More manufacturers are now working alongside IT solutions providers like Computero to assist in navigating the changing IT landscape. Adopting new technology, and utilizing manufacturing IT services from a reliable managed service provider like Computero, can give you an edge and help you maintain your market share as a manufacturer in the current highly globalized market. Manufacturing IT offers new opportunities for manufacturers to improve efficiency, agility, and productivity through digitization and automation solutions.
Technology is changing how things are done in almost every industry, including manufacturing. By embracing new technology solutions, manufacturers can streamline the production process, innovate much faster, minimize costs and deliver high-quality goods that match customer demands. You may not realize this but manufacturing IT is the backbone of the transformative changes in the manufacturing industry that support automation and digitization. It ensures that people and machines work side by side by supporting flawless coordination.
Did you know that sustainability is one of the key drivers for manufacturers to adopt new IT solutions? Doing so would reduce greenhouse emissions.
What is Manufacturing IT?
Manufacturing IT refers to all technologies applied in the manufacturing process to support operations by providing timely and relevant information to inform decision-makers at various levels of the company hierarchy. It also supports automation and secures manufacturing operations and management processes sequencing.
By implementing manufacturing information technology, managers and stakeholders can understand the conditions of their production process and identify areas that need to be optimized and improved for better outcomes. You can implement manufacturing IT services and solutions for different stages of the production process or the entire production process, from raw materials to finished products.
Why Should Manufacturers Invest in Manufacturing IT Services & Solutions?
Manfacturing IT solutions are proactive, which is critical for improving productivity. Without knowledge of how your processes work, it isn’t easy to know where you should invest your resources. However, with information technology, plant operators and managers have a highly informed view of their manufacturing facilities and processes. IT systems create real-time records and capture relevant data throughout the manufacturing process, that helps optimize the processes to increase efficiency and reduce errors and downtime. Other benefits of our manufacturing IT services include:
- Provides essential information for proactive and reactive solutions for problems within the manufacturing plant, thus saving maintenance costs and time.
- Reduces production costs by ensuring resources are appropriately allocated and well-optimized.
- Saves production time by ensuring efficiency in the workflows and operations, leading to a shorter time-to-market.
- Promotes higher customer satisfaction since accurate real-time data informs the whole process.
Manufacturing IT Trends You Need to Know About
To differentiate yourself from competitors, you need to develop factory-wide agility. In addition to investing in state-of-the-art production machines, manufacturers must push further and digitize their complex routines to deliver goods on a configure-to-order requirements market. Some of the information technology solutions being highly used to achieve this include:
Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
43% of manufacturers are already using robotic process automation, while another 43% have plans to deploy RPA initiatives soon. RPA is mostly used to automate workflows and business processes that would otherwise require significant manual intervention. Manufacturers are using RPA to automate the quality assurance processes, facilitate order fulfillment and improve compliance. RPA systems free up workers to focus on other meaningful business functions while improving efficiency and minimizing the errors associated with manual processes.
Cloud Computing
Organizations need a tech infrastructure capable of handling large sets of data, one that is easily scalable and that can also make sense of data and effectively use other technologies at their disposal. Cloud computing makes it easy to store and retrieve important data from anywhere. Today manufacturers are using the cloud to streamline supply and inform the manufacturing process from when raw materials are delivered to when the final product is shipped to the retailer. Easy access to data helps improve productivity and is a reliable way to track all your manufacturing operations.
Big Data
Data is considered a vital resource in every industry, including manufacturing. Data is like a legal cheat sheet to help you get a leg up against your competitors. You will need to collect important information from your machines to make better sense of the production stages, assist with overall performance, predict machine failure, determine resource allocation, adjust product quality, help with research, improve customer experience, and more.
With big data comes data analytics that helps manufacturers harness the power of the data collected. The data could be about products, customers, and marketing to production phases. You can use data analytics to make forecasts and predictions for the future so that you’re aware of the volume of demand to anticipate any changes in consumer behavior.
Smart Manufacturing
Smart manufacturing connects data, people, and machines, and the connections are not limited to time or distance. It relies on the industrial internet of things (IIoT) to have the three elements stay in communication to reduce labor and production costs and minimize errors, downtime, and waste. This streamlines manufacturing operations while also improving the experience of workers.
Besides facilitating communication among devices, smart manufacturing creates efficiency in equipment management, regulating maintenance schedules, tracking inventory, measuring performance, etc. Smart manufacturing is constantly developing, and the goal is for it to allow organizations to monitor their entire manufacturing workflow, troubleshoot problems, optimize performance and make informed decisions, all in real-time.
Cyber Security
With a growing online presence and heavy reliance on cloud solutions, cyber security has become an important part of IT management. Data security in the manufacturing industry needs to be addressed by employing efficient tools that focus on detecting breaches or attacks, protecting against malware, and responding to any attempted attacks.
Manufacturing industry cyber security ensures all devices and users online are protected from malware or hacking attempts. It should also adhere to compliance regulations to save you from legal problems.
Implement New Tech Into Your Current Workflow With Our Manufacturing IT Services & Solutions
The technology used by manufacturers varies widely in its uses and applications. For many manufacturers, adopting these solutions is not the problem; the challenge comes during implementation and when trying to find the right hardware to bridge the gap between the industrial operations and the insights delivered to stakeholders. The goal is to adopt and implement unified systems that improve collaboration and build meaningful connections between machines and teams.
For any questions related to manufacturing IT services or solutions, or if you need help streamlining your information system technologies, contact Computero today. We provide professional and reliable managed IT solutions for a safe, secure, and productive working environment.