short process file. Same build as its parent file; the playbook has no separate volume or benchmark for this desk.

All process files