Patent ID: 8509934

Claim:
A method for managing and controlling a planned manufacturing process planned by an Enterprise Resource Planning and produced by a plant floor, wherein a Manufacturing Executing System implements the planned manufacturing process and controls a corresponding production at the plant floor, the method which comprises: defining a plurality of sequential process segments, wherein each of the plurality of sequential process segments includes a plurality of actions to be performed at a plant floor level; in a computing machine, executing a software tool including steps of activating a sequential process segment and sequentially executing respective ones of the plurality of actions; defining state machines implementing corresponding asynchronous production processes including a plurality of states and state transitions corresponding to the plurality of actions to be performed at the plant floor level; executing a state manager tool to perform the step of defining the state machines; activating the software tool with a state manager tool in order to execute the state transitions of the state machines; selecting ones of the plurality of sequential process segments that introduce latency in the planned manufacturing process; and replacing the selected ones of the plurality of sequential process segments with asynchronous production processes including state transitions corresponding to actions which substantially substitute the plurality of actions of replaced sequential process segments; wherein the software tool enables a step for refusing to execute a state transition and for rolling back into a source state after a state transition to a target state has been required from the state manager tool and a corresponding action cannot be executed.