Traditional MES Wasn't Built for Palletized Machining. RCO Engineering Found What Was.

Palletized machines are among your highest-output assets and your hardest to track. An operator names a few jobs at the start of a shift, the cell cycles through them automatically and by day's end your ERP has no real record of what ran or for how long.

RCO Engineering knows the problem. With roughly 600 employees across multiple campuses and a mixed environment spanning welding, stamping, tooling, mold, EDM and CNC machining for aerospace and contract work, the team's palletized cells were the hardest to track. Run times went uncaptured and keeping inventory accurate took hours of manual correction at the end of every shift.

Join this session to hear from Eric Doyle, Operations Manager at RCO Engineering, for a candid look at why standard MES fell short on their most demanding machines and what changed when they augmented Epicor with MES built for palletized machining from MachineMetrics. They will share what wasn't working on the floor, how purpose-built inventory tracking brought their material data back under control and gave those manual hours back and how easier tools in operators' hands, including Max AI to answer floor-level questions on the spot, changed who actually uses the system and what the data makes possible.

We will close with a look at where shop floor execution is headed next, including a preview of what MachineMetrics is bringing to IMTS 2026.

Agenda

• Why traditional MES breaks on palletized machines. When a cell cycles through jobs and part numbers automatically, manual entry can't capture true run times or material use and that's where the data falls apart.
• MES that augments your ERP, not replaces it. How RCO layered MachineMetrics onto Epicor and built custom inventory tracking around their workflow, rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all template.
• How visibility turns into decisions. Moving from lagging counts and manual fixes to data leaders can act on, from reclaiming labor hours to justifying a new palletized cell to quoting with confidence.
• What's Next. A first look at how the line between ERP planning and shop floor execution is changing, ahead of IMTS 2026.