Smart Manufacturing Blog

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Plex Team

About the Author

Plex, by Rockwell Automation, is the leader in cloud-delivered smart manufacturing solutions, empowering the world’s manufacturers to make awesome products. Our platform gives manufacturers the ability to connect, automate, track and analyze every aspect of their business to drive transformation. The Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform includes solutions for manufacturing execution (MES), ERP, quality, supply chain planning and management, Industrial IoT and analytics to connect people, systems, machines, and supply chains, enabling them to lead with precision, efficiency and agility.

Digital Building Blocks for Operational Efficiency

Plex Team January 16, 2024

As Industry 4.0 continues to shape industries across the globe, one of the most significant beneficiaries of the power of these technologies is operational efficiency within manufacturing.This is particularly true with the rise of the role of robots in manufacturing industries and the supply chain....

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Contents May Settle, But You Don't Have To

Plex Team January 9, 2024

Everyone has experienced the disappointment of opening a bag of chips or crackers and looking inside only to see half-empty space. Often, the product contains the cryptic warning "Caution: Contents May Have Settled."Visually, this isn't very pleasant, but everyone knows the content volume is the same. It's just the space between the products affected by the journey from factory to retail shelf.…

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How Smarter Manufacturing Helped These Companies Beat 2023’s Biggest Challenges

Plex Team January 9, 2024

As we look back on 2023, the ripple effects of the pandemic continued to shape manufacturing as businesses reassessed, adapted, and innovated in response to the many challenges the year brought. Businesses are rethinking their manufacturing strategies, leveraging cutting-edge tools to navigate unprecedented roadblocks. From enhancing visibility and agility to embracing automation not only to…

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Digital Building Blocks for Your Enterprise

Plex Team January 4, 2024

From the most straightforward shed to the highest skyscraper, every structure is built with a complex assortment of components. These “building blocks” give the structure support and strength and allow it to be used as designed.As manufacturing industries rapidly adopt Industry 4.0 technologies to create smart and fully digital manufacturing systems, companies are realizing that digital building…

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Digital Building Blocks for Quality

Plex Team January 4, 2024

Automotive manufacturers operate in a hyper-competitive industry, producing complex pieces of equipment that have, on average, over 30,000 parts. Manufacturing them comes with substantial uncertainty due to quickly shifting consumer tastes—and the unwavering expectation for high quality....

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Looking Beyond Your Horizons in 2024

Plex Team December 19, 2023

Put yourself in the mindset of settlers from long ago exploring a new landscape. As they started each new day, their effort to understand what was beyond the horizon faced a manual and labor-intensive process. Several scouts would head off in different directions, hoping it was the right path to answers. They had to endure harsh conditions, uneven terrain, obstacles like rivers and mountains,…

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Digital Building Blocks for Sustainability: Part 2

Plex Team December 18, 2023

There is increasing interest in reducing carbon emissions as part of overall sustainability. This particularly applies to manufacturing where both awareness and regulations are encouraging producers to explore ways to mitigate or eliminate their emissions.Continuing our discussion of sustainability as a digital building block in manufacturing, let's look at how software can help monitor, track,…

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The 2023 Innovator Impact Award Winner: The Shyft Group Electrifies and Pursues Innovative, Sustainable Excellence

Plex Team December 12, 2023

Steering the commercial vehicle industry into the future requires not only creativity but innovation. The Shyft Group is fearlessly up for the task, leveraging smart manufacturing technology to aid in their quest to reinvent the wheel. Since implementing Plex in 2021, The Shyft Group has acted with precision and speed to develop commercial-grade electric delivery vehicles....

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Digital Building Blocks for Sustainability: Part 1

Plex Team December 12, 2023

Sustainability. It has such a simple definition, yet it has become diluted and obscured in many ways when companies try to implement it as part of their business model.The definition of sustainability for business and development is well established by the UN World Commission on Environment and Development. This definition states: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of…

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The Top 5 Moments of Automation Fair® 2023: Relive the Excitement

Plex Team December 5, 2023

In early November, many of us gathered in Boston for the industrial automation event of the year: Rockwell’s Automation Fair®. This is a time for industry members—from customers and partners to Rockwell team members—to connect and learn about the future of manufacturing together. This year’s event was no exception, and it was an especially exciting opportunity for Plex community members to gather…

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