Industrial Transformation Blog

Research analysts from LNS attended the Plex Systems Analyst Day in early November at the company’s headquarters in Troy, Michigan. In an unusual move, Plex hosted its Customer Advisory Board (CAB) concurrently, giving customers and analysts a chance to interact directly. This level of direct access is rare among software vendors and demonstrates a strong show of confidence by the Plex executive team. The Plex CAB includes representatives from companies in automotive, metal forming, food and beverage (F&B), aerospace and defense (A&D), and other discrete and batch manufacturing industries.

In our recent work on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and manufacturing operations management (MOM), LNS Research has highlighted the inexorable journey MOM systems are taking as they become an integral part of IIoT-based systems and solutions. Much of this journey, when looked at from the outside, is somewhat haphazard to date as each vendor is doing its own thing. Hopefully, that will change as we move towards MOM 4.0, the seventh life of MOM.

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In my long career in manufacturing operations, I have had many discussions with product design teams for discrete manufacturing. These discussions have ranged from pure delight to taxing because while the product designers were smart and creative they were also somewhat self-centred. Sharing of data has been a natural extension of sharing ideas, goals, and success for those of us who have worked together in design and operations, and data sharing usually resulted  in new products.

Click here to speak with Andrew Hughes

LNS Research is thrilled to launch the first Analytics That Matter survey in partnership with MESA (Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association) International. For the last six years we partnered with MESA on the Metrics That Matter survey, which has been one important foundational element of LNS Research’s primary data-driven research. As the use of plant-centric data has expanded dramatically since the last survey in early 2016, we decided to change the focus from overall metrics to the use of analytics in manufacturing operations and beyond.

On Wednesday, February 14, LNS Research hosted the webcast, “Making Manufacturing Operations Management Choices in a Changing World.” The presentation examined the complex considerations involved in MOM system choices, why the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and manufacturing operations management (MOM) will partially merge, and what to expect in terms of data organization and protocols.  The discussion also included an examination of how manufacturing information architectures will change as companies move to smart manufacturing.

Here at LNS Research we have been covering the Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) market for the last six years and have witnessed a considerable change in the manufacturing software industry. MOM has been a crucial part of the industrial software stack that is defined by the ISA-95 standard and depicted in the diagram below. MOM is the bridging point between operations and business systems, the place where Operational Technology (OT) and IT converge.

Plex Systems is a cloud, software-as-a-service (SaaS), multitenant enterprise resource planning (ERP) and manufacturing execution system (MES) vendor with a historical focus on discrete manufacturers that are small and mid-size businesses (SMB) headquartered in North America, largely across the automotive supply chain. The company does have a growing number of customers in food and beverage and high tech. LNS Research recently participated in Plex’s Future of Manufacturing Roundtable, a joint customer advisory board / analyst event. The conference featured a combined review of Plex System’s 2017 progress, customer engagement, and forward-looking plans.

LNS has had lots of interest in our research on jumpstarting Digital Transformation with MES. It has led to many conversations with manufacturers and, unsurprisingly, these conversations have differed hugely depending on the level of digital maturity and the industry in the company involved. What became clear during these discussions is that companies with little automation and less manufacturing operations integration were keenest to get going with a Digital Transformation initiative.

In our recent webinar and ebook on jumpstarting digital transformation with manufacturing operations management (MOM) systems, we introduced the idea of moving towards a Digital Twin in the digital journey. Although the term "Digital Twin" emerged some 15 years ago, it's only now that computing power and simulation technology is sufficient to allow us to deploy Digital Twin solutions.

On Thursday, October 19, LNS Research hosted the webcast, “1-2-3 to Digital Transformation with MES: Manufacturing Operations, Maturity, Platform.” The presentation explained how to accurately assess and benchmark MOM against the ISA-95 model, plus other proven strategies to determine the right Digital Transformation jump-in point with manufacturing operations management.