As I have been fully engaged in finalizing the analysis, data and strategic insights in support of VDC's Industrial Networking Products Track 2: Competitive Analysis market studies on wireless and wireline networking products, blogging activity slipped off my radar screen.
Back in mid February I posted a blog on the the growing need for greater cooperation amongst factory floor plant operations and the Enterprise IT world. In that blog I indicated posting a follow on blog revealing the findings from over 300 respondents on who is the key decision-maker where in regards to their industrial networking infrastructure solution investment decisions.
The results were interesting and somewhat surprising given my belief that the factory floor primarily operated in the past as a siloed enclave onto its own with its own standards, processes and mandates. Users overwhelmingly indicated that Corporate IT was the key decision-maker in their industrial networking solution deployments.
The fact that plant and corporate level operations are playing such a key role in at least some of the user's operations was a modicum of comfort given how vital their input can be, based on their technical and operational experiences and proximity to the idiosyncracies of plant operations, in making the best decision possible for the greater corporate good.
It is my belief that personnel from the operations world must be more proactive in learning to cooperate better with the personnel from the Enterprise IT world and try using sound logic, personal persuasion and facts to help influence the final decision that IT is apparently going to be making anyway. In most situations not many companies are going to make a decision to invest in any technology or standards that will ultimately place the manufacturing operations at risk anyway, so much of the tension between these two worlds is as much based more on personalities and egos than logic and technology.
If you see that change is coming and that it is likely inevitable than I believe it is best to embrace the change and become a positive proponent for it so as to help shape the change for the better, rather than resist, delay the inevitable and experience frustration along the way. Embracing change is always easier said than done, at least for me anyway.
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