Method and system for controlling a manufacturing plant with a manufacturing execution system

A system for controlling a manufacturing plant with an MES system, through an execution of a given workflow meeting given customer requirements, the system comprising:

• an application for modeling a representation of the manufacturing plant through a set of equipment objects and through at least one workflow, said application being a plant designer, wherein the set of the equipment objects are not object classes;
• an equipment object of the set of the equipment objects being a collector of information;
• a complex entity for expanding a characteristic of the equipment object of the set of the equipment objects, wherein the expanding of the characteristic of the equipment object includes at least adding a new property to the equipment object, the complex entity being a plugin;
• the plugin exposing an interface including a configuration, a set of property elements, and a set of functionality elements;
• the system further comprising the following means to be used at engineering time:
• means for designing a set of plugins usable by the set of equipment objects;
• for at least one equipment object of the set of the equipment objects, means for associating at least one plugin of the set of plugins;
• through the plant designer, means for defining the given workflow according to the given customer requirements, the given workflow including at least one interaction with at least one element of the at least one plugin of the set of plugins, wherein the at least one plugin is associated with the at least one equipment object;
• and
• the system further comprising the following means to be used at runtime:
• means for executing the given workflow and performing the at least one interaction with the at least one element of the at least one plugin associated with the at least one equipment object.