June 201819 CXO NSIGHTSSmart manufacturing is proving to be nothing short of a new industrial revolution. Companies around the world are using it to digitally transform their operations and to drive productivity improvements in virtually every process, worker and machine in their organizations.So it should come as no surprise that countries have created smart manufacturing initiatives to help usher industries into this new era. In Europe, manufacturers are transforming their operations and business models to align with Industry 4.0. In the Asia-Pacific, top initiatives include China Manufacturing 2025 and Make in India.Industrial IoT technologies present an opportunity to accelerate the realization of benefits from these initiatives. While the technologies alone are not an end solution, they can help companies improve time-to-market, lower total cost of production, improve asset utilization and reduce enterprise risk when they're deployed as part of a larger smart manufacturing strategy.Enabling TechnologiesIndustrial IoT technologies allow companies to optimize operations and derive new business value from leveraging data and information across their enterprise.For this to happen, manufacturers must first converge their plant-level operations technologies (OT) and enterprise-level information technologies (IT), which have long been separate from each other, into a unified architecture. The deployment of common, secure, standard and unmodified Ethernet as the communications network for real-time control and communications is often the first step to converging OT and IT.With a unified secure network infrastructure in place, companies can deploy the latest industrial IoT technologies across their enterprise. Key components of this deployment include:THE INDUSTRIAL IOT IS BRINGING SMART MANUFACTURING TO LIFEBY SUJEET CHAND, SVP & CTO, ROCKWELL AUTOMATIONSujeet Chand
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