中文The packaging manufacturing industry faces a quiet crisis that threatens operational continuity: its most experienced estimators, planners, and press operators are retiring, and they are taking decades of institutional knowledge with them. Pittsburgh-based ePS has addressed this challenge head-on with the release of CommandCore™ 2026.2, a platform update that systematically encodes plant-floor expertise into software — turning what was once tacit knowledge held by individual veterans into scalable, repeatable intelligence accessible to every operator.
“Packaging manufacturers are facing a real knowledge-transfer challenge,” said Craig Tait, Chief Product Officer at ePS. “CommandCore 2026.2 helps plants capture the expertise of their best people and make it repeatable across the business, from estimating and planning, to production control, and customer commitments.” The statement reflects a deep understanding of the industry’s pain point: the average age of a master estimator in North American packaging plants has risen past 55, and few younger professionals are entering the field with comparable depth of craft knowledge.
Radius® Estimating introduces pre-defined route templates, a feature that allows a senior estimator to configure proven routing logic once and have it automatically applied across every subsequent estimate. The implications for throughput are substantial: junior estimators can produce estimates with the accuracy of a 30-year veteran, while senior estimators are freed from repetitive tasks to focus on complex jobs that genuinely require their judgment. Early adopters report a 40% reduction in estimate turnaround time with no loss of accuracy.
Paxis® ERP takes a major step forward in 2026.2 with AI-powered dynamic translation across all workflows. In an industry where cross-border manufacturing is increasingly common — with design happening in one country, production in another, and customer service in a third — language barriers create friction and errors. The new translation capability allows teams to work in their native language without waiting for manual localization, reducing miscommunication and accelerating global deployment.
The corrugated MES receives a significant modernization in this release. MES Hub provides web-based access to orders, lineups, trim analysis, and production KPIs from any device — a browser-based experience that replaces legacy thick-client interfaces. For corrugator planners and plant managers accustomed to being tethered to specific workstations, this represents a meaningful improvement in operational flexibility.
On the automation front, AC4D® Packing Station Advanced now integrates directly with robotic palletizer systems, providing the software layer that connects physical robotics to production control without custom integration projects. PrintFlow® 4D debuts Order Promising, a feature that allows customer-facing teams to generate system-backed delivery commitments in seconds rather than the hours or days typical of manual scheduling processes.
The release also expands artificial intelligence capabilities within Radius ERP through an Estimate Win Predictor. By analyzing historical estimating and order data, the predictor scores the conversion probability of new estimates, enabling sales teams to prioritize the opportunities most likely to close — a data-driven approach to pipeline management that packaging manufacturers have historically lacked.
CommandCore 2026.2 is available now. For an industry grappling with demographic and competitive pressures, it offers a compelling proposition: software that does not merely automate tasks, but actively preserves and scales the expertise that makes a packaging plant competitive.
The workforce knowledge challenge that CommandCore addresses is not unique to packaging. Across manufacturing, the “silver tsunami” of baby-boomer retirements is creating expertise gaps that traditional training programs struggle to fill. What distinguishes packaging is the complexity of the knowledge being lost. A master estimator does not simply apply a formula; they draw on thousands of past jobs, understanding intuitively that a particular substrate behaves differently on specific press configurations, or that certain coating combinations reduce throughput by a predictable percentage. Encoding this granular, context-dependent knowledge into software is a fundamentally different challenge than automating a simple workflow.
ePS has taken a pragmatic approach to this challenge. Rather than attempting to build a single AI model that encompasses all packaging knowledge — an approach that would require years of development and still produce inconsistent results — CommandCore 2026.2 provides configurable templates and decision-support tools that let each plant capture and codify its own expertise. The distinction is important: it treats institutional knowledge as a competitive asset that varies by plant rather than a commodity that can be standardized across the industry. For packaging manufacturers considering technology investment in 2026, the workforce dimension may prove to be the most compelling argument for platform modernization.
Customer feedback on CommandCore 2026.2 has been notably positive. Early adopter plants report not only faster estimating turnaround but also more consistent quoting — reducing the variance between estimators that historically led to margin leakage on underpriced jobs and lost business on overpriced ones. One North American corrugated converter reported that within three months of deploying the Estimate Win Predictor, its sales team redirected 30% of its pipeline activity toward higher-probability opportunities, resulting in a measurable improvement in close rates without increasing headcount. These early results suggest that the ROI case for knowledge-capture platforms extends well beyond the initial workforce continuity argument to encompass genuine commercial performance improvement.
Source: WhatTheyThink
