November 06, 2025
When you're sitting down with your family for
Thanksgiving, you probably won't think about the machines, controls or networks
that showed up on schedule. That's exactly how good technology should
feel—transparent, reliable, and taken‑for‑granted.
I spoke with a plant controller at a midsized consumer
goods manufacturer just before the end of October. She told me how last year
they had shipped "just in time" for the holiday surge, despite a team shortage
and an aged ERP. This year they upgraded to a leaner, more monitored system. On
the busiest shipping day? "Everything just happened," she said. "And I didn't
have to send out any emails at midnight."
"When your system hums through the storm, your mind is
free to do the planning, not the firefighting." — Mary Barra, CEO of General
Motors
According to a blog from Rockwell Automation during
Thanksgiving season, manufacturers used to gamble on supplies and timing. Now,
with better systems, they're planning a full year ahead—even for what shows up
on the dinner table.
Here's what this looks like in practice:
· Machines
order parts before the deadline, so shipping isn't waiting for restock.
· IT
alerts show up on your phone—not when something's broken, but when a
temperature drift is caught early.
· Compliance
logs are ready if needed, not awkwardly thrown together.
· Your
team isn't troubleshooting—they're planning the next model run.
But I also met a CFO who ignored the simple rule: if you
forget the tech is there, you're ahead. They tried to run through the summer
buildup season using outdated equipment that should have been updated the
previous year. A weekend outage turned into a nine day outage for new equipment
that delayed deliveries and messed with vendor trust. His IT director spent his
entire vacation on remediation group teams calls.
"Reliability isn't a feature—it's an after‑thought when it
shows up every day without question." — Jim Collins, author of Good to Great
Questions to ask your team now:
· What
event over the holidays could our tech fail at—and how would we know?
· How
many times did we open an email at 11 p.m. last month just to fix something?
· If
we sat down to eat turkey and our systems went silent, would we still ship on
time?
· Which
part of our stack feels invisible because it works—and which part keeps waking
us up?
Checklist of quiet wins you can aim for:
· Daily
health‑check alerts arrive in your inbox before you arrive at your desk.
· Monthly
log summaries show zero unapproved access changes.
· Scheduled
maintenance happens during downtime windows, not business hours.
· Vendor
access is monitored automatically—no surprise log‑ins after hours.
· Your
team spends less time firefighting and more time strategizing.
There's a reason your Thanksgiving—your family, your team,
your plant—can run without long nights when tech is humming behind the scenes.
When your systems work so well you forget they're there—that's real relief.
Interested in a conversation or want to learn more? Contact us here.
