As manufacturers seek to gather more and better data to drive evidence-based decision making in their operations, getting good information from legacy equipment and systems becomes critical. Many companies offer solutions, ranging in complexity, cost and function. Most of those tend to be proprietary systems from large software producers.
However, open-source options or free systems with premium add-ons (freemium) are also available. How comfortable are manufacturers with such options? This survey aims to understand how manufacturers of all sizes see the value of using next-generation open source or freemium MES.