Based on summarizing and analyzing the development，characteristics and problems of the existing architecture of manufacturing execution system（MES），a functional architecture of MES was proposed，which was oriented to manufacturing enterprises in China.By taking the production management model as the core，the proposed functional architecture defined the main functions of the production management model and the information flows transferring between these functions.Furthermore，maintenance management，quality management and inventory management，which would affect the production，were provided as the main functional models，and the information exchanges between them and production management were also presented.Additionally，in order to ensure scalability of this functional architecture，other functional models affecting the production were also defined.Finally，an application of the functional architecture to guide the design and establishment of the MES software oriented to the process industry of China was introduced to demonstrate the practicability and completeness.