(Rockwell Automation: Milwaukee) -- Rockwell Automation has released “Scaling MES Across the Enterprise,” an industry insights report based on input from 1,560 manufacturing and industrial operations decision makers in 17 countries.

The research finds that despite widespread manufacturing execution system (MES) adoption, scaling it throughout 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, underutilized 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 enterprisewide, and just 23% report full integration across enterprise resource planning (ERP), product life cycle 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 modernization 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 cybersecurity 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 one automotive supplier specializing 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 in the United States and Canada. It most recently expanded its 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,” says Paul Andrews, assistant vice president of systems at 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,” says Anthony Murphy, vice president of product management at 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 an 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 actualized, 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,” says Lorenzo Veronesi, associate research director at IDC. “With integration ranking as both the top buying requirement and the leading modernization challenge, organizations risk leaving significant value on the table if disconnected systems and underutilized 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 here.

Methodology

This survey reflects input from 1,560 hardware, software, and services decision-makers in manufacturing and industrial operations globally. Respondents represent 17 leading manufacturing countries, spanning discrete, process, and hybrid industries. More than half (58%) work at organizations with over $1 billion in annual revenue, and 54% are primary decision-makers.