New E-Book: Addressing the Bandwidth Needs of our Manufacturing Sector

The new era of manufacturing is upon us. “Industry 4.0”, as it is termed, describes the next phase in the digitization of the manufacturing sector. In their search for faster, more efficient production processes, many firms have begun leveraging emerging technologies and applications like Industrial IoT (IIoT), Big Data analytics, advanced enterprise resource planning and improved business continuity solutions. All the data that gets generated through these modern applications, however, needs to be transported quickly and reliably. Essentially, realizing the full potential of digitally-enabled advancements in manufacturing depends on the quality of a company’s network. In recognition of this, we’ve written a new e-book that examines the network solutions that the manufacturers of our Industry 4.0 era need to succeed. Here’s a quick summary of what you’ll learn.

What is Industry 4.0?

Companies involved in Industry 4.0 integrate extremely large volumes of sensor data from a vast number of endpoints – at several orders of magnitude beyond what even the largest enterprise environments manage today. No doubt you are aware already about the potential that 3-D printing, advanced robotics and other new forms of human-machine interaction such as touch interfaces and augmented-reality systems offer today’s manufacturers. However, implementing these types of technological advancements requires highly available, reliable and resilient networks that facilitate the gathering, processing and sharing of large amounts of data from multiple devices in real-time.

The Challenge

Currently, many existing industrial network solutions are built on mature but relatively slow network technologies. As the number of devices connected to industrial networks rises, and the volume of data they produce increases, the capacity shortfall can result in traffic bottlenecks. Although digitally-enabled advances (like IIoT) can improve productivity efficiencies by 15 to 20 percent and reduce machine downtime by 30 to 50 percent, companies risk not being able to attain such benefits if their networks are overloaded and slow. If companies want to realize the full potential of Industry 4.0 technologies, they must have a communications network that is tailored to their specific requirements.

What’s the Solution?

At DQE, we have a history of proven success in developing reliable solutions for the connectivity challenges facing Industry 4.0 manufacturers. Here in Pennsylvania, we’ve worked with several leading manufacturers to customize our fiber optic-based network solutions and services to meet their needs. Now, all of them have the high speeds and capacity necessary to perform their business functions with cutting-edge technology – all while enjoying exceptional network performance. With the deployment of fiber-optic networks, our clients can leverage increased bandwidth and real-time backup capabilities, as well as data center connectivity, disaster recovery services and secure cloud-based applications.

In short, Industry 4.0 isn’t just a buzzword. It’s a well-defined industry trend that is only getting more relevant with each passing quarter. As a manufacturing company, rest assured that, if you wish to implement emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning, your network capacity demands are only going to increase. That’s why it’s important to future-proof your network today. Download our e-book to find out more about how we can help you establish the network you need so you can implement the new technological manufacturing applications you want.