Modernizing Manufacturing
Growing manufacturers are prioritizing IT modernization to boost operational efficiency, improve safety and security, reduce human errors, and make more accurate decisions. They are transforming factories into smart operations that are adaptable, secure, efficient, and sustainable. But smart factories require more applications and more data than ever before to deliver the insights that leaders need and the modern products that customers want.
A recent survey of IT leaders in growing manufacturing organizations found that 92 percent agree digital transformation is a top priority and have a formal, written plan for data center modernization over the next two years.1
Manufacturing leaders are building scalable, flexible, and enterprise-grade infrastructure to support the Internet of Things; predictive analytics and maintenance; sensor technology; and much more. They are powering the manufacturing organizations of today and preparing for the future.
Better, faster, safer: Addressing manufacturing Priorities
Modernization roadmaps in growing manufacturing organizations are designed to address a series of interrelated priorities that create incremental change today and a future-proofed foundation for continued growth.
Operational Efficiency
Manufacturing leaders say increased operational efficiency is their IT department’s No. 1 goal for the next two years.2 Faced with staffing challenges and growing operational costs, manufacturing organizations need to accomplish more with the same or fewer resources. They want to lower costs, increase asset utilization and product yields in plants, improve energy efficiency, and reduce waste. To do so, they are turning toward edge applications and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, as well as data analytics, to transform manufacturing operations at scale.
Cybersecurity
Once primarily a concern of information technology (IT) teams, cybersecurity is now equally a concern of operational technology (OT) teams. It is essential not only to data and intellectual property protection, but also to product quality, personnel safety, and facility uptime. Replacing outdated infrastructure and deploying integrated cybersecurity technologies can dramatically improve an organization’s cybersecurity posture.
Cyber technologies, extended across the enterprise – from the edge to the data center to the cloud – can reduce vulnerabilities; safeguard user identities, data, and systems; speed time to recovery from cyberattacks; and minimize penalties associated with compliance failures and fraud.
Agility and Flexibility
The manufacturing industry is evolving rapidly in response to technology innovation and changing consumer preferences. To gain competitive advantage, manufacturing organizations must be able to ingest and merge massive amounts of IT and OT data from diverse sources and assess that data in real time to inform decision making. They must ensure that new IT solutions can scale across product lines, factory sites, and operating environments. They are investing in hyperconverged infrastructure to create more agile and flexible operating environments across on-premises and cloud resources.
Scalable it for Smart Manufacturing Organizations
Manufacturing organizations must overcome substantial barriers to realize the full potential of their IT modernization roadmaps, including procurement obstacles, data silos, lack of skilled data center workforce, and difficulty integrating new technologies.
Successful digital transformation relies on the solid foundation of modern, scalable, and flexible infrastructure. Legacy infrastructure and applications increase IT complexity and can’t scale to support or secure data-intensive modern technology such as AI and machine learning applications.
Dell Technologies helps growing manufacturing organizations modernize with scalable compute resources and storage. Our solutions support evolving service delivery and operational goals, simplify management of larger and more complex IT landscapes, break down organizational silos and integrate ecosystems, maintain security and compliance, and seamlessly shift resources to support increasingly diverse workloads.
Innovation Anchor: Enterprisegrade Infrastructure
Anything is possible with modern, enterprise-grade infrastructure that offers scalable server, storage, and edge solutions that underpin hybrid, multicloud, and colocation environments. These robust environments power workloads that deliver new insights and truly remarkable smart factory outcomes by enabling organizations to tap vast data stores and leverage highperformance computing, AI, and machine learning.
Hybrid, Multicloud, and Colocation
To take advantage of the innovation, agility, security, and cost savings that cloud can offer, manufacturing organizations need a single, multicloud operating model from edge to core to cloud. This simplifies cloud management, reduces migration costs, and extends existing investments and skill sets. Dell Technologies works with manufacturing organizations to deliver this operating model in the way that delivers the most value for the organization. That could be a cloud-like experience on premises, a colocation environment that the organization manages, or a hybrid or multicloud environment. Our strategic cloud partnerships and a full range of consulting, deployment, support, managed, and education services help manufacturers make the most of their cloud investments.
AI-Enabled Operations and Data Analysis
Artificial intelligence (AI) and growing levels of automation present tremendous opportunities for manufacturing organizations to operate more efficiently, respond to changing customer preferences, bolster security, and gain insights from data that improve operational efficiency and inform new products.
Successful AI implementations require rethinking people, processes, and technology to capture and process volumes of diverse data using machine learning and deep learning models integrated into processes and applications. Dell Technologies can help manufacturing organizations develop plans to capture valuable data and deploy validated solutions that reduce cost and risk. Our partnerships with other AI innovators and our flexible IT consumption options enable organizations to deliver and scale AI use cases to drive digital transformation on their timelines.
Dell PowerEdge Servers
Put these innovative technologies to work for your manufacturing organization with Dell Technologies pre-configured PowerEdge servers, which offer adaptive compute capabilities that scale, autonomous compute infrastructure, and proactive resilience with an infrastructure designed for secure interactions and the capability to predict potential threats. The PowerEdge XR4000, Dell’s shortest-depth server, is purpose-built for the edge, delivering highperformance compute in unpredictable conditions while saving much-needed floor space.
Dell PowerStore 500
Get the storage capacity you need with Dell Technologies PowerStore 500, an all-flash data storage appliance that eliminates typical tradeoffs between performance, scalability, and storage efficiency with a flexible, containerized software architecture. With PowerStore 500, mid-size manufacturing organizations can complement existing infrastructure investments with the flexible and scalable storage capacity they need to support modern workloads.
Project Frontier
Project Frontier by Dell Technologies will deliver an edge operations software platform to securely scale edge operations to power any use case. The platform will unify edge operations across infrastructure and applications, provide zero-trust security protection from end to end, centralize management and deployment, and minimize the need for IT expertise in the field via automation.
Purpose-Built Solutions for Manufacturing
Dell Technologies offers validated solutions that are purpose-built for manufacturing use cases at the edge. Built on award-winning hyperconverged infrastructure – Dell EMC VxRail or PowerEdge servers – and leveraging an ecosystem of industry partners, these solutions provide a comprehensive ecosystem to support smart manufacturing.
The Future of Manufacturing is Here
As manufacturing organizations grow and change, scalable, modern data ecosystems – underpinned by hybrid and multicloud environments – will support the high-performance computing, AI, machine learning, and cybersecurity applications they require.
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