Low Cost, Easy to Use MES Software for Small Shops

BellHawk Systems Corporation (Millbury, MA) will be exhibiting their low cost, easy to use BellHawk Manufacturing Execution System (MES) software in Booth 5647 at the EASTEC show. BellHawk uses barcode tracking and mobile computer technology to track the receipt and put-away of raw materials, their conversion into finished products through a sequence of operations, and the packing and shipping of finished products to customers. The system also tracks labor and machine times, as well as scrap and rework. Some of the capabilities that make this software especially suitable for use by metal cutting, fabrication, and assembly organizations include:

• Tracking metal sheets and rods by length and width with a common part number. This enables tracking of off-cuts and facilitates their re-use.
• Tracking the cutting of parts, such as by plasma, laser, or waterjet cutting, for multiple jobs from a common sheet of metal. The system does accurate allocation of the cost of materials, labor, and machine time to each job.
• Capturing information, such as heat number and hardness as well as lot number and supplier, on incoming metals and tracking which product batches or assembly these parts went into.
• Tracking the welding of assemblies, including tracking the parts that went into each assembly, their inspection, coating and painting.
• Real-time dynamic scheduling of work through multiple machining and inspection centers to help ensure that customer orders get out on time.
• Ability to import bills of materials from CAD systems and automatically convert these into work orders to make and track the manufacture of all the different components of an assembly.
• Ability to automatically exchange data with existing accounting systems, such as QuickBooks and legacy ERP systems, which eliminates need to switch accounting system to add MES capabilities.

The BellHawk software is available for use in the “Cloud” at a secure data center in Florida, starting at under $200/month for small shops that just want to do work-in-process tracking. It can also be rented or purchased outright for use on a client’s own Windows Server at their plant.

BellHawk Systems, 45 River Street, Millbury, MA, 508-865-8070 ext. 302, emily.green@bellhawk.com, www.bellhawk.com.