A Forrester Consulting study found three in four manufacturers in Asia-Pacific prioritised innovation and automation for greater operational efficiency and resilience over the past 12 months.
Commissioned by HPE, the study, High-Tech Manufacturing Begins with High-Performance Networking and Security Solutions found that edge solutions, IoT applications, and networks were essential to driving innovation for 63% of respondents, with 61% indicating they had optimized manufacturing processes with automation and robots.
Source: “The Path To Smart Manufacturing Begins With High-Performance Networking Solutions,” a commissioned study conducted
by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Aruba, January 2022
Meanwhile, 69% of respondents said they were either piloting or already using cloud-managed networking and security solutions to benefit from improved flexibility, scalability, and defence capabilities.
“The turbulence in manufacturing and the supply chain seen in the last two years have underscored the need for manufacturers to accelerate their transition from mass production and economies of scale to prioritizing market and customer responsiveness," said Mark Verbloot, senior director, product, solutions and systems engineering for the Asia Pacific Region at Aruba.
He added that high-tech manufacturers are increasingly aligning their technology investments to secure and optimise operations while addressing data privacy and security concerns even as they build greater resilience in the long term.
The survey indicated that 66% of respondents see a rise in the importance of enabling consistent network operation and remote monitoring, and a similar percentage of respondents said modern, resilient operations are just as important. This is followed by 64% of respondents who indicated their intention to build on previous investments in AI-powered software to optimize operations, implement predictive capabilities, and optimize productivity.
Address data privacy and security concerns
With the increased connectivity and digitalization of processes and operations, the collection, transmission, and utilization of the breadth of data is becoming critical to the sectors' ability to scale operations and address the challenges posed by privacy and security concerns.
Among APAC decision-makers participating in the study, 52% ranked data privacy and security concerns within their top five challenges when implementing networking solutions, while 48% said the lack of cybersecurity features in legacy IoT devices is one of their top five challenges.
In response to data privacy and security concerns, manufacturers have plans to leverage emerging technologies and automation to secure their operations in the next 24 months.
These solutions include cloud-managed networking (38%) and SD-WAN (37%). More than 50% of manufacturers are also expanding, upgrading, or planning to invest in Zero Trust Edge solutions in the same timeframe, while 57% said identity-based traffic segmentation helps them to achieve their business goals.
Verboot says the manufacturing industry needs to develop greater agility and flexibility in its operations. “Innovation is at the heart of decision-makers' priorities but manufacturing leaders need to act now by leveraging high-performance network and security solutions to help the smart manufacturing industry scale effectively,” he added.
