A new component has been added to the ongoing turf war between corporate IT and manufacturing professionals who occupy the plant floor. It revolves around the growing popularity of tablets and other mobile devices. That’s the gist of a story by Terry Costlow that was posted recently on automationworld.com. As tablets and smart phones become increasingly interwoven with the control and monitoring technologies in today’s plants, says Costlow, IT teams can’t help but worry about data security issues. After all, tablets and smart phones have many of the conventional security issues related to wireless networking and portable devices. Not to mention the fact that mobile devices connected to the corporate network are easily lost or stolen, which could lead to sensitive information falling into the wrong hands.
Costlow goes on to say that whether IT teams like it or not, the tablet trend is here to stay, so it will simply have to be dealt with. Many predict that equipment operators and technicians will hasten the advance by using their own devices instead of waiting for management to acquire tablets or phones. The latest generation of handhelds makes it even easier for operators and technicians to gather data without being physically tethered to a piece of equipment. Companies that embrace the use of tablets and smart phones feel they’re continuing a trend that took off when companies started using Ethernet.
