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Modern Manufacturing
Plex Manufacturing Blog
Your 5 Steps to Smart Manufacturing Adoption
Smart manufacturing enables manufacturers like you to adapt to a changing market and unlock long-term opportunities by connecting and automating their business. But where do you start? With increasingly modular smart manufacturing technology options available, investment and implementation can be simple, seamless, and cost-effective. These incremental investments unlock value quickly and can be…
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Why Manufacturers Should Consider Cloud-Based MES Solutions
Everything you do is focused on the shop floor. A manufacturing execution system (MES) provides the foundation for operations to schedule, manage, and track each step during production....
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Solving the Downtime Riddle
Riddles. They’re mysterious, mind-bending puzzles that throw in an element of misdirection to throw you off course. They can be fun and even educational in your personal life, but riddles are not a puzzle piece you want to see in your manufacturing environment....
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The Top 3 Challenges Facing Manufacturers (and How to Solve Them)
Each year, the State of Smart Manufacturing Report compiles feedback from hundreds of manufacturers. For nearly a decade, these findings have shown supply chain disruption, skilled worker shortage, and security/risk management as top challenges for business and the pandemic has made this worse....
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Seeing Through the Sales Pitch: 10 Questions to Ask ERP Vendors
Shopping for any big-ticket item is never easy, whether in your personal or professional life. But there’s a big difference between buying the wrong oven for your house vs. buying the wrong ERP for your company. One will burn your dinner, while the other will burn quality, customer relationships, and the bottom line....
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Staying Competitive in 2022 and Beyond
There’s never been a more pivotal time in manufacturing. The pandemic exposed the depth of challenges that manufacturers are facing, including supply chain disruption, skilled worker shortages, and risk mitigation. Environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) has also emerged as a must-address component of the business. At the same time, the combination of data-driven insights, speed,…
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Key Takeaways From the 7th Annual State of Smart Manufacturing Report
Responding to market adversity with agility, improved processes, and technology adoption Welcome to the 2022 State of Smart Manufacturing Report, the most robust edition yet. Based on surveys from 321 manufacturers from across the globe, the results reflect general consistency in major factors impacting manufacturers....
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Utilizing Automation in Manufacturing Processes: The Future Is Here
Driven by the rapid growth of technology, automation in manufacturing processes has significantly evolved over the years. Where traditional manufacturing was once utterly manual, more and more manual functions were reinvented with automated production. This included innovation in conveyance, limit switches, and eventually programmable logic controllers....
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Monitoring, Tracing, and Tracking Manufacturing Processes: What’s the Difference?
The rise of cloud-based software and advanced analytics has helped manufacturers drill further into Lean and Six Sigma methodologies that improve efficiency and lower costs....
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How OEE and Manufacturing Software Improves Efficiency
“Efficiency” is a broad term in manufacturing. It means producing or doing something while using the least time, resources, and energy. For companies like yours, that may encompass efficiency of motion, the effectiveness of training, the quality of SOPs, or inventory accuracy. But it’s when all those components are working together that operations achieve their highest efficiency....
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