Why Manufacturing Will Never Live in the Cloud

You wouldn’t allow your competitors to walk your floor and rifle through your files, so why allow strangers to access your data by placing it in the cloud?

Last week SalesForce, one of the most widely-used CRMs on the planet, inadvertently opened access to its Pardot repository leading to a full shutdown. This locked out thousands of users, for more than 15 hours. Not only did this failure result in private data being made available to the rest of the user base, it meant sales teams around the world were hamstrung from doing their job for multiple days.

The amount of potential revenue that was lost is incalculable, but many businesses feel so locked into their contracts and sales processes that they wouldn’t dream of moving onto a new platform. Mistakes happen and Salesforce will learn from this glitch making it even stronger moving forward… right?

This isn’t the first time a CRM (including SalesForce) has inadvertently shared private data and it won’t be the last. The reality is that systems hosted in the cloud are susceptible to mass outage, data corruption and cyber-attack. The only way to confidently protect your data is to house it on-premises, on your own secure server in a stable database.

The Wrong Manufacturing System

It isn’t just your sales data that is at risk. The engineering, planning and process data collected throughout production are what your plant relies for a competitive edge over your competition. Government contracts and certifications require safe-guards be put in place to protect that data but that doesn’t stop shops from allowing their intellectual property to be stored in a third-party cloud.

The critical data for every job released to your floor is put at risk the moment it passes through your firewall. This is why companies in industries like aerospace, defense and medical have kept far away from the cloud trend. They understand that you get what you pay for and the risks associated with passing private data through external systems.

The Real Cost of the Cloud

There is nothing more critical to the life of your business than protecting your manufacturing data. If it is corrupted your production grinds to a halt. Every minute production is down is profit lost and, even if production is capable of running manually, the data you need to run your business reverts back to 19^th century, paper and pencil processes.

Having to explain to your customers that your shipment will be late because your ERP/MRP/MES was down permanently damages the trust your team has built over the years. Your customers may not know exactly how production has been impacted, but they do know that if an entire line/area of your floor is down, their project is at risk too.

Researching your next shop floor solution? Start with the fundamentals: 
What the Size of Your Shop Says About Your Production Needs

Where to Turn?

There are secure solutions available for manufacturers. Your most secure option will always be restricting access to your system by keeping all connectivity on-premises. There are on-premises cloud options available on the market that carry similar principles, but it’s important that you learn everything you can about their processes of data-transfer to guarantee security at every step.

There’s a reason why the world’s biggest players in Aerospace and Defense have bucked the SAAS trends of the past five years. It’s because their data is too valuable to put in harm’s way and their contractors would never allow their plans to be in a compromising situation.

Next Steps

Don’t put your company at risk by leaving the keys to your data in the wrong hands. Work with the CIMx Experts that understand security is not a nice to have; it’s critical to your success.

To learn more about protecting your shop and keeping production on track, visit www.CIMx.com.