Our manufacturing expert had the opportunity to take a look at a deployment of the Plex Manufacturing System. Like many enterprise solutions they do many things. But only a couple are done well. We found that the Business Management Modules were of medium effort to deploy and worked to expectations. The modules related to manufacturing seem adequate. They do require more customization and the help of an outside consultant. In particular, the Inventor Management module does have off the shelf integration components to keep track of consumed items. However, the hardware offered does put the environment back a few decades. One would think at the least the Inventory module would have come with a mobile application, or desktop tool to handle scanning barcodes easily. Not the case. This module will most likely require and outside software consultant to create tools to automate inventory adjustments. The Quality Management module does not have the intuitive UI that other QA applications offer. It does look to have the features needed, but this module also may require outside help.

Overall Plex has put together a good cloud based system for manufacturing. It is our observation that Plex is not a ready to go off the shelf solution and will need a dedicated professional to administer it and understand its abilities and gaps.