Rockwell Automation Fair 2025 Shows How Autonomous Operations Can Truly Scale

Rockwell Automation Fair 2025 took place in November, in Chicago. Attended by over 10,000 delegates from across automotive, consumer goods, life sciences, energy and other industrial sectors, it provided a clear view into how the firm is reshaping its technology stack, as manufacturers move from traditional automation towards systems capable of more autonomous and adaptive behaviour. The event placed substantial emphasis on the convergence of hardware, software and data management as a prerequisite for this transition. It also illustrated how agentic AI is beginning to influence product roadmaps within Rockwell’s Plex Systems platform.

Across multiple sessions, presenters described a progression that many industrial organizations are currently working through. Digitization has created visibility into processes and assets, while automation has helped teams respond to that visibility with greater speed and consistency. The next phase requires systems that can interpret operational signals and make contextually informed adjustments without direct human intervention. To support this, Rockwell has positioned its MES portfolio as a central enabler. Plex already processes more than 11 billion daily transactions, and its Elastic MES environment can adapt its configuration and scale as production conditions evolve.

The Elastic MES concept addresses several industry-wide challenges. Manufacturers are seeking platforms that can standardize processes across multiple facilities, while still allowing individual sites to adjust to unique requirements. They also require data models and connectivity frameworks that reduce custom development work and support interoperability with existing enterprise systems. Presentations from product leaders highlighted investments in standardized best practice models for execution, quality, maintenance and inventory workflows, along with a stronger focus on enterprise-level visibility.

A recurring theme throughout the event was the integration of hardware and software in ways that simplify engineering and operations. Demonstrations of FT Design Studio, Emulate3D and AssetIQ illustrated how Rockwell is attempting to link design, simulation and control development in a unified workflow. By enabling full system simulation without physical hardware, the firm is aligning with broader efforts across the industrial market to incorporate DevOps principles into automation engineering. Robotics sessions also pointed to ongoing work around unified robot control, mobile robot coordination and logistics automation, supported by the OTTO platform.

AI featured heavily across product roadmaps – although the framing remained focused on practical and incremental adoption. Presenters positioned AI as an embedded capability within existing solutions, rather than a standalone product category. Examples revolved around technician support tools, predictive maintenance features within Fiix and the use of simulation-informed optimization in control system design. The most forward-looking development involved agentic AI within Plex, where six initial agents are being introduced in areas such as automated quality checks and analytics recommendations. The roadmap also includes user-defined, goal-driven agents, and a Plex Agent Composer designed to help firms develop agents that operate across their IT and OT environments.

Several customer examples illustrated how these technologies are being applied. Texas Instruments is using data from chilling equipment to reduce energy consumption. GE is deploying OTTO autonomous mobile robots in production environments. Lucid is leveraging Rockwell technologies to support scale-up activities for the Gravity SUV. Additional sessions focusing on sustainability and materials traceability also referenced firms that are standardizing on Rockwell systems for industrial decarbonization and circularity initiatives.

Overall, the event provided a clearer picture of how Rockwell is structuring its roadmap around autonomy, and how it plans to unify hardware, software and data environments to support that objective. The sessions emphasized both the opportunities and the implementation complexity associated with autonomous operations and offered insight into how agentic AI will progressively shape capabilities within the Plex ecosystem.