93% of manufacturers have MES, but only 23% have fully integrated it, Rockwell Automation report finds

Nearly every large manufacturer has a manufacturing execution system running somewhere. Almost none have made it work everywhere. Rockwell Automation's new report, "Scaling MES Across the Enterprise," draws on responses from 1,560 manufacturing and industrial operations decision-makers across 17 countries and puts a precise number on that gap: 93% of manufacturers have MES deployed, yet only 28% have rolled it out enterprise-wide, and just 23% report full integration across ERP, PLM, quality, and operational technology systems.

More than half of the respondents work at organizations with over $1 billion in annual revenue, and 54% are primary decision-makers, making this one of the more operationally weighted surveys of its kind published this year. The findings land at a moment when many manufacturers are entering the second or third wave of their MES journeys, moving from initial deployment to questions of standardization, data flow, and system-to-system connectivity.

Integration is both the goal and the barrier

The report's most pointed finding is that integration is simultaneously what operators want most and what they struggle with most. Forty-four percent of manufacturers rank integration as their top MES buying requirement. That same challenge tops the list of modernization obstacles, with 33% identifying MES as their single biggest data integration problem.

The practical consequence is that most manufacturers are sitting on MES investments that deliver partial value. Production tracking may be working at the plant level, but data is not flowing cleanly into quality management, supply chain forecasting, or workforce productivity tools. IDC Associate Research Director Lorenzo Veronesi, whose firm contributed analysis to the report, noted that organizations risk leaving significant value on the table when disconnected systems and underutilized data go unaddressed.

AI ambitions are running ahead of data readiness

The report also surfaces a tension between AI roadmaps and operational reality. Manufacturers expect 42% of processes to be AI-supported within the next year, rising to 54% by 2030. At the same time, 43% of respondents acknowledge they are not effectively using the data they already collect. AI systems require clean, connected data to produce reliable outputs; the integration gap documented in this report is, in effect, an AI readiness gap as well.

Anthony Murphy, Rockwell's vice president of product management, framed the shift in operational terms: MES has moved from a production tracking tool to a system that should be generating insights across quality management, worker productivity, and supply chain forecasting. Connectivity, in his framing, is what makes AI viable at scale.

Cybersecurity moves from background concern to buying requirement

Security pressures are reshaping procurement criteria in real time. Forty-six percent of manufacturers reported a cyber incident in the past year. That exposure has pushed security and compliance to the second-highest MES buying requirement, cited by 43% of respondents. For procurement and IT teams evaluating MES platforms or modernization vendors, security posture is no longer a checkbox at the end of the evaluation; it is near the top of the scoring rubric.

A Tier 1 supplier's path from isolated sites to connected production

Kumi North America, a Tier 1 automotive supplier focused on injection-molded interior plastics and assemblies, illustrates what multi-site MES scaling looks like in practice. The company began using Rockwell's Plex platform in 2008 and has since expanded it across facilities in the United States and Canada, most recently adding Plex MES Automation and Orchestration capabilities. Paul Andrews, the company's assistant vice president of systems, described pre-Plex operations as difficult to synchronize, with some locations running no software at all.

What this means for your team

• Audit your integration coverage before new platform investments: the report indicates most organizations are paying for MES capabilities they cannot fully access because ERP, PLM, and OT systems are not connected. Identify which handoffs are broken before expanding seat count or site licenses.
• Treat AI readiness as an integration problem first: if 43% of manufacturers are not effectively using collected data, deploying AI tools on top of disconnected MES infrastructure is unlikely to deliver projected returns. Data architecture work should precede or run parallel to AI procurement.
• Elevate security requirements in any MES vendor evaluation: with 46% of manufacturers reporting a cyber incident in the past year, security and compliance should be scored at or near the level of integration capability when selecting or modernizing an MES platform.
• Benchmark your enterprise rollout against the 28% figure: if MES is live in some sites but not standardized company-wide, quantify the operational inconsistency. The report's broader dataset can help justify the budget case for a standardization program.