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Manufacturers today face relentless pressure to produce more, faster and with greater precision, all while navigating supply chain volatility, labor shortages, workforce challenges and rising cyber risk. Yet for many organizations, the most significant obstacles aren’t on the shop floor – they’re buried in outdated, disconnected and reactive IT environments that drain productivity, limit growth and frustrate teams.
Let’s recognize the top seven pain points holding back manufacturers and the strategic solutions to turn these challenges into competitive advantages.
Read: How Manufacturers Leverage Data and Analytics to Boost Productivity
1. Poor ERP Performance from Outdated Systems
Your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system should be the backbone of your operation. But when it’s slow, outdated or poorly maintained, it becomes a bottleneck. The result? Sluggish performance, frequent errors, limited reporting, system crashes and frustrated teams who don’t trust the data.
To counter this, first evaluate your ERP environment end-to-end, including hardware, integrations, database health and user workflows. This can help identify where performance issues stem from, whether it’s aging servers, poor configurations or unsupported versions. From there, it’s time to modernize your ERP infrastructure to improve speed, stability and usability. Map a cost-effective path to migrate your ERP environment to a modern server infrastructure or the cloud. Lastly, if your system is several versions behind, plan a comprehensive upgrade to the latest, most optimized version of your ERP software.
2. ERP Systems that Don’t “Talk” to Anything Else
When ERP, CRM, accounting, inventory and production systems operate in silos, efficiency collapses. Disconnected systems force teams to manually re-enter data, reconcile reports and chase information across platforms, leading to duplicate work, inconsistent data, limited visibility and costly errors.
To build a connected ecosystem, system integration and automation enable your ERP to become a true hub for seamless data sharing across production, finance, sales and supply chain. This results in a single source of truth that leadership can rely on.
Read: The Top 7 ERP Security Tips Every Executive Should Know
3. Struggling to Digitize Production or Reduce Manual Entry
The goal of Industry 4.0 is digital production, but many plants are still relying on clipboards, spreadsheets and paper printouts. Although these tools are still surprisingly common in manufacturing, they often hold organizations back. How? Manual processes slow production, introduce errors, limit visibility and make it nearly impossible to scale efficiently.
With the proper roadmap, digitization becomes a strategic advantage. Digitizing production processes – through automation, data capture and system integration – eliminates unnecessary manual work while improving accuracy, traceability and compliance.
4. Frequent Downtime that Disrupts Production Schedules
Every minute of downtime costs money, whether that’s in lost production, idle labor, missed deadlines and unhappy customers. Yet many manufacturers accept downtime as “part of the job,” a reactive mindset that only fixes issues after production is impaired.
To counter reactive IT, implement a proactive IT model that prevents issues before they disrupt production. Implement 24/7 monitoring, standardized systems and a strategic maintenance plan. Invent in backups and a disaster recovery plan (DRP) so you can minimize recovery time.
Read: Reduce Downtime and Tickets with Proactive Managed IT
5. Growing Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities
Manufacturers are prime targets for cyber attacks because they hold valuable intellectual property (IP). Phishing attacks, ransomware and supply chain exploits have become more than IT problems – they’re business risks. When one of these cyber threats occurs, production shuts down, IP is stolen and regulatory compliance is compromised.
The solution? A layered cybersecurity strategy that includes employee training, endpoint protection, incident response planning (IRP), multi-factor authentication (MFA) and email security.
Read: Safeguarding Manufacturing Firms from Cyber Threats
6. No IT Roadmap – Everything Is Reactive or Patchwork
Many manufacturers operate with a “fix it when it breaks” mindset. Without a clear roadmap, the result is a patchwork of outdated hardware, mismatched systems and constant surprises. Technology investments become disjointed, costly and misaligned with business goals, leading to unbudgeted IT costs, sudden failures and incompatible or redundant software.
On the other hand, when IT becomes strategic, it stops being a cost center and starts being a growth engine. Develop a long-term IT roadmap that budgets for system upgrades, security enhancements and application migrations. By aligning with business objectives, you can support production growth, reduce costs and manage risks.
Read: 5 Reasons Why a Multi-Year IT Roadmap Is Essential for Your Business
7. Overwhelmed IT Managers Who Can’t Focus on Strategy
Even the best internal IT managers can’t do everything. Many managers are buried in tickets, outages and maintenance tasks. This can quickly lead to burned-out IT teams, stalled innovation, missed opportunities and leadership flying blind on technology decisions.
Instead, consider partnering with a top-notch managed service provider (MSP) that offers a Fractional CIO model. This approach provides executive-level IT leadership without the cost of a full-time hire and elevates IT from a support function to a strategic business driver, all while ensuring day-to-day operations remain effective. Your IT team can then focus on business-critical applications and strategic initiatives.
Read: Streamline Production: IT Strategy for Manufacturing
Turn Pain into Profit with Thriveon
Manufacturers that thrive in today’s environment use technology strategically to reduce risk, improve productivity and support growth.
At Thriveon, we specialize in helping manufacturers move from a painful, reactive IT model to a strategic, proactive one. Our focus is on aligning your technology with your production goals, ensuring your IT infrastructure is an asset rather than a liability. We combine Fractional CIO leadership, cybersecurity and IT management to support your entire business.
Request a consultation with us today to build a strong, resilient IT strategy.
