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Forrester - Seamless Connectivity Fuels Industrial Innovation
Forrester - Seamless Connectivity Fuels Industrial Innovation

 

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Martin Cotter
Martin Cotter,

Senior Vice President Global Vertical Business Units and President, EMEA

Analog Devices

Author Details
Martin Cotter
Martin Cotter is Senior Vice President of the Industrial and Multi Markets Business Unit. In this role, Mr. Cotter is responsible for driving strategic growth, investment and value capture, and accelerated development of leading precision and core power products and complete solutions. Serving as many broad market customers as possible through ease of selection, adoption, and deployment through expert application support.
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THE CONNECTED FACTORY:
INDUSTRIAL CONNECTIVITY ACCELERATES INDUSTRY 4.0


Sophisticated, high-level industrial connectivity across the whole factory is the cornerstone of digital transformation. Without it, there’s no reliable method for turning mountains of industrial data into insights that lead to smart decision making and, ultimately, better business outcomes and industry disruption. While modernization and digitization are already being adopted by forward-looking manufacturers, the onset of a global pandemic has brought a new urgency to the need for developing advanced network connectivity. Next-generation industrial connectivity ties assets and technologies together into an efficient, resilient, and flexible ecosystem that can easily adapt to unique manufacturing needs and pivot to embrace future trends.

Developed over decades of disruption and innovation, Analog Devices has a deep bench of expertise in industrial and communications markets, along with system-level design and problem-solving. We collaborate hand-in-hand with customers to think about tough challenges in new ways and discover new solutions. However, we believe that there is always more to be learned by taking an outside view.

To further understand the impact of new connectivity trends on digital transformation, ADI commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the state of industrial connectivity, including efforts to deliver more timely data, insights, and decision making.


Forrester Logo

Discover key challenges and opportunities faced by leaders on their path to implementing industrial connectivity.

Download the Forrester study


After surveying over 300 global, senior manufacturing leaders responsible for defining industrial connectivity at their organizations, respondents were grouped by low, mid and high levels of digital transformation maturity. Among the report findings, here are some key insights that are particularly meaningful.

  • Low maturity firms are looking to rely on insights from connectivity – however, 53% of these organizations have legacy equipment that is unable to communicate with other assets.
  • Mid maturity firms are more confident in their efforts to improve network reliability and secure their industrial data. However, they are still finding their way along the journey to become digital-first organizations.
  • High maturity firms are embracing flexibility manufacturing, as around half of these respondents are most capable of handling small batch sizes, quickly reconfiguring, and customizing products.

The following interactive chart can help you identify where your organization falls on the digital transformation spectrum and shows what may be a logical next step towards a goal of future proofing your business.

Current IT Focus
Improving Customer Outcomes

Investing in technology to improve current customer outcomes is more important than improving efficiencies and cutting costs.

Challenges
Maintaining reliable network connections

Lack of reliable network connectivity impedes product innovation and slows time to market.

Business Outcomes
Increasing productivity

Increasing productivity and reducing downtime are the key drivers for investing in smart manufacturing.

Key Opportunities
Scale Communication networks

Move from connectivity pockets to successful communication across networks to support the factory of the future.

Current IT Focus
Improving operation control

Consider investing in industrial connectivity as crucial to informing long-term, competitive strategy.

Challenges
Realtime insights & Legacy systems

Extracting insights to plan labor resources and make safety decisions is complex.

Business Outcomes
Becoming a digital-first organization

Recognize that digital agility is necessary to respond to evolving customer needs.

Key Opportunities
IT/OT convergence

Better connect assets with corporate and factory data and workers in real time to improve efficiency and quality control.

Current IT Focus
Gaining Operational Insights

Recognize that investing in reliable networks is critical to realizing the benefits of IIoT.

Challenges
Ensuring Network Security

Preventing cyber attacks to protect company, employee and customer data is highly important.

Business Outcomes
Accelerating Product Innovation

Turning industrial data into actionable, real-time insights to be more agile and responsive to changing customer demands.

Key Opportunities
Cloud-Based Analytics

A continued investment in wired (industrial ethernet) and wireless (5G) network reliability will enable real-time monitoring and analysis to inform key business decisions.

The (Complex) Human Use Case

Connectivity for Industrial Innovation

SEAMLESS CONNECTIVITY FUELS INDUSTRIAL INNOVATION

Forrester Study: Seamless Connectivity Fuels Industrial Innovation

Read the Forrester study and discover key challenges and opportunities for leaders on the path to implementing industrial connectivity.

Download the Forrester study