Alberto Busch 
After working on MES projects across multiple plants, I’ve noticed a pattern. Sooner or later, someone looks at the MES database and decides it should become the answer to every data problem in the plant. What starts as a system for managing production orders, genealogy, and execution gradually turns into a repository for raw Level … Read more
The Unified Namespace (UNS) has become one of those concepts that sounds obvious once explained and mysterious before that. It is often described as: In steel, where production chains are long, tightly coupled, and extremely sensitive to timing and context, this promise is especially attractive. But like many “simple ideas”, the real challenge is not … Read more
When Level 2 and MES don’t line up in a plant, the problem is rarely the interface itself. It is almost always a decision that was never made explicitly. Who owns the logic? Who owns the state? And who defines what is true when numbers do not match in the morning production meeting? After working … Read more
In copper mining, production does not change in big leaps. That kind of growth is rare, slow, and usually requires years of capital investment. What actually moves the needle is much less dramatic. A 0.5 percent improvement in recovery. A small reduction in losses during concentration. A few more hours per month of stable operation … Read more
After working on multiple MES projects in the steel industry, I’ve noticed something interesting: the technology changes, the acronyms change, even the plant layouts change, but the same myths keep showing up again and again. They usually appear early in the project, often in PowerPoint slides, sometimes in steering committees, and almost always with good … Read more
The steel industry is one of the most complex production environments on the planet. From batch-based primary metallurgy to continuous rolling lines and intricate finishing operations, each plant is an ecosystem of processes, automation levels, and legacy systems that must operate in sync. At the center of this orchestration lies the Manufacturing Execution System (MES). … Read more