Memex Automation Completes Transaction To Become Public!

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BURLINGTON, ONTARIO – (Marketwire – Oct 30, 2013) – Astrix Networks Inc., operating under the trade name Memex Automation, is pleased to announce that it has completed the previously announced reverse take-over of GPS Investment Corp. The resulting issuer has assumed the legal name of Astrix Networks Inc. and the business of Astrix Networks Inc. will continue to operate under the trade name Memex Automation.  Upon receipt of final acceptance of the reverse take-over by the TSX Venture Exchange, the common shares of the post-reverse take-over Astrix Networks Inc. will commence trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the trading symbol “OEE”.

The reverse take-over is intended to serve as the “Qualifying Transaction” of GPS Investment Corp. pursuant to Policy 2.4 of the TSX Venture Exchange and is subject to acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange. Final acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange is subject to Astrix Networks Inc. fulfilling all of the requirements of the TSX Venture Exchange. It is currently expected that the TSX Venture Exchange will issue a Final Exchange Bulletin giving its final acceptance of this transaction in the next two or three business days, provided that all required documentation is filed with the TSX Venture Exchange.  Upon the issuance of the Final Exchange Bulletin, the common shares of the post-reverse take-over AstrixNetworks Inc. will commence trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the trading symbol “OEE”.

Memex Automation is the leader in real-time shop-floor-to-top-floor technology solutions. Memex’s flagship product MERLIN delivers Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) metrics in real-time, enabling manufacturers to enhance production and increase income and profits from operations. MERLIN has earned the 2013 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Technology Innovation Leadership.  Since 1992, Memex has partnered with 280 dealers worldwide to provide a variety of manufacturing connectivity products and services to over 12,000 customers globally.

For sales information, call +1 (905) 635-1540 or email salesgroup@memex.ca.

For more information and detail about this press release, please visit www.sedar.com, or contact:

Jill McCubbin

Conversation Architect

market2world communications inc.

Office: +1 (613) 256-3939

Email: jill@market2world.com

Or

Dave McPhail

President and CEO

Memex Automation Inc.

Office : +1 (905) 635-1536

Email: davem@memex.ca

Mazak Demos MTConnect With Memex at CMTS

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Mississauga, ON – Sept. 30, 2013 – Canadian Manufacturing Technology Show (CMTS 2013) – Mazak Corp., one of the largest machine tool manufacturers, is conducting a live demonstration at CMTS 2013 of leading edge machine tool automation with MERLIN, real-time industrial machine monitoring and control technology from Canada’s Memex Automation Inc. The Mazak-Memex demo will take advantage of MTConnect, the open source, royalty-free manufacturing protocol that helps unite islands of unconnected information on the shop floor. Dave McPhail, President and CEO of the Burlington, ON-based Memex, is also conducting a seminar on MTConnect Tues. Oct. 1 at 3PM in Mazak’s booth #4638. Memex is at booth #7023.

The Mazak-Memex collaboration at CMTS 2013, Canada’s premiere manufacturing event for buyers and sellers, follows a decision by Mazak to co-market Memex solutions on Mazak’s product list, and install Memex’s MERLIN solution throughout the machine tool manufacturer’s recently expanded 800,000 sq. ft. manufacturing plant in Florence, KY. This U.S. plant produces 100 different models of machine tools, including sophisticated 5-axis and multi-tasking machines. Many of these models are designed, and manufactured in the United States, then shipped across North America and also to export markets.

Memex Automation’s flagship product MERLIN, is a Manufacturing Execution System application that tracks manufacturing operations bi-directionally from the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) work order, to each machine’s detailed operations. MERLIN is able to connect to all machines on the shop floor using various protocols, MTConnect adapters, or network connectivity devices. It measures capacity utilization and Overall Equipment Effectiveness metrics, and tracks up to the second detail about every event at a machine, all automatically.

“Using MERLIN’s capability, Mazak is taking another positive step in further increasing the productivity of our North American operations, ensuring the strong competitiveness of our Kentucky manufacturing,” said Brian Papke, President of Mazak Corp. “We continue to take a leadership position in propagating the MTConnect open protocol. MTConnect’s value to our customers is in the ability for them to establish extensive and open channels of communication for plug-and-play interconnectivity between devices. MTConnect allows software to be universally applied between different types of machine models so that information is readily available for improving machine tool utilization.”

Earlier this month, Memex won the 2013 Frost & Sullivan North American Machine Monitoring Systems Technology Innovation Leadership Award. Frost & Sullivan awards recognize companies that demonstrate outstanding achievement and superior performance in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service and strategic product development.

About Memex Automation Inc.

Memex MERLIN delivers Overall Equipment Effectiveness (“OEE”) metrics in real-time, enabling manufacturers to increase production and increase Income From Operations profitably. Based in Burlington, ON, Memex is a 2013 Frost & Sullivan leadership award winner and a world leader in manufacturing connectivity solutions. Memex offers Shop Floor to Top Floor Information in Real-Time and has sold a variety of connectivity products since 1992 to over 12,000 customers with the help of 280 dealers around the world.  For more information on MERLIN, call Memex Automation at +1 (905) 635-1540, email salesgroup@memex.ca, or visit http://www.memex.ca.

For more information about this press release, please contact:

Jill McCubbin
Conversation Architect
market2world communications inc.
Office: +1 (613) 256-3939
Email: jill@market2world.com

or

Dave McPhail
President and CEO
Memex Automation Inc.
Office : +1 (519) 993-1114
Email: davem@memex.ca

To see this press release in Metalworking Production & Purchasing, click here

Memex MERLIN Selected by Mazak

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Burlington, Ontario Canada; Tuesday, August 27, 2013 – Mazak, the largest machine tool manufacturer in the world, has selected Memex MERLIN to be implemented at their world class manufacturing facility in Florence, KY, USA.

Following a thorough evaluation of vendors globally, Mazak issued Memex a purchase order to install the MERLIN solution throughout their plant.  MERLIN will be fully operational this fall and on display at Mazak’s Discover 2013, Technology and Education Event, beginning October 8th.

Memex Automation’s flagship product MERLIN is a Manufacturing Execution System application that tracks manufacturing operations bi-directionally from the ERP work order to each machine’s detailed operations.  MERLIN is able to connect to all machines on the shop floor using various protocols, MTConnect adapters or network connectivity devices. It measures capacity utilization and Overall Equipment Effectiveness metrics, and tracks up to the second detail about every event at a machine, all automatically.

“We continue to take a leadership position in propagating the MTConnect open protocol,” said Brian Papke, President of Mazak Corporation. “MTConnect’s value to our customers is in the ability for them to establish extensive and open channels of communication for plug-and-play interconnectivity between devices. MTConnect allows software to be universally applied between different types of machine models so that information is readily available for improving machine tool utilization. Using MERLIN’s capability, Mazak is taking another positive step in further increasing the productivity of our North American operations, ensuring the strong competitiveness of our Kentucky manufacturing.”

According to Neil Desrosiers, Mazak’s developer of digital solutions; “We want to demonstrate to our customers that they, too, can improve their productivity through MTConnect machine monitoring capability. Because when it comes to machine tool performance, you have to measure it before you can improve it.”

“Manufacturers today require both the adoption of new practices and new machining technology.  In order to improve productivity, the machines on the shop floor need to be analyzed continuously in an automated way”, said Memex President & CEO David McPhail.  “More and more companies are interested in enabling LEAN. If you can measure every state and event of the machine, then you have the evidenced-based data to effect change and improve efficiency of operations.” he said.

MERLIN utilizes the MTConnect protocol to communicate shop floor information to the top floor.  This MES solution will allow Mazak to monitor its manufacturing equipment in their award-winning plant and gather valuable data about their manufacturing operations. As well as keeping a historical record, MERLIN presents capacity utilization information in real-time in a format suitable fordisplay on large screens as well as on tablets and portable smart devices.

About Memex Automation Inc.

Memex MERLIN delivers overall equipment effectiveness (“OEE”) metrics in real-time, enabling manufacturers to increase production and increase income from operations profitably. Based in Burlington, Ontario, Memex, as a world leader in manufacturing connectivity solutions, offers Shop Floor to Top Floor Information in Real-Time and has sold a variety of connectivity products since 1992 to over 12,000 customers with 280 dealers, globally.  For more information, call 905.635.1540, email salesgroup@memex.ca, or visit http://www.memex.ca.

Memex MERLIN Wins Frost & Sullivan Award!

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Memex Automation has just won the 2013 Technology Innovation Leadership award for Machine Monitoring Systems, as given by Frost & Sullivan, in an independent and comprehensive evaluation by their Best Practices Research group.

Memex MERLIN scored 9.4 out of 10 and was evaluated against a large well known enterprise MES supplier with a rating of 7.4 and others in the 6.4 range.  This shows that MERLIN is an enterprise class MES system.  With the recent endorsement from Microsoft as the MES solution of choice for discrete manufacturing, and with various machine tool builders adopting MERLIN in their technology centers, it is recognized as a very powerful solution.

MERLIN received a 10 out of 10 rating in the major categories of Impact on Customer Value, Uniqueness of the Technology and Relevance of the Innovation to the Industry, which shows that Memex indeed brings true manufacturing value to our customers.

The report’s conclusion states: “Frost & Sullivan is of the opinion that Memex Automation’s MERLIN solution is the best solution currently available on the market for the efficient management and monitoring of equipment efficiency in the manufacturing sector.”  And furthering customer value: “…equipping customers to best achieve their goals of reducing their operating costs by adopting standard M2M (Machine to Machine) communication protocols and thus passing on the savings to their customers.”

You may be interested to know that a comment in the report about why companies do not succeed with lean initiatives came down to 2 points; “There are two reasons for these failures:

  • Lack of seriousness in the adoption of lean methodologies and culture of the organization
  • Lack of efficient tools for aggregating and analyzing machine data, a process that is the heart of lean manufacturing implementation”

With an independent evaluation like this, Memex hopes that it will assist in your project comfort level to proceed.  If you and your team can accomplish the first point above, then Memex MERLIN can solve the second point.

If you would like a copy of the Frost & Sullivan report, please email us at sales@memex.ca. The award ceremony is being held in mid-September in San Jose, California.

Memex is expanding Worldwide Operations into Europe

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Burlington, ON – February 8, 2013 – Memex Automation creator of the Manufacturing Execution System (MES), MERLIN, is expanding operations into Europe.  Memex announces it has signed a licensing and distribution agreement to structure the European operations with Sales Force Europe (SFE).

With a current customer base and dealer channel already in Europe, growing demand from new customers and a focus on global enterprise operations, this expansion is a natural business growth path for Memex.  “Customers want to be assured that local implementation sales support and service are available to them.  Global companies typically want a single common solution, supported on a worldwide basis.” said John Rattray, VP Sales & Marketing with Memex Automation.

As part of the operations, Memex has an expanding customer base in the Middle East and Africa and SFE will help guide a business strategy for these important markets.  SFE has operations in most European countries and is run as a central group with local operations.

MERLIN is a manufacturing productivity tool that provides a real-time automated approach to data collection and OEE metrics for visibility into what is happening at each machine or shop floor manual process.  The advanced functionality in MERLIN allows work order information to flow seamlessly from any ERP business system through the Manufacturing Execution System (MES) to the machine on the shop floor and back, an electronic traveler, delivering on a paperless shop floor.

“The benefits of plant-wide visibility mean pro-active response, less downtime, improved production scheduling and quality, as well as more extensive data analysis and reporting capabilities, often translating into a 10%-50% increase in efficiency.” said David McPhail, CEO of Memex, as he recognizes that Memex can deliver the “Factory of the Future” today.  “By automating the information flow, companies can better manage operations both vertically, “Shop Floor to Top Floor” and horizontally across the plant.”

Memex Automation will next showcase this powerful solution at the Microsoft Convergence conference, Booth # 2550, (http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/convergence) in New Orleans, LA, March 18-21, 2013, then at CMTS in Toronto, September 30th to October 3rd, 2013.

About Memex Automation Inc. (www.memex.ca)

Based in Burlington, Ontario, Memex Automation, founded in 1992, offers  “Shop Floor to Top Floor” Information – in Real-Time for the discrete manufacturing industry.  As a world leader in manufacturing technology Memex specializes in developing many engineered products using advanced R&D and has over 12,000 customers with 280 dealers worldwide.  Memex’s vision is to improve the way machines work and connect on the factory floor with Manufacturing Connectivity Solutions, to Automate the Automation, supplying component hardware, memory upgrades, and visionary shop floor communication technology.  Their products allow manufacturers to realize the impact of OEE Profitability delivering the “Factory of the Future”, today.

For more information about Memex Automation, contact John Rattray at 905.635.0590, email jrattray@memex.ca or visit http://www.memex.ca.