Survey was based on 200+ complex discrete manufacturing respondents and found an increased investment in cloud, data collection and analysis, and supplier quality management.

iBASEt, the company that simplifies how complex products are built and maintained, today announced the results of an original survey of more than 200 manufacturing executives. The findings revealed that complex, discrete manufacturers continue to accelerate investments in cloud-based applications, data collection and analysis, and supplier quality management. The survey found that these investments were initially spurred by pandemic-driven disruption and continue to accelerate.

Investment in cloud technologies is top of mind, indicating that the pandemic has made a compelling case to leverage cloud infrastructure to not only create a more agile, flexible manufacturing environment - but to also support an increasingly distributed, remote workforce.
• Over half of respondents (53.7%) have accelerated investments in cloud technologies
• A quarter of respondents (24.1%) indicated they are "all in" on the cloud, migrating all key operations and analytics applications to take full advantage of the infrastructure
• About one-fifth of respondents (18.2%) are taking a "wait and see" approach on the cloud; 3.9% said they have no plans to use a cloud infrastructure

"Complex, discrete manufacturers are embracing innovation and digital transformation on many fronts. These range from cloud adoption to better methods of supplier quality management to innovation surrounding data collection and analysis," said Tom Hennessey, CMO of iBASEt. "Manufacturers are justifying this investment with better operational excellence and intelligent decision support that can be extended across the entire value chain."

Considerable investment is taking place in technologies integral to digital transformation, with over half of all respondents indicating they are investing in:
• Supplier quality management (59.1%)
• Cloud applications (55.2%), and
• Data collection and analysis (56.2%)

Other notable areas of investment include the Industrial Internet of Things/IIoT, (48.8%), Industry 4.0 (42.9%), and supply chain collaboration (47.8%). Nearly half of respondents (44.8%) say they are completely digital regarding how operations are managed, reports are generated, and issue resolution is achieved, including audit and regulatory compliance documentation.

More than half of respondents (53.2%) share a "strong confidence" in manufacturing growth prospects over the next 1-3 years, and 44.3% of respondents indicated moderate confidence for growth in the next 1-3 years. Only 2.5% see growth as flat.