Rockwell Automation Completes Acquisition of Plex Systems

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Rockwell Automation, Inc., the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and digital transformation, announced that it has completed the acquisition of Plex Systems, the leading cloud-native smart manufacturing platform.

Plex offers the only single-instance, multi-tenant Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) manufacturing platform operating at scale, including advanced manufacturing execution systems, quality, and supply chain management capabilities. It has over 700 customers and manages more than 8 billion transactions per day. Plex will be reported as part of Rockwell’s Software and Control operating segment which provides leading hardware and software offerings for the design, operation, and maintenance of production automation and management systems.

“Plex Systems joins Rockwell at the perfect time, as more customers are starting to move their industrial applications to the cloud,” said Blake Moret, Chairman and CEO of Rockwell Automation. “Plex’s software capabilities will be further differentiated by Rockwell’s global market access, complementary industry expertise, and ability to turn real-time data into actionable insights. This will allow us to better serve our customers with cloud-native solutions that are easy to implement, use, and maintain. We are excited to complete this acquisition and welcome Plex and its employees into Rockwell.”

“Rockwell’s industrial and digital transformation leadership along with its geographic and industry scale make it the ideal home for the entire Plex Systems community of customers, partners, and employees,” said Bill Berutti, CEO of Plex Systems. “We are eager to integrate our Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform with Rockwell’s FactoryTalk suite to deliver on our commitment to optimize our customers’ operations and bring smart manufacturing to life.”

Today, Plex delivers tremendous value to customers in high-volume, highly repetitive discrete and process manufacturing sectors such as automotive parts, metal fabrication, electronics, food & beverage, and aerospace. Together with the advanced, cloud-native asset maintenance and management capabilities provided by Rockwell’s earlier acquisiton of Fiix, the combined offering is ideal for customers in industries like life sciences and consumer packaged goods that are focused on complying with regulatory requirements and meeting consumer expectations in areas like product quality, safety, and sustainability.

HI-LEX, a leading global automotive supplier, is a customer of both Plex Systems and Rockwell Automation.

“At HI-LEX, our vision is to be a world-class manufacturer by providing quality, cost-effective, and on-time products on a global scale to our customers,” said Dr. Brad Semp, Chief Operating Officer of HI-LEX. “We’re excited to see these two industry-leading suppliers come together to accelerate our digital transformation and deliver on that vision.”

“We continue to see the adoption of cloud solutions accelerate within the industrial sector, but many struggle with how to best integrate these solutions into their operations to maximize benefits and minimize risk,” said Kevin Prouty, Group Vice President, Energy and Manufacturing Insights at IDC. “The acquisition of Plex Systems fits the strategy for Rockwell to meet manufacturers where they are and deploy systems that can be configured to meet specific needs.”