Kanoa MES 1.14: Ignition 8.3 Compatibility, Batch/Continuous Support, and Deeper OEE & Downtime Insight

Kanoa MES 1.14 is a major platform step forward—both in terms of Ignition compatibility and the set of MES capabilities available out of the box. This release includes our first Ignition 8.3–compatible Release Candidate, expanded support for batch, discrete, and continuous process types, and a set of improvements aimed at making OEE rollups, downtime analysis, and auditing more scalable across real-world enterprise deployments.

Below are the highlights we’re most excited about, plus links to the full release notes and downloads.

Kanoa MES 1.14 Release Candidate: Ignition 8.3 Compatibility and Continued Platform Growth

We’re excited to announce the availability of the Kanoa MES 1.14 Release Candidate, our first Kanoa MES build compatible with Ignition 8.3.

This release represents an important milestone for both Kanoa and the broader Ignition ecosystem. It reflects our commitment to staying tightly aligned with Ignition’s platform evolution—while continuing to invest heavily in new MES capabilities that help integrators and manufacturers build scalable, long-lived systems.

Why Ignition 8.3 matters

Ignition has become the de facto platform for industrial application development, and each major release brings meaningful improvements in performance, security, and developer experience.

Ignition 8.3 builds on the foundation established in Ignition 8.1 and introduces enhancements that make it an even stronger platform for enterprise-scale MES deployments. For organizations still running earlier versions—or planning upgrades from 8.1—Ignition 8.3 represents a natural next step in keeping systems modern, secure, and supportable.

From day one, Kanoa MES has been designed to live inside Ignition—not alongside it. Ensuring compatibility with the latest Ignition releases is critical to protecting long-term customer investments and giving integrators confidence that their MES layer will evolve with the platform underneath it.

Kanoa MES 1.14 RC is the first step in validating that compatibility with Ignition 8.3 in real-world projects.

What is a Release Candidate (RC), and why are we doing this?

A Release Candidate (RC) is a pre-release version of software that has:

• Passed internal QA
• Met functional and performance expectations in controlled testing
• Reached a level of maturity where broader, real-world validation provides the most value

Unlike a general availability (GA) release, an RC is not yet recommended for production deployment. Instead, it’s intended for early adopters—integrators, engineers, and technically capable teams—who want to evaluate new platform compatibility and features in non-production or controlled environments.

This is the first time we’re formally offering a Release Candidate for Kanoa MES. We’re doing this to:

• Surface edge cases across different industries and architectures
• Validate upgrade and migration paths
• Improve stability and polish before general release

1.14 is now supported on both Ignition 8.1 and 8.3

Kanoa MES 1.14 is our first release supported on both the 8.1 and 8.3 platforms. Under the hood, the builds are aligned, and version numbering remains consistent—while the module name clarifies which Ignition line it targets (8.1 vs 8.3).

Support for batch, discrete, and continuous processes

Kanoa MES increasingly needs to work across mixed manufacturing environments—where you might have packaging lines (discrete), extrusion or flow processes (continuous), and recipe-driven operations (batch), all inside the same enterprise.

With 1.14, assets can now be configured with a process type (including Batch), enabling Kanoa Ops to organize OEE-enabled assets more naturally and support process-appropriate calculations and analysis. For batch assets specifically, standard rates can be defined as “batch time in minutes,” and performance can be calculated accordingly.

Practically: this makes it easier to group and compare assets by “how they run,” not just where they sit in the asset tree—while setting the stage for more process-aware dashboards and analytics moving forward.

Inheritable OEE thresholds for enterprise rollups

Historically, defining OEE thresholds at the asset level works—until you need consistent scoring across a site, an area, or an enterprise.

In 1.14, OEE thresholds are now inheritable throughout the asset hierarchy, which improves how OEE “rolls up” into areas, sites, and enterprise-level views. This is a foundational capability for organizations building standardized scorecards across multiple lines and facilities.

Alongside this, we’ve added an enterprise OEE analytics view that calculates and displays OEE scores at every level of an enterprise hierarchy.

Better downtime analytics: “downtime by item” and richer categorization

Downtime by item analysis

Downtime isn’t always evenly distributed. Many teams find that specific products—or families of products—tend to trigger more stops, longer changeovers, or higher rates of minor stoppages.

Kanoa MES 1.14 adds “downtime by item” analysis to our downtime reporting, allowing teams to correlate downtime patterns to what was being produced—supporting more targeted continuous improvement work. (Kanoa Docs)

Downtime category hierarchy (folder-style fault trees)

This is one of the most requested improvements we’ve shipped in a while.

Previously, downtime (and other states) could be assigned a single category. In 1.14, downtime categories now support a hierarchical “folder system” so teams can build structured fault trees that scale—without forcing operators to scroll through long, flat lists.

A practical example of a tiered fault system might look like:

• Equipment Faults
  • Electrical
    • VFD Fault
    • Encoder Signal Loss
    • Motor Overcurrent
• Mechanical
  • Conveyor Jam
  • Bearing Overheat
  • Guard Door Interlock
• Utilities
  • Compressed Air
    • Low Pressure
    • Water in Line
  • Steam
    • Boiler Trip
    • Low Temperature

This structure helps teams keep operator selection fast and intuitive, while giving engineers and CI teams the granularity they need for Pareto analysis and root cause programs.

Kanoa Logger: audit-friendly event logging that doesn’t get lost

Kanoa MES 1.14 introduces the Kanoa Logger, a dedicated mechanism for capturing important MES events without having them disappear into the broader Ignition gateway logs.

This is valuable for:

• Engineering troubleshooting and system audits
• Compliance-driven traceability requirements
• Reviewing “what happened, when, and why” across operational workflows 

A new logger view is also included in the application. 

New widgets and dashboards added in 1.14

As part of improvements to the Hawthorn installer, dashboard and widget installation is now handled via import—enabling Kanoa MES to ship more turnkey dashboards and widgets with each release. 

New widgets added in 1.14 include:

• Production Loss
• Utilization
• Item State Bar Chart
• Event Notification
• Performance Reasons
• Scrap Reasons
• Lot Bar Chart
• Lot Quantity Bar Chart

Developer experience upgrades: system function IntelliSense + documentation refresh

Kanoa MES includes a large system function surface area, and accuracy/consistency in function documentation matters—especially for integrators building extensions and custom apps.

In 1.14, all 643 system functions were reviewed and rewritten to standardize documentation and correct examples. 

As part of that effort, a small number of functions were modified to correct deviations in return values. If you’ve overridden views or written custom scripts that call affected functions, you’ll want to validate against the updated behavior. 

Keyword Search Utility: safer upgrades for customized projects

To support platform refactoring (including updates required for batch/continuous enablement), 1.14 introduces a built-in Keyword Search Utility to help identify potential impact areas across projects, scripts, and tags.

The release notes call out several example keywords to search for, including changes such as oeeType → oeeEnabled, and certain functions now returning tuples.

This is especially useful for teams who maintain overridden views or have layered custom functionality on top of the Kanoa base projects.

Performance and platform improvements you’ll feel immediately

Kanoa MES 1.14 also includes several under-the-hood improvements intended to make large deployments smoother:

• Updated Asset Configuration UI with significant performance improvements on load
• A new materialized assetTypeHierarchy_MAT table to improve SQL query performance
• Expanded image and file management system functions and supporting views

Where to learn more (and how to get the RC)

• The full Kanoa MES 1.14 release notes are available in Kanoa Docs. 
• The Ignition 8.3 Release Candidate download is available on the Kanoa download page, along with guidance on RC usage and support ticket submission for feedback.

If you’d like Kanoa help validating an upgrade path, or want feedback on an 8.3 migration plan for a large MES deployment, reach out via your usual support channel.