Manufacturers facing MES scaling challenges

The research finds that despite widespread manufacturing execution system (MES) adoption, scaling it across the enterprise has become the defining challenge for manufacturers seeking to drive performance, integration and long-term value.

Most manufacturers have MES running in at least one facility. However, far fewer have made it work consistently across all sites, due to contributing factors such as disconnected systems, underutilised data and rising operational risk, all of which are limiting the value manufacturers can extract from the investments they have already made.

Key findings from the report include:

• MES adoption is widespread, but scale is lagging: 93% of manufacturers have MES in place, yet only 28% have deployed it enterprise-wide and just 23% report full integration across Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), quality and operational technology (OT) systems.
• Integration is the top priority – and the top obstacle: 44% of manufacturers rank integration as their top MES buying requirement. It also ranks as the leading modernisation challenge, with 33% citing MES as their biggest data integration problem.
• AI ambition is outpacing operational readiness: Manufacturers expect 42% of processes to be AI-supported within the next year and 54% by 2030. Yet 43% acknowledge they are not effectively using their collected data – the foundation AI requires to perform.
• Resilience is now a buying requirement: 46% of manufacturers experienced a cyber incident in the past year. Security and compliance now rank as the second-highest MES buying requirement, cited by 43% of respondents.

Real-world manufacturers are scaling with Rockwell’s MES technology, such as Kumi North America, a Tier 1 automotive supplier specialising in injection-molded interior plastics and assemblies. The longtime customer initially implemented Plex in 2008 and has since deployed the smart manufacturing software in facilities across the United States and Canada. They most recently expanded their usage to include Plex MES Automation & Orchestration (MES A&O).

"Before Plex, our operations struggled to synch and some locations didn’t have any software,” shared Paul Andrews, assistant vice president of systems, Kumi North America. “Our Plex infrastructure has grown alongside Kumi’s expanding business, and we’ve continued to leverage Plex technology in new ways.”

“MES adoption is no longer the hurdle, but enterprise scale is,” said Anthony Murphy, vice president of product management, Rockwell Automation. “Manufacturers may have checked the box by making initial investments in MES technology, but many struggle to gain full value across the enterprise. The impact of a MES has also changed, it’s shifted from production tracking to providing insights across a company’s full operations, like quality management, worker productivity and supply chain forecasting. Additionally, when connectivity is actualised, there are more opportunities to leverage AI technology. Manufacturers winning the race are not doing more than the rest, they’re just doing more together. With an elastic, edge-to-cloud MES like Plex, manufacturers can connect all aspects of production right away and then scale however they want over time.”

“Manufacturers have moved past the question of whether to adopt MES and are now confronting the harder challenge of scaling it,” said Lorenzo Veronesi, associate research director, IDC. “With integration ranking as both the top buying requirement and the leading modernisation challenge, organisations risk leaving significant value on the table if disconnected systems and underutilised data go unaddressed.”

The recommended steps to address the incumbent gap between the deployment and scaling of MES are mapped out in the full report, available at:

www.rockwellautomation.com/en-gb/products/software/factorytalk/operationsuite/mes/scaling-mes-across-enterprise2.html