Smart Manufacturing Blog

Welcome to your source for all things smart manufacturing. Whether you’re looking for expert insights, hard data, or actionable tips for your plant floor, we’ve got you covered every week of the year.

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Plex Manufacturing Blog

The Edge of Tomorrow: Edge Computing Reshaping Manufacturing

Plex Team July 29, 2024

In the vast expanse of a modern factory floor, the rhythms of production echo beneath the vigilant gaze of towering machinery. Workers and robots perform in a well-choreographed ballet of precision and speed. This industrial symphony is orchestrated by a frequently overlooked catalyst of contemporary innovation – edge computing....

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The Edge of Tomorrow: Unveiling the Potential of Edge Computing

Plex Team July 26, 2024

The landscape of technology has continually evolved. From the early mainframes of the 1950s and the initial days of server rooms to the expansive possibilities of the cloud, we have always pursued the next technological plateau. Our journey has now taken us to the edge—a place where technology converges to create a new horizon: edge computing....

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How to Win a Food Fight with the Competition: Quality & Compliance

Plex Team June 18, 2024

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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Bring Your Production Schedule into the Modern Era Using Smart Manufacturing

Plex Team April 30, 2024

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

Plex Team April 23, 2024

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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How AI Is Revolutionizing the Present and Future of Inventory Optimization

Plex Team April 14, 2024

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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Improve Your Improvements by Digitizing Processes

Plex Team February 20, 2024

In traditional manufacturing, continuous improvement was a misnomer. It wasn't that practitioners were insincere or wrong. But manual processes, data acquisition, and analysis, created hard limits to what the most zealous continuous improvement methodologies could achieve....

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Automotive Manufacturing Trends for the Balance of the Decade

Plex Team February 6, 2024

Each year brings new predictions of the future. These predictions include what to expect, what will happen, and which technologies will power the expectations.While these predictions are always interesting to consider, they should be kept in the context of reality to have value for automotive manufacturers. With a rapidly evolving landscape, this industry is producers are under intense pressure…

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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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