Most MES ROI calculations, according to AMR's analysis, stop with first-year savings from head-count reductions, reduced cost of goods and savings such as reduced scrap. But they fail to calculate the process improvements that come in Year Two - worth three times as much as the first-year savings - and market improvements in Year Three that can return 10 times the savings of the hard costs gleaned in Year One.

While first-year savings tend to focus on reduced inventory, people and cycle times, Year Two savings include process improvements such as faster introduction of new products, improved new customer compliance, and data services from better tracking and genealogy. These benefits generally are worth three times as much as the savings achieved in the first year of an MES project, according to AMR's analysis.

Market improvements in Year Three, meanwhile, return 10 times the savings by tuning the manufacturing operation to be more responsive to actual demand. AMR says phase of the project is so valuable because it allows companies to capture additional market share with no increase in costs.

Even bigger benefits can be harvested by rolling out successful projects to additional facilities, AMR says, because "project costs were much smaller but the benefits were the same.

The bottom line, the company says, is that an investment of $750,000 to $1.5 million in an MES project should do more than pay for itself. Properly measured, a well-run project has the potential to return between $5 million and $15 million in benefits each and every year. But the benefits likely won't happen if sponsors fail to anticipate them and therefore fail to continue the push to realize them in Years Two and Three.

"MES offers a wide range of benefits, and users that stop seeking benefits when projected paybacks are met are leaving money on the table," authors Bill Swanton and Alison Smith write in their report. "Your MES is a powerful information tool and a vehicle for business process and cultural change."

That sounds like good advice, whether the project is an MES or some other type of investment. If you're looking just at one-time, first-year savings, chances are you're saying no to projects that offer the potential for far bigger savings down the road than those that are getting the green light based solely on the near term. In IT as in driving, it seems, it's important to focus both on what is immediately in front of you, and on what is happening well down the road.