We often speak of the need for small and medium-sized factories to integrate with Industry 4.0, but many companies at this level still assume that doing so wouldn’t be worth the return on investment. A manufacturing execution system (MES) is often the first step for implementation, but just a cursory bit of window shopping will reveal prices upwards of $100,000, as many MES providers are optimized to serve OEMs. However, there are affordable MES solutions, as some providers are looking out for the little guy.
Pico MES Inc. is one such provider, founded in 2019 with the intention of helping small to midsized factories digitize their operations and keep up with the national manufacturing boom. Its pitch is simple: Connect your shop floor and pay only for what you need, when you need it. That cost flexibility was a major selling point for MORryde, a family-owned RV manufacturer based in Elkhart, Ind., when engineers at the company were introduced to Pico-MES at FABTECH 2022.
Pico MES’ nearly 30 employees work 100% remote. Its software solution creates a digital twin of assembly processes and connects to limitless factory tools—capturing data for complete visibility into the supply base and providing actionable insights to identify areas for continuous improvement. Pico MES has migrated more than three dozen factories from paper-based systems, and helped improve product quality for factories in battery manufacturing, automotive, aerospace and more.
Founded in 1966, MORryde International is a family-owned business with about 1,000 employees spread across 13 plants. MORryde manufactures suspension systems and aftermarket products for recreational vehicles, working closely with OEMs to design and engineer products.
MORryde initially implemented Pico MES to help boost quality control during the installation of drivelines on motor homes. The reinstallation of drive shafts on a modified suspension is a complex operation. When adding new technicians to this station, MORryde noticed a problem—there was inadequate torque control for critical fasteners.
The root cause of this quality issue was the reliance on hands-on experience, paper-based work instructions and tribal knowledge. Digitalization was the logical next step to eliminate inefficiencies across MORryde’s assembly lines.
“We wanted to put something in place so that we were just guaranteed that this process was going to be done this way every time and a chassis wouldn’t ship, really wouldn’t move to the next station without all of these steps being taken care of in the proper order,” says Greg Whitt, process improvement engineer at MORryde.
When MORryde was shopping for the right MES, Pico quickly differentiated itself in pricing, flexibility and support. After an onsite demo and 30-day trial period, MORryde was convinced that Pico could handle the scope of work.
“MORryde does such a broad range of manufacturing processes, products, you name it,” Whitt explains. “We’ve run into manufacturers that will come in and say, ‘Yes our equipment can help you take care of this and what you guys are doing here, we can take care of that,’ and then we get a little further in the quoting process and they’re like, ‘Oh wow, we didn’t realize you guys do that.”
MORryde implemented Pico MES and connected the system to torque tools for its driveline assemblies. Driven by process data embedded in the work order’s instructions, the system guides the operator to the correct fastener location, activates the tool to provide the right torque, validates the applied torque, stores the data for each fastener and then disables the torque tool when completed.
Digital work instructions from Pico MES guide every step in the process, which the company says makes error-proofing easy. In the background, the MES logs actions taken and time to complete for both traceability and process improvement. Following the successful driveline implementation, MORryde expanded its deployment of Pico MES to three of its five campuses.
In 18 months, Pico MES has connected 20 MORryde workstations with more than 500 digitized processes, creating a digital thread for data collection. MORryde has since shipped 2,400 error-free chassis to customers with 100% production quality certainty, according to the company. After implementing Pico MES, Whitt discovered that the company’s assembly lines were gaining efficiencies from the new controls, measures and instructions.
“People ask me to sum up Pico, and that’s really hard to do because of how broad the applications can be. … It hasn’t been any one thing, but because of Pico’s broad applications to take care of a lot of little things, you end up with a big change over the long term,” Whitt notes.
One example: A returning customer wants a product to be packaged slightly differently than standard. Such requests can be hard to keep track of and articulate on a two-dimensional work order. With Pico MES, each customer’s specific needs can be communicated as a computer prompt with relevant imagery.
“And that’s a small improvement, but if you do that across 400 different assemblies, in a lot of different ways, you end up with fewer issues that you have to take care of that are really hard to capture, that cost, that lost time. Now, you’re able to do more with the labor force that you have,” Whitt says.
Elkhart has been called the RV capital of the world, and much of the local economy is integrated with the fluctuations of the RV industry. As such, it’s important for MORryde to stay ahead of the curve in a competitive environment.
“One of the real challenges, especially when RVs are having a boom cycle, is hiring the people that you need. What Pico is really enabling us to do is give more tools to the manpower that you have or that you can get,” Whitt says.
Ryan Kuhlenbeck, CEO and co-founder of Pico MES, comes from a wide-ranging career in automotive manufacturing, having held positions at General Motors, Tesla and others. He says small and midsized factories may have a bad impression of Industry 4.0. Some may have even attempted to make the jump but found the cost involved better spent on something more practical, like a new press brake machine.
“If you think about how technology gets developed, it often starts with the enterprises because they have larger r&d budgets, but then they also need more customization,” he adds. So, it makes it unusable to smaller factories, who can’t afford all of that setup and configuration cost and million-dollar licenses.”
Kuhlenbeck’s mission, and that of Pico MES, is to help small and midsized manufacturers (SMMs) realize that a more affordable, less complex solution is available. The software company recently hosted a factory tour to showcase how it has modernized MORryde’s operations.
According to Kuhlenbeck, Pico MES is so user-friendly that facility visits after implementation are rarely, if ever, necessary. If a customer has a question about the software, users can ask the Pico team directly in a shared Microsoft teams or Slack channel included in the company’s base fee.
Digitizing SMMs’ operations not only boosts productivity for those companies, Kuhlenbeck explains, but also leads to a healthier manufacturing ecosystem overall. As a Series A startup, Pico has raised $21 million with support from large OEM partners such as Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH and Schneider Electric SE’s SE Ventures. These companies are interested in Pico MES because of the vital role it plays in the supply chain, according to Kuhlenbeck.
“The number one problem of an automotive OEM, whether they want to admit it or not, is absolutely out of their control. It’s getting shut down for no part, bad part, wrong part from one of their tens or hundreds of thousands suppliers,” Kuhlenbeck says. “If you have a solution like Pico that you can deploy into the supply base, everyone wins.”
Meanwhile, MORryde says it continues to eliminate costly errors with Pico MES. Whitt is excited to see how far MORryde can take Pico MES. “We now ask the question, ‘Where else can we use Pico MES?’” he says. “I’m a Pico fan. I think it’s a fantastic, much-needed tool.”
For more information on Pico MES, visit https://www.picomes.com/ or email contact@picomes.com. For more information on MORryde International, visit https://www.morryde.com/ or call (574) 293-1581.
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