4 Chapter One Chapter 4 examines production flow-oriented design. Chapter 5 addresses the tasks related to production flow-oriented sequence planning. Finally, Chap. 6 examines order fulfillment. However, in addition to the theoretical fundamentals of MES, this book is also intended to provide the reader with concrete aids for implementing MES. Thus the technical aspects, such as the necessary hardware, integration of the control level, etc., will be looked at in more detail in Chap. 7. Chapter 8 shows the ways in which the cost efficiency of MES can be assessed. One very important topic with regard to the purchase of complex software systems is ensuring acceptance among employees and conducting systematic training. Chapter 9 provides helpful methods for the implementation of rele- vant systems. Your projects' prospects for success should be increased considerably by these strategies. Two concrete examples from production and process technology for the implementation of MES are given in Chap. 10. After a descrip- tion of the production processes, we look at the challenges in concrete cases and look briefly at realization and implementation. Chapter 11 examines the outlook for the future and describes the authors' visions of future production-oriented IT systems. It is pre- dicted that the various existing software solutions will merge and grow together.