Rockwell's Elastic MES: Bridging the OT/IT Divide for Smart Factories

MILWAUKEE, WI – December 09, 2025 – For decades, a deep chasm has separated the worlds of operational technology (OT) on the factory floor and information technology (IT) in the corporate office. This divide, characterized by siloed data, disparate systems, and conflicting priorities, has long been a primary obstacle to achieving the full promise of smart manufacturing. Now, industrial automation giant Rockwell Automation is making a significant move to bridge that gap, unveiling a re-architected portfolio of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) designed to be 'elastic'—unifying OT and IT on a single, cloud-native platform.

This strategic shift isn't merely an incremental product update; it represents a fundamental rethinking of how manufacturers can connect, analyze, and optimize their entire production lifecycle. By leveraging the cloud, artificial intelligence, and a modular architecture, Rockwell aims to solve a persistent industry headache and lay a resilient foundation for the next generation of autonomous operations.

The Integration Imperative

The challenge of integrating OT and IT is not a new one, but its urgency has intensified with the rise of Industry 4.0. OT encompasses the hardware and software that directly monitors and controls physical devices and processes—the machinery, sensors, and controllers on the plant floor. IT, conversely, manages the flow of digital information across the enterprise. Historically, these two domains have operated independently, creating information bottlenecks and limiting operational visibility.

According to Rockwell's own 2025 State of Smart Manufacturing Report, more than one-fifth of manufacturing leaders point to integration challenges as a top internal barrier to progress. This friction manifests in tangible ways: delayed decision-making due to stale data, difficulty in tracing product quality issues from source to shipment, and an inability to quickly reconfigure production lines in response to market shifts. Legacy MES solutions, often custom-built and confined to a single facility, have frequently compounded the problem, becoming rigid data islands rather than flexible information hubs.

"Legacy MES systems, while foundational, have become barriers to agility in an era defined by rapid change," noted Lorenzo Veronesi, associate research director for manufacturing at IDC. "This future lies in modern, flexible and scalable MES platforms that enable manufacturers to reconfigure processes on demand, integrate seamlessly across the digital thread, and accelerate innovation."

Enter the 'Elastic MES'

Rockwell's answer to this challenge is its 'elastic MES' portfolio, a suite of solutions built on cloud-native principles. The term 'elastic' refers to the platform's ability to flexibly scale capabilities up or down as a manufacturer's needs evolve, without the constraints of traditional on-premise hardware. This is largely enabled by its multi-tenant Software as a Service (SaaS) architecture, a model that significantly lowers upfront capital investment and shifts the burden of maintenance and updates to the provider.

This strategy was heavily bolstered by Rockwell's 2021 acquisition of Plex Systems, a pioneer in cloud-native manufacturing platforms. The integration of Plex's technology is central to this new offering, which unifies critical applications from materials and inventory management to production control and quality assurance on a single platform.

"Our elastic MES strategy and investments drive a fundamental shift in how manufacturers connect and optimize their operations," said Anthony Murphy, vice president of product management at Rockwell Automation, in the company's announcement. "DIY and disparate systems increase cost, risk and complexity. Rockwell's elastic MES unifies critical applications across OT and IT on a cloud-native, resilient architecture that grows with our customers."

By creating a unified data environment, the platform provides a single source of truth, embedding analytics and AI-driven insights to make production more agile and transparent. The architecture also supports hybrid deployments, allowing facilities to blend the resilience of on-site edge computing for real-time control with the scalability and analytical power of the cloud.

From Theory to Factory Floor

The practical impact of this unified approach is already being felt across diverse manufacturing sectors. For regulated industries like food and beverage, the benefits are particularly acute. David Rudofsky, chief financial officer of Wonton Food Inc., highlighted the flexibility of the platform. "Plex gives us flexibility to grow our digital infrastructure at our own pace," he stated. "For industries like food and beverage, Rockwell's purpose-built MES offerings simplify compliance for SQF and customer audits and reduce implementation time by eliminating the need for heavy customization."

This ability to streamline compliance and traceability is a critical value proposition. In pharmaceutical manufacturing, where GxP (Good Manufacturing Practice) regulations are paramount, Rockwell's FactoryTalk® PharmaSuite® offering creates a digital core that enables electronic batch recording and enhances overall efficiency. The ability to have a complete, auditable digital record from raw material intake to final product shipment is transformative for quality control and regulatory adherence.

Beyond regulated industries, the results are compelling. A major manufacturer of stationery, lighters, and shavers utilized the Plex MES to achieve real-time production visibility across its operations. A baking mix producer automated its work-in-progress (WIP) management, leading to improved performance across both finance and operations. These cases demonstrate the platform's ability to deliver tangible ROI by improving inventory accuracy, boosting line utilization, and reducing scrap.

The Strategic Blueprint for an Autonomous Future

While solving today's integration challenges is a significant achievement, Rockwell's elastic MES strategy is clearly aimed at the future. By creating a standardized, data-rich foundation, the platform is designed to be the digital backbone for increasingly autonomous operations. The embedded AI and machine learning capabilities are not just for generating dashboards; they are intended to provide predictive insights and intelligent guidance that will eventually allow systems to self-optimize.

This move also positions Rockwell strategically within a highly competitive industrial software market. Major players like SAP and GE Digital are also aggressively promoting their own cloud-based manufacturing solutions, recognizing that the future of industrial efficiency lies in breaking down data silos. Rockwell's deep expertise in OT, combined with its strengthened cloud and SaaS capabilities via the Plex acquisition, gives it a unique end-to-end value proposition, connecting the enterprise level directly to the machine level.

Ultimately, the launch of the elastic MES portfolio signals a broader industry transition away from rigid, monolithic systems and toward intelligent, composable platforms. For manufacturers, this means a new level of agility to respond to supply chain disruptions, shifting consumer demands, and the relentless pace of innovation. It is a critical step in transforming factories from simple production centers into connected, adaptive, and intelligent nodes in a global digital ecosystem.