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Modern Manufacturing
Plex Manufacturing Blog
How to Win a Food Fight with the Competition: Quality & Compliance
Have you ever sat down at a local restaurant and ordered your favorite meal, only to discover a change in the recipe or ingredients has completely altered the taste? You’re now a thoroughly unsatisfied customer – even if there are plenty of good reasons for menu changes behind the scenes....
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Interactive Work Instructions Redefine What Workers Can Achieve
Even with the most carefully designed manufacturing processes in place, the actual outcome of your operations rests with your team on the floor. They rely on work instructions to carry out both unique and routine tasks – referencing a variety of documents and resources. But what happens when work instructions become a burden instead of a benefit?...
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Unlocking Supply Chain Success: 6 Tips for Seamless Implementation
Supply chain planning solutions offer incredible opportunities over their predecessors. Today, most are cloud-based, automatically updated, and easy to customize to specific industries. The best solutions provide advanced analytics to deliver real-time insights and reporting to those who need them. ...
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Overcoming Challenges to Becoming an Operations Leader
Leadership within a complex operational structure has never been easy. Now, new pressures are making this level of responsibility even more challenging....
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Bring Your Production Schedule into the Modern Era Using Smart Manufacturing
Production scheduling is an essential component in any manufacturing operation. It synchronizes operations so everyone is on the same page and uses the same game plan....
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Digitization: Getting the Whole Story from Your Data
Today, digitization across most industries is driving the next industrial revolution in manufacturing. As companies and OEMs seek to build digital capabilities within their production systems, smart manufacturing becomes standard for anyone looking to get ahead....
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Edge Computing: Preprocessing Data for Efficient Integration with ERP & MES Systems – Part 2
With the advent of Industry 4.0, modern manufacturing facilities generate an enormous amount of data, predominantly through sensors, automation and control system, HMI/SCADA systems, and IIoT devices. This data, rich in insights, is invaluable to ERP and MES systems that drive business and production decisions. However, transmitting this voluminous raw data to central systems can lead to latency…
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How AI Is Revolutionizing the Present and Future of Inventory Optimization
Companies today are faced with upward pricing pressure from multiple fronts. In addition to continuing disruption and labor shortages, inflation is a crucial driver affecting almost every decision.Perhaps nowhere is the impact felt more painfully than in inventory management, where inventory inaccuracies can result in significant loss....
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Key Takeaways from the 9th Annual State of Smart Manufacturing Report
What’s new. What’s now. And what’s happening next. The 2024 State of Smart Manufacturing Report offers a comprehensive look at where 1,500+ manufacturers see challenges and opportunities both today and in the future. From the expanding use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) to the ongoing need for a skilled, adaptive workforce, here’s a rundown of the report’s biggest takeaways that…
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Laying the Groundwork: Current State Analysis & Understanding the Data Communications Landscape – Part 1
In the modern manufacturing landscape, the synergy between plant floor operations and enterprise systems is the linchpin of a truly connected, intelligent production environment. At the foundation of this ecosystem, automation and control systems gather the vital signs of the manufacturing processes, but their true potential is harnessed only when this data informs the broader organizational…
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