Carrier Management Tutorial#
Introduction#
In Critical Manufacturing MES, Carriers are reusable physical structures that hold, support, and protect materials, as they move through production and processing steps. For example, metal carrier wafers to accommodate microchips in the semiconductor industry or trays that transport cookies to an oven in the food industry.
In MES, you manage carriers like materials, tracking their assignment, usage, and condition throughout the production process. You can attach carriers to materials, monitor their status, and ensure they are correctly used in each production step.
Depending on the configuration, you can attach a carrier to a single or multiple materials simultaneously, and attach one or more carriers to a single material. You can define carriers as a mandatory step before moving materials through the next setp of the production process.
This tutorial includes the following assets:
| Scenario | Description |
|---|---|
| Configuration | Configuration tutorial for setting up carrier management. |
| Attaching a Single Carrier to a Material | Attache a single carrier to a material. |
| Attaching Multiple Carriers to a Material | Attache more than on carrier to a material. |
| Removing a Carrier | Remove a carrier attached to a material. |
| Assembling With a Carrier Attached | Assemble a material with a carrier attached. |
| Master Data file | Contains the necessary master data to create the example model used in this tutorial. |
Why Carriers Matter#
Use Carriers to support the following manufacturing needs:
| Product-specific carrier requirements | Different Materials may require different types of Carriers. The MES tracks exactly which Carrier, each Material must have attached, ensuring that operators assign the correct Carrier before processing begins. |
| Multi-carrier operations | A single Material can require more than one Carrier attached simultaneously. |
| Carrier persistence across multiple steps | The system links Carriers directly to the Material itself, and they remain linked to it from one operation to the next, until an operator explicitly removes them. |
| Shared carrier pools | Many Materials share the same pool of Carriers over time. Because a Carrier follows a Material for a period and then becomes available for reuse, tracking its current owner, availability, and condition is critical to avoid delays or mix-ups. |
| Setup validation and quality control | Before or during processing, the system checks that the Material has the correct Carrier attached. A green check mark confirms proper configuration, preventing production from proceeding with an incorrect, missing, or mismatched Carrier. |
| Enforced traceability | Because a Carrier stays with the Material across several Steps, the MES maintains full traceability of exactly which Carrier held which Material throughout its entire routing, not just at a single Step. This is critical for genealogy. |
Carrier Management Benefits#
The following table summarizes the key benefits of carrier management in MES:
| Benefit | Impact |
|---|---|
| Product-specific carrier tracking | Ensures every operation uses the correct carrier/frame. |
| Multi-carrier operations | Attaches multiple carriers simultaneously. |
| Multi-step persistence | Keeps carrier assignment accurate as material moves through the flow. |
| Shared carrier pools | Maximizes asset utilization. |
| Setup validation | Reduces defects from wrong or missing carriers. |
| Traceability enforcement | Supports quality audits and material/wafer genealogy. |
Security Features#
Find the permissions for managing Carriers, listed below, under Administration > Security > Feature.
To open the carrier-related permissions proceed as follows:
- On the left side menu, select Administration.
- In the Administration panel, select Security.
- In the Security panel, select Feature.
