What you’ll learn:
- Rockwell's “elastic” MES is a cloud-native, interoperable platform designed to unify operations across OT and IT.
- Rockwell said its unified MES connects materials and inventory to production and tooling, featuring embedded analytics, AI-driven insights and connected worker technology.
Rockwell Automation today announced a series of “strategic innovations” to its manufacturing execution system portfolio, which the industrial automation and digital transformation heavyweight said were focused on flexibility, scalability and resiliency.
Rockwell's MES portfolio is a cloud-native, interoperable platform designed to unify operations across operational technology and information technology.
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The Milwaukee-based tech company brands its “elastic” and modular approach as a way for manufacturers to scale capabilities as needed, helping to break silos that traditionally hamper OT and IT collaboration.
According to Rockwell’s 2025 State of Smart Manufacturing Report, 21% of manufacturing leaders cite integration challenges as a top internal obstacle.
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Rockwell said its MES eliminates these barriers with a unified platform that connects materials and inventory to production and tooling, featuring embedded analytics, AI-driven insights and connected worker technology.
“Legacy MES systems, while foundational, have become barriers to agility in an era defined by rapid change,” said Lorenzo Veronesi, associate research director at IDC, a manufacturing research service. “This future lies in modern, flexible and scalable MES platforms that enable manufacturers to reconfigure processes on demand, integrate seamlessly across the digital thread, and accelerate innovation.”
“Our elastic MES strategy and investments drive a fundamental shift in how manufacturers connect and optimize their operations,” said Anthony Murphy, VP of product management for Rockwell.
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“DIY and disparate systems increase cost, risk and complexity. Rockwell’s elastic MES unifies critical applications across OT and IT on a cloud-native, resilient architecture that grows with our customers.”
Rockwell’s "elastic" MES solutions
Rockwell’s MES portfolio includes the following features:
- Tailored for discrete, hybrid, and regulated industries, ensuring compliance, traceability, and security.
- A Software as a Service (SaaS) environment with embedded AI to guide manufacturers along their autonomous operations journey.
- Connectivity delivering holistic visibility and stronger business resiliency
- Secure, resilient platform that integrates with existing systems and leverages technologies like AI.
- Options from cloud-only to hybrid configurations.
“Plex gives us flexibility to grow our digital infrastructure at our own pace,” said David Rudofsky, chief financial officer of Brooklyn, New York-based Wonton Food Inc.
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“We selected what worked for us initially and there are various capabilities we can consider for future expansion, like material tracking and production efficiency."
About the Author
Scott Achelpohl
Head of Content
I've come to Smart Industry after stints in business-to-business journalism covering U.S. trucking and transportation for FleetOwner, a sister website and magazine of SI’s at Endeavor Business Media, and branches of the U.S. military for Navy League of the United States. I'm a graduate of the University of Kansas and the William Allen White School of Journalism with many years of media experience inside and outside B2B journalism. I'm a wordsmith by nature, and I edit Smart Industry and report and write all kinds of news and interactive media on the digital transformation of manufacturing.