Training and employee development can seem daunting to manufacturers still playing catch-up post-COVID and trying to move product out the door. Management wants to implement new IIoT and smart manufacturing strategies to increase manufacturing productivity, but a lack of time, money and available resources can complicate these goals.

The industrial communications networks of the future incorporate enabling technologies that are designed to support digital manufacturing strategies, helping companies optimize and intensify their processes. In addition to driving up profitability, they can also greatly contribute to reducing the environmental impact of shop floor operations. A key example of one such technology is CC-Link IE TSN, which uses Time-Sensitive Networking (TSN) to transition towards convergent architectures for data sharing.