Using robots in manufacturing has grown exponentially over the last few years, with many manufacturers now using them to perform tasks that were previously done by human workers. The introduction of these robotic applications into the workplace presents unique safety challenges for both employers and employees.

There are many different strategies for equipment maintenance that teams can use to help raise and keep the operational availability (OA) up on the production lines. And every one of those strategies comes at a cost. It’s a balancing act between keeping the right number of technical resources on staff, keeping the lines up and running, and of course, keeping profits up.

Denial can be a very perilous state of being, and admitting there is a problem is the beginning of the journey to solve any issue facing anyone.

While that may sound like a psychology 101 class, in actuality that can be considered the mindset for those in the manufacturing automation sector these days. After years of denying they had any kind of attacks or any kind of security issue, users today are at least acknowledging what they are facing.

“When we meet with clients it is far more common to hear these days, ‘yeah, we had an incident.’ In most cases it is malware that got into the environment,” said John Cusimano, vice president of industrial cybersecurity at aeSolutions. “When we do a cyber risk assessment, one of the things we talk about is the likelihood of certain incidents occurring it is far more common today to hear people say ‘yeah, that happened here.’ They are not publicized events. At least they are aware they had an incident.”