Chemstar is the world’s leading industrial starch polymer specialist founded in 1965. The company specializes in an advanced bio-based polymer portfolio alongside custom formulating expertise. Chemstar serves industrial markets, with a strong presence in oil and gas, mining, and construction, where quality, traceability, and consistency are essential.
Speaker Information
- Long onboarding time due to complex processes
- Disparate systems across operations
- Limited granularity and visibility
- Reduced onboarding time by over 50%
- Increased overall quality passing rate by 4.2%
- Decreases manufacturing variances by nearly 100%
- Decreased inventory adjustments by 75%
- Lowered scrap rate by 73%
Overview
Sam Werler is the Director of Strategic Operations at Chemstar, a leading industrial starch polymer specialist since 1965. Chemstar understood the importance of data, quality, and operational excellence. However, before Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform™, the company relied on an outdated ERP environment supported by spreadsheets and disconnected systems. To support long-term growth and gain deeper insight into operations, Chemstar needed a more granular, unified solution that could bring all processes together under one system.
Challenge
Outgrowing an Outdated ERP Environment
Before Plex, Chemstar’s systems provided a basic infrastructure. While the team could access purchase orders, sales orders, and inventory, nearly everything else was housed elsewhere. Quality operated in a custom-built system, maintenance was managed in a separate module, and operational data was tracked manually in spreadsheets.
The Chemstar team knew they needed more. Not only were they eager for greater detail and better integration, but they wanted a streamlined way to manage the entire operation under one platform – a single source of truth.
Solution
Building on the Rockwell Foundation
As the search for a new ERP system kicked off, Chemstar was approached by a Plex sales representative at what the team described as “perfect timing." Leadership had just begun evaluating potential solutions, and Plex was added to the list.
Chemstar already operated with with Rockwell Automation and Allen-Bradley technology in their plants. When Rockwell acquired Plex, the Chemstar team was further convinced Plex was the correct solution and moved forward with confidence in a long-term roadmap and foundation potential with Plex. Ultimately, Plex was chosen and the implementation process began at the start of 2022.
Chemstar partnered with Revolution Group, who brought together subject matter experts across each department and tackled the implementation with a module-by-module approach. Migrating and cleaning years of data was a significant task, but Revolution Group helped guide everyone through the process as smoothly as possible. The Chemstar team acknowledged that reaching Plex’s full potential would take time. Sam Werler, Director of Strategic Operations at Chemstar, noted that it’s unrealistic to expect perfection at go-live and that learning and growing are part of the journey.
“It really took us a year or two to fully get Plex to where it is today,” Werler stated. “And we’re still growing with it.”
By August of 2022, Chemstar had completed their Plex implementation and gone live with the new technology. While moving away from the familiarity of their legacy tools took time, Chemstar remained focused on the goal of utilizing a single source of truth and ultimately achieved a successful Plex implementation.
Results
Driving Adoption and Building a Unified System
With Plex, Chemstar has gained deeper insight into operations, costs, and quality. This has allowed the team to focus less on manual entry and more on what matters most: quality and safety.
Supervisors now communicate more effectively with access to real-time dashboards, and each department can see their metrics at any time. The Chemstar team is becoming increasingly comfortable with the new process flows module, which allows them to automate even the most menial tasks. These automated process flows handle everything from auto-notifying departments of various changes to transferring information more quickly.
Onboarding has also improved dramatically. With tailored onboarding checklists and digital work instructions, training is standardized and onboarding time has decreased across multiple roles. Not only is everyone now trained on the same documentation, but with custom reporting, the team can locate information with ease, regardless of role or department.
Root cause analysis has also been standardized and is now tied to each customer record, helping to solve issues at an individual level. Material variability within products has decreased, and the team now makes frequent use of both lot trace and lot management, making it easy to trace everything directly back to the raw material itself.
The ability to make data-driven decisions with Plex has digitally transformed Chemstar’s operations. The metrics speak for themselves: manufacturing variances have decreased by nearly 100% and inventory adjustments have decreased by 75%. Additionally, the overall quality passing rate has increased by 4.2% and the scrap rate has lowered by 73%.
“Before Plex, we were in the dark ages when it comes to an ERP and an MES,” Werler said. “We had data and information in many different areas, but a lot of it wasn’t good data. Plex is allowing us to allow people to do their jobs and not have to constantly input data.”
The company is now in the process of implementing additional Plex capabilities, including Asset Performance Management (APM) and MES Automation & Orchestration (MES A&O). By moving away from spreadsheets and disparate systems to a unified, smart manufacturing platform, Chemstar has positioned itself for long-term operational excellence and growth.
Published July 1, 2026
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