Since 1999, Bill Rokos has spearheaded the development of Parsec’s manufacturing operations management (MOM) platform, TrakSYS.

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​For better or worse, one of CTOs’ prevailing responsibilities is helping stakeholders understand the value of tech initiatives that we view as must-have investments.

In cybersecurity, for example, it may be surprisingly hard to pitch investments like MFA and Zero Trust frameworks because good security measures are invisible when they work, and it’s hard to prove ROI based on the absence of incidents. Even general best practices like modernizing legacy architectures can be tough sells because they often don’t create flashy new features. Stakeholders may wonder why they need to fix what isn’t broken.

Tech leaders in the manufacturing industry have something like this as well. It’s an initiative with tremendous upside potential, but in an industry characterized by latent tech adoption, there’s often significant pushback or reticence to make it a priority.

It’s interoperability, and the organizations that don’t embrace it are signing themselves up for enormous opportunity costs.

What Interoperability Means On The Shop Floor

Most manufacturing facilities today feature a blend of legacy and modern equipment. There are countless data sources that feed into production, ranging from inventory tracking tools to smart sensors installed directly on heavy machinery.

Facilities are usually designed to minimize downtime. That means machines are nearly always in operation; there’s always something happening and a new thing to prepare for. To keep everything in proverbial (and literal) motion, a ton of information needs to circulate at all times. And any single datapoint could get fed into several systems, shaping current and future production, equipment maintenance schedules, purchase orders and long-term planning.

With so much constant activity taking place in one facility, the value of interoperability is clear. It creates a unified name space, so all areas of production are unified with one technology layer that exposes all data to relevant applications. It’s a logical investment for any manufacturer—at least in theory.

Interoperability Impeded: What’s Standing In Manufacturers’ Way

In practice, interoperability can be a surprisingly tough sell for manufacturers. This is likely due to a few reasons.

First, manufacturing facilities are complex. There are countless employees, perspectives and opinions to accommodate when making any big decision. Between shop-floor managers focused on their team’s day-to-day, sales leaders concerned about customer outcomes and regional executives overseeing several facilities at once, there’s a lot of buy-in that needs to happen to make big tech initiatives happen.

Even if a tech leader gets everyone on board with the idea of implementing a system-wide platform for the sake of interoperability, that’s just the first step. You then have to find the right time to make it happen, agree on products and vendors and map out the extensive change management that will be required. That’s a lot of friction to overcome.

Second, it can be hard for manufacturing tech leaders to justify an investment whose ROI might not materialize for several years. When done properly and responsibly, big tech implementations take time. Even once the implementation is complete and teams are feeling comfortable with new tools, it takes even more time for the benefits to compound into something tangible.

But that’s the best-case scenario. Many times, implementations stall out or are canceled altogether. Whether a key point person leaves the company or organizational commitment simply erodes, it’s not uncommon for major system implementations to peter out. The fact is, the longer a project’s implementation schedule, the less likely it is to be completed.

How Leaders Can Move The Needle

Manufacturing tech leaders are well aware that interoperability is now table stakes for modern businesses. If it’s challenging to persuade key stakeholders of this imperative, keying in on the points below could help spur organizations into action.

Interoperability brings teams together.

Facilities will be able to operate much more efficiently if they have one team working off one set of data all pointed toward one goal: making production as efficient and accurate as possible. To make that happen, you need interoperable solutions.

It’s a prerequisite for AI.

AI simply won’t work if its underlying data isn’t unified. To reap the benefits of system-wide intelligent technology, your entire architecture needs a singular, synchronized data layer. It needs to be in place before facilities even consider moving forward with AI.

Your competitors are doing it.

Say what you will about the lengthy system implementation timelines and change management processes, but every day more manufacturers are embracing interoperable tools—and they’re better off for it. The longer manufacturers wait to make their architectures interoperable, the farther behind they’ll fall.

Another way of thinking about it: for tech leaders, it’s not so much about proving the value of interoperability. It’s about demonstrating the cost of waiting. Leaders need to make the case that the organizations that don’t invest in interoperability now will pay the price of fragmentation down the road.

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