Portland Bottling Company (PBC), a U.S. beverage co-packer, has been named a recipient of the 2025 Plex Transformer Impact Award after doubling its monthly production volume and posting a string of measurable operational gains.
The company specializes in ready-to-drink beverages manufactured exclusively in aluminum cans. As customer demand climbed, it needed a level of operational visibility and control its existing setup couldn't deliver.
Before implementing the Plex Smart Manufacturing Platform in 2020, PBC managed inventory, production, quality, and shipping with nine disconnected technologies with no single source of truth. Manual processes introduced data errors, limited production insight, and slowed the company's ability to respond to customer needs.
Using this system, operators would record production counts, scrap, and downtime on paper and later key the information into spreadsheets. According to Rockwell Automation, this type of workflow multiplies opportunities for mistakes.
As Michael Hart, head of industry strategy and growth at Rockwell Automation emphasizes, food safety is non-negotiable in beverage packing. Without a single source of truth, limited production visibility results in limited traceability, causing both quality and inventory accuracy to suffer.
To address those gaps, PBC worked with Plex partner Revolution Group to implement Plex MES, including Plex MES Automation & Orchestration (A&O) and Plex Quality Management System (QMS). A&O pulls data directly from the bottling lines in real time.
“Tracking our customers’ inventory accurately is paramount to our business,” says Robert Van Blake, IT director, Portland Bottling Company. “Plex enables us to do this efficiently and to easily report on-hand balances and warehouse charges. Real-time data is a key factor in operational productivity improvements. Prior to Plex, this data was cumbersome to collect and subject to human error.”
Consolidating nine systems into one
PBC’s consolidation of its technology landscape into one connected platform gave every department access to the same real-time operational data, which according to Rockwell, eliminated the silos that had constrained growth.
The benefits of that connected system are visible on the plant floor. PBC places 100% of its product on quality hold pending lab results, and the moment a lab technician enters a pass result, the inventory is automatically unlocked for the shipping team, minimizing the risk of shipping uncleared product. The same visibility tells a batching operator exactly where a needed ingredient is and confirms it’s the right lot.
More broadly, Plex MES is designed to integrate with existing packaging line equipment through an interoperable connectivity layer that bridges both modern and legacy systems. By connecting directly to equipment and control systems on the plant floor, the platform captures machine data, production performance, and quality information directly from the packaging line.
Measurable operational wins
The impact was both immediate and sustained, according to Rockwell. PBC increased production from 900,000 to 2 million case equivalents per month. Inventory accuracy reached 99%—spanning quality, receiving, batching, and warehouse put-away—while shipping accuracy hit 100%. The company also reduced inventory levels by 25%, lifted productivity 10%, and cut waste 20%, alongside quicker maintenance response times, fewer expediting charges, and less downtime.
Much of that came from A&O specifically, which combined shop-floor data with Plex inventory and quality transactions and surfaced real-time KPIs and Andon boards—a visual management tool—so operators could see what was working and adjust accordingly.
"Plex MES extends beyond execution to help manufacturers bring greater coordination and visibility across quality, inventory and production," says Hart. "Portland Bottling Company's transformation brings this to life, showing how a connected operational foundation can drive both efficiency and scalable growth."
