A Manufacturing Executing System (MES) implements a planned manufacturing process and controls the corresponding production at the plant floor in a method and in a system for managing and controlling manufacturing processes planned by an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and produced by the plant floor. The method includes defining sequential process segments. Each sequential process segment includes a plurality of actions to be performed at a plant floor level. The method includes the execution of a software tool including the steps of activating a sequential process segment and sequentially executing the respective actions. The method further includes defining state machines including a plurality of states and state transitions corresponding to actions to be performed at plant floor. A state manager tool is executed to define the state machines. A software tool is activated by the state manager tool to execute the state transitions of the state machine.