| | January 20164Manufacturing is stronger and more productive than at any time in history. It accounts for more than 17 million American jobs. For the first time ever, manufacturing contributes more than $2 trillion to the U.S. economy. That's 12.5 percent of America's GDP. By shifting toward a future of rapid advancement and innovation, U.S. manufacturing is on the cusp of an historic revitalization.With significant deployment of microprocessor driven automation of production, production planning, management and control of shop floor, most processes characterize a high level of dependency on accurate processing and delivery. Set against this backdrop, there seems to be profound rethinking, among the manufacturing leaders of production models, operational processes and supply chain structures.Today, many manufacturing companies operate on thin margins, so wringing every drop of efficiency out of your equipment is crucial to profitability. Manufacturing continues to do more with less, employing lean and agile techniques to optimize operations and maximize product availability.More manufacturers depend on a growing number of new and disruptive technologies to support their mission and maintain competitive advantage. This has put tremendous pressure on CIOs, who must now respond quickly to evolving markets, think in terms of revenue objectives and truly run IT as a business. This means they need to support greater speed, agility and efficiency, even while ensuring quality, compliance and security. The task is daunting.At the same time, CIOs in manufacturing firms are struggling to deal with rise in IT complexity driven by more users, increased locations, new applications, and adoption of cloud computing. As manufacturers embrace trends like Cloud Computing, Unified Communications and BYOD, IT leaders need to deal with rise in IT performance problems such as `application downtime'. If not, they ultimately risk falling productivity. Manufacturing leaders must also satisfy shifting customer and regulatory requirements, drive product and process innovation, and anticipate the impact of potentially disruptive technologies on their business and operating models.On that note, we present to you this special edition on technology for manufacturing industry. We hope this special edition triggers a thought process among manufacturers to reinvent their organizations, align processes for tomorrow and key technologies they should be investing in.Thank you,Sarah WilsonEditor-in-ChiefWrite to ussarah@cioapplications.comRevitalizing ManufacturingCopyright © 2015 CIO Applications. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part of any text, photography or illustrations without written permission from the publisher is prohibited. The publisher assumes no responsibility for unsolicited manuscripts, photographs or illustrations. Views and opinions expressed in this publication are not necessarily those of the magazine and accordingly, no liability is assumed by the publisher thereof.SEPTEMBER - 2015Mailing AddressCIO Applications44790 S. Grimmer Blvd Suite 202, Fremont, CA 94538T:510.936.8381, F:510.894.8405 Sept 2015, volume 2- 09 Published monthly by CIO Applications To subscribe to CIO ApplicationsVisit www.cioapplications.com Editor-in-Chief Sarah WilsonEditorial StaffSalesAbishek ChandranCharles MatthewGeorge ThomasHarvi SacharJeevan GeorgeJoshua ParkerRuby JonasSarah FernandesMichael Vincentmichael@cioapplications.comVisualizersStephen ThomasManjith FernandezT:510.556.2283Editorial
< Page 3 | Page 5 >