Modular migration off a deprecating DB2 MES — without stopping production

An old MES on IBM DB2 carried 150 custom applications built around it, spanning what today would sit in modern ERP, QMS, PLM, MES and SCADA scopes.

Production losses in copper manufacturing from downtime can be huge, so a switch-on/switch-off replacement was never a workable methodology here.

DB2 is deprecating for this customer, and all 150 applications have to move before it does.

Connected both the old MES and the new one, so the migration could be modular instead of a single cutover event.

Mapped the development team's tribal knowledge into the data Flows, so the logic lives in reusable Flows rather than in people's heads.

Reused those same data Flows for reporting and analytics instead of rebuilding the logic a second time downstream.

Turned on warnings and email triggers so internal IT can respond to end users before a problem is raised.

Fed the warning history back into automations that error-proof the recurring issues in the applications and data Flows.

Migration proceeds application by application, with production protected throughout.

Internal IT responds to end users from an alert rather than a phone call, and recurring failures get automated out instead of re-triaged.

FactoryThread becomes the layer that moves manufacturing data into any system — extending the life of technical debt without production losses, and avoiding vendor lock-in on the way out.