Plex Systems, a Rockwell Automation company and a leader in cloud-delivered smart manufacturing solutions, today announced a new modularization approach for its Smart Manufacturing Platform to enable accessibility and scalability for digital transformation in manufacturing. This approach, enabled by Plex’s innovative cloud-native platform, more closely aligns with customers’ needs as they build their smart manufacturing technology strategy, including a focus on flexibility, quick implementation, and ease of entry with a path to grow.
With Plex, manufacturers can start their digital transformation in a number of ways. For example, they can initially implement quality management (QMS) or manufacturing execution (MES) systems – common entry points for most manufacturers – and from there add capabilities, such as production monitoring, asset performance management, or supply chain planning. With this approach, companies pick the starting point that best meets their needs and then can scale into additional connected solutions over time. Plex uniquely enables new capabilities to simply be activated versus “installed” and for data and governance rules to flow seamlessly throughout the system.
Three examples of the new modular solutions include:
- New Product Introduction and Management: Maximize profitability and increase competitive position by reducing time to market and decreasing development costs. Companies can manage the product and program lifecycle – from concept to completion – and effectively track new and existing products, including updates, retirement, and obsolescence.
- Labor and Workforce Management: Optimize labor schedule and costs while preserving delivery schedules through effective labor management, clear skills-to-required production capabilities, reduction of onboarding time, and programs for employee health and safety.
- Advanced Quality: Proactively manage supplier quality and compliance with integrated continuous improvement toolsets and extend quality processes throughout the full supply chain to promote a holistic quality culture both inside and outside the four walls of the organization.
“Plex was built from the ground up for manufacturers with flexibility and scalability in mind, as evidenced by our cloud-first multi-tenant architecture. Modularization takes this a step further with numerous starting points for companies at any stage to begin or expand their digital transformation journey,” said Nathan Pieri, chief product officer and vice president, applications, Rockwell Automation. “We took an outside-in look at understanding customer challenges and aligned our approach to help them manage their entire lifecycle and deliver positive business outcomes every step of the way. By providing manufacturers with easier points of entry and an elastic building block approach, companies can focus on their immediate Industry 4.0 transformation needs with options to add more capabilities as they need them, all seamlessly within our secure manufacturing cloud.”
"This approach solves a major need for manufacturers, addressing prioritized pain points immediately while providing a simple path to broader capabilities as needed. Plex is distinctive in its multi-tenant SaaS approach, enabling modular capability expansion without complicated integrations," said Reid Paquin, Research Director at IDC.
“The new modular approach, from production monitoring to full ERP and everything in between, ensures we can help customers quickly solve their most pressing pain points with one, many or all of our innovative smart manufacturing solutions, meeting them where their needs are and supporting them as they grow,” commented Ron Pascuzzi, chief customer officer, Plex Systems. “Plex’s customer-led approach to our product strategy is affirmed by offering a fast path to start their digital transformation journey.”
Plex is a cloud pioneer that uniquely offered its innovative QMS and MES capabilities as part of its ERP solution in a multi-tenant SaaS environment for over twenty years. This modular approach demonstrates the unparalleled flexibility available with a cloud solution and gives manufacturers the ability to continue to implement all these capabilities at once or compose the solution they need with seamless scale.
