Rockwell Automation’s survey of 1,560 manufacturing decision-makers across 17 countries reveals a significant MES adoption paradox: while 93% have a Manufacturing Execution System in use somewhere within their organization, only 28% have implemented it enterprise-wide, and just 23% have achieved full integration across ERP, PLM, quality, and operational technology systems. The real MES challenge isn’t a lack of technology—it’s the integration gap. And that gap is where much of the value from an investment manufacturers have already made remains unrealized.
The MES integration gap is the industrial IoT story that doesn’t need a new product launch or a funding round to matter, because it’s hiding inside software most manufacturers already own. Rockwell Automation’s “Scaling MES Across the Enterprise” report, published July 14, 2026 and based on 1,560 manufacturing and industrial operations decision-makers across 17 countries, found that 93% of respondents have a Manufacturing Execution System running in at least one facility, according to the report’s PR Newswire release. Only 28% have deployed it enterprise-wide. Just 23% report full integration across ERP, PLM, quality, and OT systems.
The distance between 93% adoption and 23% full integration is a 70-point spread, and that spread is not a technology problem, it’s an integration and change-management problem sitting on the desk of every VP of Operations and plant IT director surveyed, according to MarketScale’s analysis of the findings. The MES integration gap exists because buying and installing the software was always the easier half of the job. Connecting it to ERP, PLM, quality systems, and operational technology across every facility is the harder half, and it’s the half most manufacturers quietly stopped short of finishing.
93% of manufacturers have MES deployed in at least one facility.
23% report full integration across ERP, PLM, quality, and OT systems, the true measure of the MES integration gap.
Buyers themselves have already reordered their priorities around this gap: 44% of manufacturers now rank integration as their top MES buying requirement when evaluating new or replacement systems, ahead of feature depth or vendor reputation, according to the same PR Newswire release. That shift reflects a real fear driving procurement decisions, that another MES purchase without a clear integration path just adds a second disconnected island of data rather than closing the MES integration gap already sitting on the shop floor.
For manufacturers in Africa, Southeast Asia, and other emerging markets building out MES capability without the multi-decade runway larger incumbents had, the MES integration gap is both a warning and an opportunity: a newer deployment can be architected for enterprise-wide integration from day one, rather than retrofitting connectivity onto a system built facility by facility over twenty years.
Given that 44% of buyers now rank integration as their top requirement, a manufacturer’s first step should be assessing whether the existing MES can close the integration gap through further connection work before funding a full replacement, since the software itself is rarely the actual bottleneck.
The MES integration gap isn’t a story about manufacturers failing to adopt technology. It’s a story about technology that got adopted and then never finished the job it was purchased to do. Closing that gap, not buying another system, is where the next real return sits.
