If you’re looking for some great insight and thought leadership from Cisco on the “Wireless Mobile Worker” and the mobile industrial worker, look no further than the March 2012 Issue of Control Engineering Magazine (available from April digitally -- click below).

The digital and print versions talk about the trends going on right now -- lack of expertise, reticence  of the ‘millennium generation’ to study subjects and gain skills that manufacturers need, and how all sorts of devices are coming onto the plant floor and carpeted areas to help workers do their jobs more efficiently.

BYOD

How we manage the BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) trend, and how we control more devices and automation in the many  aspects of the manufacturing process may go some way in tackling the lack of skills and experts that we have relied on in the past to keep things moving and to address out-of-line situations fast.

Attracting and Retaining Talent

It does seem that the workers that are entering the manufacturing arena have a preference for newer technologies -- and expect to use laptops and high tech devices to do their jobs. Smart Industry players (like the ones in the Aberdeen Report I blogged about) have spotted this trend and are making the roles more attractive to these kinds of workers -- attracting and retaining talent better then their laggard competitors.

Industrial Strength

Some of the keys to success for Industry are specialized products and applications. The infrastructure needs to be ‘up-to-the-task’ -- both from a fixed LAN, wireless LAN and supporting IT infrastructure. That’s the real differentiation only Cisco can bring. Only last week Cisco demonstrated new products (the IE2000) at the Hannover Messe event in Germany to complement the fastest wireless in the industry, and the most compatible with factory systems.

9 Tips for a Smarter Wireless industrial Workforce

The magazine also printed ’9 Tips and Tricks’ that organizations should be aware of to enable the smarter worker. Taking a look through them you’ll see that Cisco is able to provide or enable all of these points. Cisco products incorporate the best practices mentioned -- unique for the industry, particularly when you consider Cisco’s strength across both the IT and OT (Operational Technology -- plant floor IT if you will).

Well, I wont give everything away here -- read the article to learn more and get ahead! Read more by clicking here.

Tags: cleanair, control engineer, Control Engineering, employee retention, Hannover Messe, IE2000, intrusion prevention, mobile industrial worker, mobility, open standards, self-healing, talent, Tips and Tricks, videostream, wireless mobile workers, wobile workforce