MES is comprised of a relatively mature group of applications designed to manage production workflow from beginning to end, operation by operation. These applications generate work instructions for operators, ensure the right materials are available, and communicate operator and setpoint instructions to factory systems. As specific tasks are performed, outputs and results are measured against parameters for quality, cycle time, and throughput. MES have evolved over time to become mission critical systems that maintain the bill of process, ‘as built' bill of material, and full product genealogy. While suitable for many environments, MES delivers the largest dividends to those companies that build complex discrete products, process manufacturers that manage variable recipes/ batches, plants or mills in the paper or steel industry, and those that have mass customization or complex packaging requirements. Factories and plants fully utilizing MES typically have it well entrenched in the culture and rely on it to drive the flow of work and information.