New Kanoa MES Training: Learn Kanoa Ops by Building a Working Implementation

You can now learn to implement Kanoa MES, our modular Manufacturing Execution System (MES) for Ignition, at your own pace and at no cost. We've launched a new training section in the Kanoa documentation, and the first released course covers Kanoa Ops, the operational foundation of Kanoa MES. Courses for Kanoa Quality, Kanoa Trace, Kanoa Maintenance, and Kanoa Inventory are forthcoming.

This is a substantial step up in our education and enablement resources. Users and implementers now have a structured, written course they can work through alongside the software. They can start when they need it, revisit difficult topics, practice the steps themselves, and use what they learn to prepare for the Kanoa Ops certification exam.

Product documentation remains the place to understand individual features and look up details. Training connects those features through a realistic implementation, showing how configuration decisions, equipment data, production workflows, and analytics fit together.

Build a working implementation as you learn

The course follows CoreForge, a fictional manufacturing plant that gives every exercise a manufacturing purpose. A machine has an expected production rate. A packing operation converts individual units into boxes. A coating line needs meaningful downtime reasons. Learners configure equipment and materials, connect production data, schedule work, and turn the resulting information into useful operational views. The same plant model carries through the broader training program, connecting operations with quality, traceability, maintenance, and inventory. Explore the CoreForge factory scenario.

From platform overview to a working plant

The learning path begins with the platform itself and moves into implementation.

Understand how Kanoa fits together. The overview introduces the Ignition projects, system functions, components, database, and tags that make up Kanoa MES. It explains where customization belongs and how project inheritance supports it, which matters for implementers maintaining a system through future updates. Read the Kanoa MES overview.

Prepare a training environment. Setup lessons walk through the Ignition Gateway, database connection, tag provider, module installation, and recommended settings. Learners who already use Docker can use the optional Docker template, which brings up the gateway, Kanoa modules, and database together for development and training use. See the training environment setup.

Build the operational foundation. Learners create the plant hierarchy, define items, link them to production assets, configure rates, and start production. They then add modes, states, counters, and simulated equipment inputs to see how source data becomes production history, downtime, waste, and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). Explore base configuration.

Extend and analyze the implementation. Later lessons cover scheduling, business-system integration, permissions, customized screens, dashboards, scripting, and more advanced operational analysis. The Kanoa Ops course currently includes 41 lessons, knowledge checks among them. View the Kanoa Ops course.

What the Kanoa Ops course covers

The scope reaches well beyond getting the first machine running:

• Base configuration: model assets and items, configure production rates, run production, and capture equipment states and counts.
• Scheduling: configure shifts, create production orders, and schedule production and non-production activities.
• ERP integration: receive and schedule orders from an ERP simulator, then send production-order information back.
• Users and permissions: create roles and assign permissions to users within specific parts of the asset hierarchy.
• Navigation and operator screens: tailor menus, layouts, and default dashboards to different assets and users.
• Dashboards and marquees: build interactive analytics and configure rotating dashboards for shared plant-floor displays.
• Scaling: use scripts to expand assets, downtime states, items, and production rates.
• Performance events: explain speed losses with reasons that make the OEE performance result more actionable.
• Dynamic attributes: record changing operational context, such as the number of people staffing a packing line.
• Measures: collect summarized process measurements and investigate trends, distributions, and collection gaps.
• Operator effectiveness: configure crews, record operator presence, and examine labor and production performance together.

Measures is included with Kanoa Ops beginning with Kanoa MES v1.15, and labor-effectiveness analysis beginning with v1.15.1. Statistical Process Control (SPC) analysis for Measures requires Kanoa Quality.

The ERP exercises show the course's practical depth. Learners build a two-way exchange with an ERP simulator through Ignition, including receiving orders, scheduling them, and returning order information. They also meet realistic implementation details, such as mapping the ERP's equipment names to the names used by operations. Integrators get a concrete integration pattern to study and adapt. See the ERP integration exercises.

Feedback and resources along the way

Many exercises include a check script that learners run in the Ignition Designer Script Console. The script inspects the training configuration, reports passes and failures, and explains what needs attention. The asset lesson, for example, checks the hierarchy, asset types, time zone, OEE settings, and asset groups, so learners can fix mistakes before later exercises depend on them. See the asset configuration checks.

Downloadable resources add another layer of support: completed configuration exports, simulator tags, and an ERP simulator project. Completed models let learners compare their work or move ahead from a supplied configuration, and the simulators let them practice equipment connectivity and integration without live machinery or a customer's ERP system. Explore equipment simulation resources and the ERP simulator exercise.

The written format keeps the work easy to follow. Clearly marked hands-on instructions, downloads, checks, explanations, and tips separate actions from supporting information, and expandable reference sections bring relevant documentation into the lesson. Learners can mark lessons complete and track progress in their browser; that progress stays with the browser rather than syncing across devices. If a lesson is unclear or something doesn't work, the Get Help button on each training page opens a support ticket for the specific page and topic you're on.

Implementation judgment and certification preparation

The course teaches judgment alongside configuration. Learners meet questions that matter on real projects: how standard rates differ from scheduling rates, how inherited shifts behave, where permissions apply, and why a shared TV display needs a different dashboard experience from an interactive workstation. The dashboard exercise has learners build working asset and date selectors, connect analytics widgets, and arrange layouts for desktop and mobile, which encourages them to think about how people will use the finished application. Read the dashboard-building lesson.

Knowledge checks carry the same approach into certification preparation. They ask learners to explain behavior and reason through situations from the implementation. One question asks why a machine running at its scheduled rate can still show speed losses; the revealed answer ties the result to the standard rate used for performance calculations and links back to the relevant lessons. That helps learners find gaps and review the underlying concepts as they prepare for the Kanoa Ops certification exam. Explore an example knowledge check.

Who benefits

Systems integrators gain a repeatable onboarding resource and examples to study before applying Kanoa MES on customer projects. Manufacturers and end users gain a clearer understanding of their system's configuration, workflows, and analysis tools. Technology partners gain context for how equipment data and external systems can connect with Kanoa MES through Ignition. Teams growing their Kanoa expertise gain a shared learning path that new colleagues can start without waiting for a classroom session.

Kanoa Quality, Kanoa Trace, Kanoa Maintenance, and Kanoa Inventory will extend this approach into more of the manufacturing environment. Starting with Kanoa Ops gives learners the shared asset, item, production, and scheduling context those Solutions build on.

With a realistic implementation to build, resources to work from, feedback along the way, and questions that support certification preparation, the new training gives people a more accessible path to becoming confident Kanoa MES users and implementers.

Start the Kanoa training course.