The Problem

In many manufacturing companies, the gap between what happens on the production floor and what the ERP shows is measured in hours, sometimes days. Production orders created in SAP or Infor describe a planned reality that may have diverged from actual production before the shift is halfway through. Quality notifications travel by email. Goods movements are confirmed by memory at the end of the day, or the end of the week. The record and the reality are two different things.

The consequences are not just administrative. When the ERP does not reflect actual production state, planning decisions are made on stale data. Material requirements are wrong. Delivery commitments are unreliable. Finance closes the period on numbers that require manual correction. The problem is structural: there is no system connecting the control layer to the business layer in real time.

MES integration is the answer to that structural gap, but the scope of what is needed varies significantly by facility, by product complexity, and by the maturity of existing systems. Gradion scopes before specifying.

What We Deliver

MES Selection and Scoping

Not every facility needs a full MES implementation. Gradion assesses what integration layer is actually required: a full manufacturing execution system such as SAP ME, Siemens Opcenter, or Rockwell FactoryTalk; a lightweight execution tracking layer that sits between the PLC and the ERP; or a custom integration adapter connecting existing systems that are already in place but not yet talking to each other. Scoping is driven by the reporting requirements, the complexity of production events, and the gap that currently exists between the floor and the business systems. The result is a defined architecture before any platform is selected.

Bidirectional ERP and MES Integration

Production orders flow from the ERP to the MES. Production confirmations, quality results, and goods movements flow back. This bidirectional data exchange is the operational core of any MES integration. Gradion implements SAP PP and QM integration for clients running SAP environments, and Infor LN and CloudSuite production module integration for clients in the Infor ecosystem. As a certified Infor CloudSuite implementation partner, Gradion brings deep familiarity with Infor's data model, its production event structure, and the configuration decisions that determine whether an implementation delivers clean data or creates reconciliation problems.

SCADA and PLC Connectivity

Machine status, cycle counts, and quality signals are captured from the control layer and mapped to MES production events. OPC-UA is the preferred protocol for modern equipment; where legacy machinery requires it, Gradion works with Modbus and Profibus. The mapping from PLC signal to MES event is where integration projects most often run into problems: the granularity of what the machine reports does not always match the granularity of what the MES expects. Gradion resolves this at the data model level, before the production event structure is built, not after go-live when mismatches surface as reconciliation errors.

Data Model Design

The data model determines whether the integration delivers clean, usable production records or generates a new class of data quality problems. Gradion designs the event structure to match reporting requirements: how partial completions are handled, how rework is recorded without creating phantom goods movements, how material substitutions are tracked without breaking traceability. These decisions are made before implementation begins, in alignment with both the production team and the ERP configuration, because changing them after go-live is expensive.

Testing and Go-Live

Production systems cannot be tested in isolation from live production. Gradion runs integration testing in parallel with live operations, operating in shadow mode before cutover so that discrepancies between the legacy process and the new integration layer are identified and resolved before the old process is retired. Rollback procedures are defined at the outset. Go-live is a managed transition, not an event.

Proof in Production

Senior Aerospace Thailand operated with production data managed in Google Sheets and an Infor Syteline ERP system whose complexity left it underutilized. Teams worked in silos. Information between departments was scattered. Gradion built the factory software ecosystem, connected automation solutions to the data management layer, and integrated Infor Cloudsuite Industrial into the production environment. "Their work with Infor Cloudsuite Industrial has streamlined our operations and improved efficiency," noted Soonthorn Tharnpipitchai, Supply Chain Director. The system moved SAT from fragmented manual workflows toward connected, visible production operations.

For a leading industrial safety technology group, Gradion supported the digitization of a technically complex production software environment, aligning cross-functional stakeholder requirements and connecting production systems to the broader digital infrastructure of the organization.

Gradion and Infor

Gradion is a certified Infor CloudSuite implementation partner. Implementations in Infor environments deliver 5 to 12 percent improvement in labor productivity and 15 to 20 percent reduction in fulfillment costs. MES integration with Infor LN and CloudSuite is a named capability with delivery experience across manufacturing facilities in Southeast Asia and Europe. For clients already in the Infor ecosystem, this reduces implementation risk and shortens the scoping phase significantly.

CTA

Tell us what ERP and production systems you are running. We will scope the integration architecture.