Responding to rapidly changing, complex business requirements

Increased expectations by customers for faster delivery of new and volume products.
Rapid and frequent factory plan changes driven by changing business needs.
Ability to load the factory within manageable range under changeable market demand, e.g., predicting planning and scheduling in real-time.
Enhanced visibility for quality assurance of high reliability products; tie-in of supply chain and customer to Factory Information and Control Systems (FICS) operations.
Addressing Big Data issues, creating opportunity to uncover patterns and situations that help prevent or predict unforeseeable problems, e.g., equipment processing/health tracking and analytical tools.
Strengthen information security―maintaining data confidentiality (restriction of access to data and services to specific machines/human users) and integrity (accuracy/completeness of data and correct operation of services), while improving availability (a means of measuring a system’s ability to perform a function in a particular time) contradictive to needs of data availability.