Robust, reliable data underpins almost every good business decision. To get that data, manufacturers need intelligent infrastructure that connects all of their devices and machines seamlessly and securely. With more connected manufacturing, you can increase visibility, solve problems faster and improve collaboration and decision-making.

It's never been more critical to ensure your operations are data-driven to help you address today’s challenges, including:

• Growing competition, including new entrants
• Continuing economic instability and uncertainty
• Ongoing skills shortages in the workforce
• Sophisticated and frequent cyberattacks

It’s clear that businesses that are reluctant to invest in smart manufacturing technologies are at a disadvantage.

The ability to overcome these challenges and ensure you’re agile enough to quickly address issues as they arise relies on having actionable, accurate data to inform key business decisions. If you're unable to see what is happening across your facilities, devices and functions, control can be compromised.

Use data-driven decision making to reduce uncertainty.

Predictive analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital twins can help take the guesswork out of investment decisions, budgeting and forecasting. Use robust and reliable data to boost competitiveness and stay ahead-of-the-curve through continuous data-led performance adjustments. For example, you could:

• Use digital twins to model flows and test improvements virtually, enabling you to improve space utilisation
• Implement predictive maintenance to help reduce unplanned machine downtime and help avoid missed production schedules
• Reduce and catch product defects due to machine wear or human error with real-time monitoring
• Use AI and machine learning (ML)  to improve forecasting, enabling the improvement of scheduling, better resource allocation and the best use of staff

In manufacturing landscapes where skilled workers are scarce, ensuring they are being as efficient as possible is key for productivity—and ultimately for business survival.

Data-driven insights can empower managers to balance resources and increase staff efficacy. Those insights can also help you to meet compliance requirements and contract terms. This can help avoid severe fines, penalties and damage to your business’s reputation.

Use data-driven insights to protect your organisation, customers and suppliers.

With cyberattackers constantly innovating and using more creative techniques, attacks are becoming more frequent and, often, more successful. This has led to an increase in the cost of mitigating successful attacks. In 2021, the average cost per industrial data breach was around $4.24 million.¹ 

To protect what really matters—customers, data and intellectual property—manufacturers need to invest in people, processes and technology.

Those who do not ensure their data is protected can face negative consequences. Aside from easy-to-quantify costs—such as regulatory penalties and the bills to remediate systems—there are a multitude of other potential impacts if data is not adequately protected. This could include lost business, both immediate and future; lost opportunities, as money and time are spent dealing with the attack; increased insurance costs; and damage to reputation and investor confidence.

But there’s hope. With security built into the network and the services that run across it, you'll be in a better position to protect your people and your customers.

Use data to focus innovation efforts.

Data-driven insights can help you to see what improvements can be made and spot opportunities for innovation. You could identify areas where automation or AI could improve efficiency and reduce delays.

AI and other innovative technologies can also help with upskilling employees and closing skills gaps. For example, you could:

• Leverage data to understand where training and development is needed
• Use augmented reality overlays to provide training on new equipment or even step-by-step instructions as workers are doing their job
• Accelerate onboarding and make new staff productive faster using digital twins and private 5G-based virtual reality training models

Data and smart technologies, like intelligent video analytics, can also help improve workforce safety. AI image recognition and intelligent video analytics running on edge computing can analyse existing video feeds to automatically check that staff are following safety protocols. If protocols are not being followed, they can help take action—such as sounding an alarm, deactivating machinery or raising a flag for additional training. In addition to keeping your staff—and your reputation as a company and as an employer—safe, the increased visibility could also help you to demonstrate compliance with safety regulations and avoid penalties.

Use data to predict and help prevent downtime and quality issues.

Unexpected crises can result in downtime and loss of customer trust, and can affect a company’s  financial and manpower resources to make things right. Access to robust, real-time data can help reduce uncertainty and improve your ability to respond to setbacks as they arise.

Real-time data gathering and analysis can provide insight needed to fix problems before they happen.

For example, AI and digital twins can help you improve forecasting and model the outcomes of changes—improving efficiency, enabling agility and avoiding disruption. Digital twins can help model ways to improve space utilisation and the impact on the flow of people and materials without making any physical changes. Using data models you can be more confident that your plans will deliver the expected savings and not have unexpected repercussions. This can lead to better results and fewer headaches.

Should issues arise, data-driven visibility can help businesses identify and resolve the underlying causes. You can use ML to trace failures back to the root cause, identify problems and fix them. Spotting problems sooner can help a business to save money and reduce impact on customer loyalty.

In manufacturing, visibility means everything. IT strategy is critical to achieving that. Being able to give the business reliable, real-time data to bolster key strategic decisions can make or break the bottom line. To take advantage of real-time data insights, manufacturers need infrastructure to enable that responsiveness and a platform for innovation. The business needs to be reliable, resilient, agile and secure.

Verizon has vast experience helping manufacturers solve some of their biggest challenges. We have decades of relevant experience, which enables us to provide practical and effective advice. Our global network, computing and security ecosystem can help you de-risk transformation, accelerate change and achieve the promise of digital technologies.