2014 Information Integration Study: Five findings on integrating operations

Respondents to the Control Engineering 2014 Information Integration Study identified five high-level findings on how companies have undertaken projects to integrate multiple levels within their organization:

1. Integrated levels: One in five respondents’ indicated that their organization’s manufacturing floor (Level 1) and advanced manufacturing control (Level 2) are highly integrated. Another 13% claimed Level 1 and enterprise (Level 3) are highly integrated, and only 11% reported the same level of integration between Levels 1 and 3.
2. Benefits: Some benefits from recent integration projects include better support for decision making (46%), better control of resources (43%), more automated processes (41%), and faster decision making (41%).
3. Challenges: More than one-third of respondents agree that the lack of budget for integration projects, training people, personnel shortage, and confusion over scope/benefits are top challenges to integrating operations.
4. Security: Thirty-five percent of respondents’ networks are well defended with no known intrusions, while 39% have some defensive measures in place, and 15% don’t have coordinated defensive measures yet.
5. Remote monitoring: When asked about accessing manufacturing data from mobile devices, 38% of respondents said their data is kept isolated and not accessible from smart phones or tablets, yet another 21% allow management to routinely use these devices to upload information to their systems.

View additional findings at www.controleng.com/2014InformationIntegration. Amanda Pelliccione is research director for Control Engineering, CFE Media.

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