24 n MANUFACTURING November/December 2025 www.drivesncontrols.com Five forces that are transforming modern manufacturing Let me paint you a picture of modern manufacturing that might sound familiar. Imagine trying to run five modern apps on an old iPhone – it’s likely that everything slows to a crawl, right? Now imagine that iPhone is controlling your entire production line. That's essentially what many manufacturers are dealing with today: systems that simply can't keep up with the complexity that’s being asked of them. Manufacturing complexity and whatever else is keeping plant managers up at night is not going to abate. Cyberattacks are on the rise – up 71% in 2024 alone and the No. 1 target is manufacturing. And the US alone is heading for a shortage of 2.1 million skilled workers by 2030, potentially costing the economy a staggering $1 trillion. Manufacturing today faces problems that can't be solved by small tweaks and improvements. There’s an urgent need for control systems that are dramatically better than those that currently exist. This isn't just about making things faster – it's about finally tackling the real issues that stymie efficient and secure operations: cyberattacks; getting robots to work together seamlessly; connecting all the different systems and vendors; keeping workers safe; and finding people with the right skills to run everything. Put simply: we can't apply old thinking to fix today's manufacturing problems. Small incremental gains? They're like putting a Band-Aid on a broken bone. We need something fundamentally different. The stakes have never been higher. Think about it: you have a nuclear power facility (far-fetched, maybe, but stay with me), and your primary control system fails, you need backup systems that kick in in milliseconds. Because if they don't, you risk widespread destruction. Not good. Your plant probably isn't nuclear-powered, but the same principle applies: when state-ofthe-art manufacturing equipment fails, the shockwaves ripple far and wide. A cyberattack doesn't just add up to downtime – it can add up to safety risks, ruined products, and a bill running into millions. Now to the good news. There are five forces that are affecting manufacturing, and here’s how to approach them: 1. Cybersecurity: When Every Machine Becomes a Target The 71% jump in manufacturing cyberattacks is real. Digital transformation has created unprecedented vulnerability. Every networked device, connected system, and point of data transfer, is a potential point of entry for malefactors. Cybersecurity for modern manufacturing is more than IT security as usual. We're working with OT (operational technology) environments where attacks not only expose data – but they also bring production lines to a standstill, destroy equipment, or put lives at risk. The intersection of IT and OT has created an intricate environment where legacy perimeter defences are inadequate. Vendors need to implement defence-indepth controls, such as secure-by-design control systems and sophisticated threat detection capabilities. A key is integrating security into operations, and not as an afterthought. Manufacturing faces problems that can't be solved by small tweaks or improvements. There’s an urgent need for control systems that are dramatically better than what currently exists. Dennis Wylie, principal product manager at Rockwell Automation, explores some of the issues, and identifies five big challenges that every manufacturer has to deal with. Modern plants need multiple robotic and automation systems from different suppliers, operating at different speeds, and on different control schemes
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