Plex Systems* Named a Challenger in Gartner’s 2018 Magic Quadrant for Manufacturing Execution Systems

Plex Systems announced that it has been positioned as a “Challenger” in the 2018 Gartner, Inc. Magic Quadrant for Manufacturing Execution Systems.

TROY, Mich., November 12, 2018 – Plex Systems, the leader in cloud ERP and MES for manufacturing, today announced that it has been positioned as a Challenger in the 2018 Gartner, Inc. Magic Quadrant for Manufacturing Execution Systems.1  This report marks the first time that Plex was included in this Magic Quadrant.

The Evolving MES Market

Manufacturers are striving to digitally connect their shop floors with business systems. According to Gartner: “Enterprise vendors are leveraging their application breadth and platform expertise to make MES part of a digital thread.”

More than 600 process and discrete manufacturers already realize the benefits of a unified MES-ERP solution with the Plex Manufacturing Cloud through which they are managing the operations of over 2,000 facilities in 23 countries.

Gartner also asserts in the report: “By 2024, 50 % of MES solutions will include industrial IoT (IIoT) platforms synchronized with manufacturing operations management (MOM) applications providing near-real-time transaction management, control, data collection and analytics.”

Plex also sees this shift in the market and has further strengthened its Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) offering with the acquisition of IIoT firm DATTUS. The resulting solutions will simplify the connection of manufacturing equipment and sensors to the Plex Manufacturing Cloud, manage high-volume data streams, and analyze in-motion equipment data to optimize performance, reduce costs, and ensure uptime.

Comments on the News

“Plex is proud to be positioned as a Challenger, and we believe that this recognition is also significant for manufacturers of all sizes who would benefit from leveraging MES capabilities in the cloud,” said Don Clarke, interim chief executive officer of Plex Systems. “Historically, the MES category has been dominated by legacy vendors offering highly complex, expensive and time-intensive custom solutions. Plex offers MES functionality in a true, multi-tenant SaaS model, which is cost-effective, fast to implement and easy to scale.”

“From a functional standpoint, legacy vendors’ MES offerings have not traditionally extended into critical business systems like ERP and supply chain planning,” said Jim Shepherd, head of strategy for Plex Systems. “We see Plex’s Challenger position as indicative of an overall shift in the market as manufacturers seek scalable and cost-effective solutions that combine deep plant-level capabilities with business systems in order to deliver rich enterprise-wide data and insights. To us, Plex personifies the future of MES.”

Download a complimentary copy of the report to learn why Gartner positioned Plex as a Challenger in this market.

1Source: Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Manufacturing Execution Systems,” Rick Franzosa, 5 November 2018

*Positioned as Plex in the quadrant and named as such in the report.

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