Recently after traveling to Dubai for the IoT World Forum, it struck me that many manufacturers are still looking for that prescriptive roadmap to understand how they can transform their operations digitally. Everyone understands that digital disruption is a reality, no matter what type of products you manufacture or where you are located. The question is not when but how to respond and plan.

And, with the added complexity of industrial security comes serious risk s if you don't do anything. One statistic cites: The average hacker is in your factory for 6 -9 months waiting to steal your intellectual property. And the average time before an intrusion is detected is 6-9 months. This means that they have had freedom to look around and probably have free access to all of your information.
This truly drives home the point that it is key to ensure that your factories and facilities are not just connected but secure.

This new age of digital manufacturing is expected to drive dramatic business improvements for companies transitioning from legacy automation systems. Manufacturers can create a foundation for a highly integrated and intelligent decision-making value chainby connecting existing industrial sub-systems, sensors and machines with enterprise applications.

To help shed more light on this topic, we have designed a short 20 minute on-demand webinar to show how manufacturers recently have experienced business outcomes such as:

• A faster time to market with 48% reduced downtime
• Improved inventory management - increasing inventory turns by 35%
• Reduction in manufacturing defects by 49%
• Faster NPI, shaving 23% off cycle times
• Overall increase in employee productivity and security

My colleagueSteve Gansenwill be your host for this worthwhile webinar. Expect to learn best practices, insights and approaches that you can consider now. I hope you can check out this informative and illuminating discussion on how you can boost your manufacturing transformation. You can also learn more by visiting cisco.com/go/manufacturing or cisco.com/go/connectedfactory

Thanks for reading.