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Reining in Uncertainty: Improve Predictability with SD-WAN

Eric Hyman
By Eric Hyman Vice President Corporate and Product Marketing, GTT

The manufacturing industry can be complicated, even in the best of times. Current geopolitical tension, labor shortages and supply chain instability add to the complexity. To manage external factors, manufacturers need the right tools to navigate modern hurdles and efficiently produce high-quality, end-user products.

An important step is understanding how smart and autonomous technologies can help optimize operations. As business scales, the workforce disperses and security threats increase, a flexible and robust network solution, such as a software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN), is critical in helping companies adapt to these new conditions.

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Many manufacturers are at the leading edge of using networks for a strategic, competitive advantage. SD-WAN delivers private networks that are governed by centralized, software-defined functions and widely deployed, promoting efficiency and securing a distributed workforce. A report by IDC revealed nearly half of manufacturing organizations (47%) are currently using or deploying an SD-WAN solution, and a further 50% plan to deploy one within the next two years. These statistics demonstrate that SD-WAN is quickly becoming the sector’s dominant overlay network architecture.

Here are the three main areas where SD-WAN can increase the agility of manufacturing operations to keep up with shifting customer, supply chain and industry demands.

1. Increase Visibility

According to a Deloitte study, 61% of manufacturing executives plan to partner with specialized technology companies as part of their primary growth strategy for smart manufacturing initiatives in the coming years. A key driver of this is the rapid escalation of data available—and needing to be protected—by manufacturers, as well as the need to easily view and make sense of the insights hidden within data. With various technologies in the mix, SD-WAN is essential for optimizing traffic routing and application performance, allowing employees across the globe to get access to the data or applications to make informed decisions. Consolidating all controls into a central interface simplifies what once was a complex environment, reducing the time IT spends on network management. Since everything is in one place in SD-WAN, network administrators can quickly and easily identify and rectify network interruptions, optimize traffic routing and assure application performance.

The carefully choreographed flows of information can be vulnerable to latency. SD-WAN can capture real-time insights of the network performance, helping manufacturing leaders make informed decisions. Since SD-WAN closely monitors activity hubs, data doesn’t have to travel invisibly across manufacturers’ business. This results in the quick delivery of actionable information.

2. Optimize the Human Workforce

It’s remarkable how, in the year 2023, it’s necessary to distinguish between two workforces: the human and the automated. It’s easy to fear that autonomous mobile robots and other AI-powered tools will replace human forklift operators, inventory managers, order fulfillment specialists, etc. However, a lot of AI, machine learning and automation solutions set out to enhance the human workforce, not replace it. Automation improves productivity and handles mundane chores, allowing humans to devote their time and uniquely human creativity to value-added tasks.

Further, human-machine interactions require wireless network capabilities and SD-WAN technology has the capability of managing multiple connection types, such as multiprotocol label switching, internet, broadband and wireless, while making them all visible in one holistic view. Additionally, SD-WAN can act alone without human intervention based on specific rules set within the cloud to eliminate tedious tasks and free valuable IT workers to spend their time on more important assignments.

For example, SD-WAN can complete many tasks autonomously, including instantaneously switching between circuits. This approach doesn’t require a network administrator to constantly monitor the network. The automated systems within the network can often identify and resolve problems before a human can pinpoint that anything was amiss in the first place. With the help of SD-WAN technology, manufacturers can enhance their human workforce by reducing human error, improving performance and preventing potential risks throughout their business.

3. Improve Reliability

A manufacturing leader’s nightmare is having to halt production. Time is money. Uptime is critical.

SD-WAN can offer 100% network availability with a high availability deployment. Legacy network architectures weren’t designed with the cloud in mind, so their integrations with business-critical applications can become convoluted. Additionally, the ability to leverage data and analytics is crucial for manufacturers looking to meet strategic business goals such as achieving long-term profitability and quality growth. However, this approach requires the process of managing the flow of data to cloud-based systems. This not only allows manufactures to optimize their overall business strategy, but can also optimize factory operations such as increased quality control and improved product traceability.

Further, SD-WAN is incredibly secure due to its integrated security protocols. Zero trust and secure access service edge (SASE) principles can be integrated into the network. Plus, because SD-WAN reduces complexity and offers better performance, there’s no need to reroute traffic through multiple networks or security checkpoints, avoiding latency.

Finally, SD-WAN scales more easily compared to legacy WANs. It grows as your organization increases in size with the added value of prioritizing application performance. To meet their quotas, many manufacturing facilities run 24/7. To be able to do so, leaders must turn to a reliable network solution such as SD-WAN to handle the constant strains and demands.

SD-WAN Is the Solution of the Future

To remain competitive, manufacturing industry leaders should consider upgrading their current operations with smart technologies like SD-WAN. They can effectively do this by adopting a holistic approach and partnering with managed service providers to help ensure they are leveraging SD-WAN to its full potential.

For instance, Etex, a building materials manufacturer, has enabled SD-WAN to harmonize processes, activities and collaboration across the business, while controlling costs. In fact, Etex is seeing a 30% decrease in cost per megabyte while enjoying a 50% increase in available bandwidth since switching to SD-WAN.

With component and workforce shortages and geopolitical tension to contend with, manufacturing leaders need reliable solutions. SD-WAN delivers the scalable and future-minded networking solution that leaders can depend on.

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