Computers in the Workplace

    The specific industry that I will be discussing would be the manufacturing industry. Based on my current knowledge of technology in the computer world. At my current job which is in the manufacturing industry, we do have our own IT department that helps maintain our companies’ servers that hold all of our private documents, designs, and work instructions. Our company holds all of their important documents privately where only certain individuals based on their job codes are able to see them. The entire database is secured through a private network that was established at the company itself, where internet access is mainly disabled from outside sources. Assuming that within the last 50 years there has not been any sort of breach in our network, it seems that our company has a very established security team to prevent any breaches. The IT department also holds an additional team that helps support the entire company if any technical issues occur with user issues, whether it's hardware or operating system issues. They also write some scripts that help with how the computers they provide to the manufacturing teams allow users to access what they need and startup programs to only run for what that team is required.



    Since I partake mostly on the assembly side currently of the manufacturing business, I feel that it would be in my best interest to exemplify how the IT department helps support this business team. When our servers are down that brings up work instructions, they try to find a fast workaround to quickly allow us to continue working, while they work on the larger issue, this generally only occurs if there is a hardware issue, or when the network for the assembly line is down. What they generally do when the network is down is loan us laptops that have connectivity to different servers until they are able to bring up the servers for our manufacturing line. Sometimes if it is not necessarily a network issue or hardware issue, they will screen share to see what the issue is and try and troubleshoot it remotely. When the issue does persist as being a hardware issue, they will place an order for a new replacement computer and provide us a loaner computer in the meantime that has the ability to achieve daily tasks.



    Based on having basic technological knowledge some of the issues that do occur in manufacturing can be troubleshot without having to contact the IT department, sometimes it could just be a connectivity issue into the computer itself, for example, an ethernet cable not being connected, or the display adapter came loose causing the monitor to not function properly. It is important to have some general knowledge behind computer technology, as this creates a self-reliant atmosphere where reliance on another team does not always have to occur, this also preventing more situations from accruing “down-time”. With the way technology is evolving, in the next ten years, I would imagine that fewer issues with programs, hardware, and server issues would end up being less likely as our IT department creates more established servers since computer technology has become so advanced and continues I feel like stability would be increased, in a server level, I would also like to believe that desktop computers in manufacturing businesses would probably downgrade desktops into tablets, depending on the business team. Tablets are becoming a very powerful device with many different options, and the touch screen capability and mobility make them more prominent in assembly work whereas a monitor is only mobile to such extent. With hardware becoming more revolutionized task operations would be much smoother in transitioning from one program to the next, perhaps data would be stored on the device itself rather than a huge super server that has the possibility of being breached where stored data on a device with limited networking would be more secure. Just some ideas based on what I have seen at my company and what the IT department does to support the business.