ABI Research’s "Manufacturers’ Technology Adoption & Attitudes Survey": Connectivity Investments Are Advancing, but Respondents Have Implementation Concerns

ABI Research’s “Manufacturers’ Technology Adoption & Attitudes Survey” has just been completed. More than 450 individuals (senior managers, plant managers, Information Technology (IT) professionals, and engineers) employed by discrete and process manufacturers located in the United States, Germany, and Malaysia proffered their opinions on a wide range of topics pertaining to their operations and technology investment plans.

What follows are the key findings and takeaways related to network connectivity and telecommunications.

The majority of respondents report that they are implementing and rolling out industrial Wi-Fi and Private 4G/Long Term Evolution (LTE) across their facilities and devising implementation programs for Private 5G.

The survey covered respondents’ investment priorities when it comes to improving productivity and quality levels. Interestingly from a connectivity perspective, controlling machines/equipment remotely is a higher investment priority to improve productivity than wireless infrastructure, asset tracking tools, condition-based monitoring solutions, or supporting remote working. Data are key for improving quality levels with respondents eager to create digital threads to track issues end to end and utilize machine vision tools and robotics. However, removing paper and digitizing data collection was the next most important investment priority and a reminder that, despite innovations around analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), digital twins, and the like, information is still recorded on paper at many industrial and manufacturing facilities.

On a more positive note, respondents that have moved away from paper-based processes are looking to analyze data in real time. But the performance of their network infrastructure and improving their security posture were the biggest technical challenges the respondents faced.

The survey shows that digitalization efforts will continue in earnest. Respondents answered that their greenfield facilities were more likely to be implementing and scaling newer technologies, such as AI or digital twins than their counterparts at brownfield facilities. Automation and digitalization will increasingly be evident at brownfield facilities with many implementing strategies to align their IT and Operational Technology (OT) teams.

Relations between IT and OT teams seem to have changed. What was once characterized as an adversarial relationship with teams often at loggerheads has shifted, with more than 300 respondents characterizing the situation at their facilities as collaborative, with teams coming to together to solve issues at least occasionally. In fact, 6% of respondents don’t have separate IT and OT teams.

But challenges remain, including supply chain performance, the rising cost of energy, wage expectations of recruits, and the fluctuations in exchange rates affecting input costs. The biggest challenge though is deploying technologies. Despite relations between the IT and OT teams now being more harmonious, respondents believe that staff don’t have the skills or expertise to take full advantage of new technologies.

Vendors should move beyond providing connectivity by partnering with others to provide solutions to improve productivity and/or quality. A key component of the go-to-market strategy should be providing a robust onboarding process with training and post-sales follow-ups. Among 22 topics, a robust onboarding process was most frequently selected when respondents were asked about their vendor selection criteria.