Food and Beverage Manufacturing

Batch-Oriented MES

• Model expected yield losses in detail and report on actual performance in pounds, labor efficiency, and production costs.
• Schedule optimal batches in series or in parallel across multiple workcenters with varying capacities.
• Schedule pre-process/prep operations tied to specific batches and batch sizes automatically.
• Enforce in-process quality control plans to ensure proper stock rotation of perishable products.
• Integrate with weigh scales, use configurable container and pallet labeling, and more.
• Rely on intuitive, role-specific access through Plex Mobile that simplifies life and provides real-time connectivity to the platform from anywhere, at any time, and on any device.

Automate, Orchestrate, and Understand Your Plant Floor

• Connect to the plant edge to control information and processes while adding efficiency, saving cost, and eliminating manual errors.
• Connect the plant floor to systems to digitally track production and provide real-time, actionable information and operational KPIs without the complexity of hardware or customized software.
• Automate data capture and processes to increase control, gain real-time machine status insights, accurately record production, improve traceability, and execute processes like job setup and lineside labeling with Plex A&O.
• Prevent downtime with asset performance management (APM) which helps pinpoint and measure asset performance and machine health.
• Extend your capabilities using low-code application building to create custom workflows, content specific visualizations, and solutions that meet localized needs.
• Connect to machines seamlessly and access the real-time operational KPIs you need to take control of performance with production monitoring.

World-Class Food Safety & Quality Management

• Execute quality checks on any device and see results on a fully digital, single source of the truth.
• Depend on process and product quality control capabilities that cover all functional areas from receiving through production and finished goods.
• Reduce time responding to mock or actual recalls with powerful lot track and trace, tracing from source to destination or vice versa.
• See all customers who received non-conforming lots and inventory at any stage of production.
• Handle allergen and country of origin tracking, SPC & problem control, and supplier quality management.
• Automate checksheets to collect data from PLCs.
• See quick links to maintenance work requests, gauges and tooling, attachments, and quality and HACCP checks within the platform.

Supply Chain Planning

• Incorporate advanced requirements planning, statistical forecasting, and demand planning with machine learning into your smart manufacturing foundation.
• Connect the top floor with the plant floor and suppliers with customers in a closed-loop planning process.
• Leverage sophisticated statistical algorithms to forecast demand based on historical sales data, external feeds like point-of-sale information, and more.
• Make collaborative forecast adjustments to reflect information on new programs, customers, products, promos, etc.
• Get help with distribution requirements planning in a multi-site network.
• Explode material requirements and plan production orders against a rough-cut capacity plan to dynamically calculate reorder points and other planning parameters.
• Build plans that lower costs while improving schedule attainment and customer on-time deliveries and satisfaction.
  

Flexible Deployment Options

• Achieve true flexibility with solutions that enable real-time integration and bi-directional communication that must co-exist in a hybrid IT environment.
• Enjoy cloud-based architecture coupled with an open integration layer and scalable functionality.
• Flexible deployment options from standalone production monitoring or quality/QMS to more comprehensive plant-level MES or enterprise-level ERP, Plex meets manufacturers where they are with solutions for today and that scale for tomorrow.

Built-in EDI and Integrations

• Access a robust library ​of 18 off-the-shelf EDI documents ​and 112 food industry trading partners​.
• Benefit from EDI mapping and processing​ that occurs directly in Plex ERP, resulting in comprehensive error checking​.
• API library allows you to integrate with external systems such as nutritional labelling, trade promotion management, and transportation management​.
• Integrate MES, QMS, and other modules to any ERP (SAP, Dynamics, etc.) and to plant floor process control systems​.