Educating users and companies on the cloud and its applications

Manufacturing organizations are responsible to provide the right education about clouds and they need to ensure that training is available to employees on cloud computing infrastructures and services.

By Goran Novkovic November 25, 2017

One major challenge for manufacturing organizations moving to the cloud is embedding new ways of working. Changes affecting business and operation including training requirements, changes in working patterns, processes and procedures such as information technology (IT) support and organizational restructuring.

Manufacturing organizations are responsible to provide the right education about clouds. They need to ensure that training is available to employees on cloud computing infrastructures and services. Successful change management programs have a strong education and training component since all organizational staff need to be kept informed of changes that will affect their day to day responsibilities. Training material and cloud computing workshops are especially helpful in identifying potential issues and embedding the new mindset within manufacturing organizations.

Manufacturing organizations need to consider company-wide training to ensure that their workforce can use and realize the benefits of the cloud services. Training also mitigates the risk that IT resources are accidentally misappropriated and helps to avoid inadvertent lapses in security. Training is therefore crucial in delivering security in the initial stages of adoption, particularly for manufacturing organizations that process commercially sensitive, regulated or government classified data.

Cloud computing education and training should outline what cloud services are available to employees and describe risks and issues associated with the particular cloud model, and how these are being addressed. Create flow charts on how cloud models could enable an organization to meet its business and strategic objectives.

The operational and business benefits of moving to cloud computing model will result in increased agility to supply or volume of manufacturing services, access to high speed bandwidths and other business enabling technologies.

Cloud computing promises a full range of benefits that include the ability to shift costs from capital to operational, lower overall cost of doing business, ability to shift computing resources to value-added activities, improved employee satisfaction, process standardization and competitive market advantages for manufacturing organizations.

Goran Novkovic, MESA International. This article originally appeared on MESA International’s blog. MESA International is a CFE Media content partner. Edited by Chris Vavra, production editor, CFE Media, cvavra@cfemedia.com.

Original content can be found at blog.mesa.org.


Author Bio: Goran Novkovic, MESA International.