Industry 4.0 Glossary: MES, ERP, OEE, CMMS

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AMS Application Management Services (TMA in French): Maintenance of software entrusted to an external provider: fixes, enhancements and support.

B2B Business to business: Trade between companies, as opposed to selling to consumers (B2C).
BBC Bâtiment basse consommation (low-energy building): French label for buildings whose energy consumption is at least 50% below the level set by the reference thermal regulations.
BI Business Intelligence: Tools that gather and present company data (dashboards, reports, analyses) to support decision-making.
BMS Building Management System (GTB in French): System that monitors and controls a building’s equipment (heating, ventilation, air conditioning, lighting) to manage comfort and energy consumption.
BPM Business Process Management: Managing business processes: modelling them, automating them and improving them continuously.
BREEAM Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method: British method for assessing and certifying the environmental performance of buildings, widely used in Europe.

CIM Computer Integrated Manufacturing: Manufacturing in which design, planning and production share the same computer data.
CMMS Computerised Maintenance Management System (GMAO in French): Software that organises maintenance: equipment, preventive and corrective work, spare parts, breakdown history.

EMS Energy Management System (GTE in French): Monitoring of energy consumption (electricity, gas, water…) through meters and sub-meters, in order to analyse and reduce it.
EnPI Energy Performance Indicator (IPE in French): Ratio between an energy consumption and what it produced, for example kWh per part or per tonne. It is the basic indicator of the ISO 50001 standard.
ERP Enterprise Resource Planning: Business management software: purchasing, sales, stock, accounting, planning. The MES links the ERP to the shop floor.

GTC Gestion technique centralisée (centralised technical management): French term for the centralised supervision of the technical installations of one or more buildings, where equipment is monitored and its alarms are received.

HQE Haute qualité environnementale (high environmental quality): French certification of a building’s environmental quality: energy, comfort, health, water and waste management.

IaaS Infrastructure as a Service: Servers, storage and network rented on demand from a hosting provider, instead of being bought and installed in-house.
IIoT Industrial Internet of Things: Connected sensors and machines in the factory, whose data flows automatically to the MES or the supervision system.
IoT Internet of Things: Connected objects and sensors that send their data over the network. In the factory, we speak of IIoT.
IT Information Technology: The company’s business computing: networks, servers, software. It is contrasted with OT, the computing of the shop floor (PLCs, supervision).

KPI Key Performance Indicator: Figure that measures progress towards a goal: OEE, scrap rate, lead time… It is used to manage and to decide.

MCO Maintien en condition opérationnelle (keeping systems operational): French term for all the actions that keep a system, software or equipment in working order: maintenance, updates, support.
MES Manufacturing Execution System: Production management software: it collects shop-floor data in real time, tracks production orders, quality and traceability, and links the ERP to the machines.
MESA Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association: International association that defined the reference model of MES functions.
MO Manufacturing Order (OF in French): Instruction to produce a given quantity of an item, with its routing and due date. Released but unfinished orders make up the work in process (WIP).
MTBF Mean Time Between Failures: Average operating time of a piece of equipment between two breakdowns. The higher it is, the more reliable the equipment.
MTTR Mean Time To Repair: Average time needed to bring a piece of equipment back into operation after a breakdown.

OBIX Open Building Information Exchange: Open standard for exchanging data between a building’s equipment and supervision software, through web services.
ODBC Open Database Connectivity: Standard interface that lets software access different databases.
OEE Overall Equipment Effectiveness: Performance indicator of a piece of equipment: the share of time during which it produces good parts at the planned rate. It combines availability, performance and quality. Called TRS in French.
OPC Open Platform Communications (originally OLE for Process Control): Standard for exchanging data between PLCs, machines and industrial software. Its current version, OPC UA, is secure and independent of the operating system.

PaaS Platform as a Service: Hosted platform (system, database, tools) on which you develop and run your own applications.
PAT Process Analytical Technology: Approach, mainly in pharmaceuticals, that measures the critical process parameters during manufacturing to guarantee product quality.

ROI Return on Investment: Ratio between the gain an investment brings and its cost. It is often expressed as a payback period: the time it takes for the gains to repay the investment.

SaaS Software as a Service: Software used on a subscription basis, from the browser, and hosted by its publisher.
SCADA Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition: Supervision system that collects data from PLCs and sensors, displays it on mimic diagrams and allows the installation to be controlled remotely.
SQL Structured Query Language: Standard language for querying and updating relational databases.
Supervision: Industrial technique for monitoring and controlling automated manufacturing processes by computer. It covers data acquisition (measurements, alarms, status feedback) and the control parameters of the PLC-driven processes.

TPM Total Productive Maintenance: Improvement approach that involves all staff, operators included, in looking after equipment, in order to eliminate breakdowns, slowdowns and defects.
TRG Taux de rendement global: French variant of OEE calculated over the plant’s opening time: it takes planned stoppages into account.
TRS Taux de rendement synthétique: French name for OEE, overall equipment effectiveness.

WMS Warehouse Management System: Warehouse management software: locations, receipts, shipments, picking and inventories.