The Industrial Internet of Things enables automakers and suppliers to operate their plant floors more efficiently by mining data on their machines. Stu Johnson, director of product marketing at Plex, talks about IIoT’s importance to manufacturers at the CAR MBS conference in Traverse City, Mich.

Automotive suppliers tackle how to use the Internet to improve factory operations at this year’s CAR MBS conference in Traverse City, Mich. “We are using less than one percent of the information available on the plant floor,” says Plex’s Stu Johnson. “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

Plex Systems CTO Jerry Foster provides simple steps IT professionals can follow when communicating with business colleagues who have no technical training and limited exposure to technology management.

Over the last week, I’ve had the opportunity to moderate two different panels with a total of five different Plex customers. One panel was during Plex’s PowerPlex user conference (in Detroit) and the other was at the Manufacturing & Technology Conference & Expo (in Chicago). Their very real, personal comments regarding their journey with cloud ERP were noteworthy.

PowerPlex has become firmly established on the Spring conference circuit among the cognoscenti and assorted curmudgeons that fancy themselves as sages of the enterprise world. The company has rightfully earned its place as the only cloud manufacturing suite player with deep functional capabilities that cater for the small and medium businesses in the Rust Belt and beyond.

It's a year since Cindy and I discussed gender diversity at PowerPlex. Now is a good time for an update.

Nick Jones, corporate operations, Aaron Thomas Packaging explains how persistence pays in getting on the Plex UX program.

One of the highlights of my visit to Detroit was the trip to Shelby Township and the MFC Netform factory. MFC Netform is primarily a maker of powertrain parts for the automotive industry using flowforming processes.

Plex employees always get to play with the coolest toys. Last week at PowerPlex, Barrie Vince was watching over 4 sets of smart glasses shown above: Google Glass Explorer, Vuzix M100, Epson Moverio BT200, and Recon Jet.

I spent a few days at Plex’s user conference in Detroit this week. For me, the backdrop was the invigorated city as I describe here. That amplified the many upbeat conversations and presentations I witnessed at the event.