When working methods differ across factories and production lines

Challenge: ”We lack standardized working methods across factories and production lines.”

Most industrial companies want to scale improvements, work more data-driven, and ensure consistent quality. But this often stalls when working methods and system configurations differ between factories and production lines. When each facility develops its own variants, monitoring, comparisons, and development at group level become both slow and costly.

In this article, we explore why the lack of standardization arises in complex production, what consequences it has, and how a model-driven MES such as AVEVA™ MES helps you create a common structure that lasts over time.

In large process industries and life science operations, production often consists of multiple factories, production lines, and batch processes. The demands on quality, documentation, and operational reliability are high, which is precisely why differences in working methods quickly become an obstacle. What works locally can simultaneously create complexity and fragmentation globally.

This is where a system like AVEVA MES makes a difference. The platform is built to handle complex, large-scale production and support standardization, traceability, and safe operation. As an AVEVA Endorsed System Integrator, we help you build production models that tie the business together – from the group level to the individual production cell.

Production environments evolve over time. New factories are added, systems are replaced, companies are acquired, and local teams make adjustments to meet immediate needs. This means that each facility has often optimized its own world.

But when you need to compare performance between factories, introduce common improvements, or roll out new ways of working, these variations become an obstacle. Differences in processes, systems, and data make the work both slow and costly. In regulated industries, the consequences are even greater, as documentation and traceability must be consistent across the board.

Many try to create standardization through common instructions, central templates, or manual adaptations of existing systems. This often works well at first, but the standard quickly begins to vary in everyday production. Small deviations in how different teams interpret or implement the instructions result in multiple versions of the same process.

Standardization based on documents rarely lasts over time. For it to work, it needs to be built into the MES platform itself.

In traditional MES solutions, much functionality is implemented as factory-specific customizations. This makes the systems difficult to reuse and even harder to change consistently.

AVEVA MES, on the other hand, is modular and model-driven. Production logic, workflows, and quality controls are built with reusable building blocks that can be used in multiple factories. This means that standardization becomes part of the system architecture itself – not something that is added on top.

In AVEVA MES, you create common templates for the entire business – for equipment, process flows, materials, quality steps, and KPI structures. When you establish a new factory or production line, it is configured based on these templates. Local variations are handled through configuration, not special coding.

This allows you to make changes centrally and have an impact across multiple facilities without each factory having to rebuild the solutions from scratch. This creates a real balance between global standards and local flexibility.

When everyone works in the same production model, improvement work becomes more structured. You can test new ways of working on one line, validate them in operation, and then quickly roll them out to other factories. Improvements are no longer isolated pilot projects; they are scalable.

This makes it easier to compare similar production environments, identify common patterns, and share experiences between facilities. You simply build a learning organization where standardization drives development forward.

When all factories use the same basic model, system management is easier, risk is lower, and upgrades are more predictable. This reduces dependence on local customizations and creates a safer path forward – especially in businesses where information security and on-premises operation are critical requirements.

In the process industry and life sciences, production is technically complex and often highly regulated. Small variations can have major consequences for quality and regulatory compliance. Therefore, the need for common working methods and robust processes is greater than in many other industries.

AVEVA MES is designed to handle precisely these requirements, with a focus on stable operation, traceability, and structured workflows.

Standardization is not just about technology. It is about how you work, who is responsible for what, and how decisions are made in daily production.

At Roima, we work with you to map the processes in production and build models that reflect reality – not just theory. The goal is to create solutions that work in operation, last over time, and can be rolled out in multiple factories.

We also offer our own MES platforms for less complex operations. The choice of system is always based on your needs – not a specific product. But for larger industrial companies with complex requirements, AVEVA MES is often the most sustainable foundation.

When working methods differ between factories, improvements become difficult to scale. With a model-driven MES such as AVEVA MES, you can create common production models that hold the business together and evolve over time – without losing local flexibility.

We help you put standardization into practice at both the local and group levels.

Want to see how it works? Watch our on-demand demo of AVEVA MES.