The Situation
A precision manufacturing company in West Michigan with 120 employees had built a reputation for delivering tight-tolerance components to the aerospace and automotive industries. Their manufacturing processes were sophisticated — but their IT infrastructure was anything but.
The company’s network had grown organically over 15 years. Switches were added as needed, often without documentation. The wireless network was a patchwork of consumer-grade access points. And the single IT technician who understood the environment had recently retired, taking most of the institutional knowledge with him.
The production floor relied heavily on networked CNC machines, inventory management systems, and quality control databases. When the network stuttered — which happened with increasing frequency — production stopped. And when production stops at a precision manufacturer, the costs compound quickly: missed delivery deadlines, expedited shipping to catch up, overtime labor, and strained customer relationships.
The Challenge
The manufacturing company was dealing with interconnected problems that made piecemeal fixes ineffective:
- Recurring network outages averaging 4 hours of unplanned downtime per month, directly halting production
- Outdated network switches — some dating back 12+ years — with no redundancy or failover capability
- Zero cybersecurity posture — no endpoint protection beyond basic antivirus, no network segmentation, no monitoring
- No documentation of the network topology, IP addressing, or system configurations
- Production floor systems on the same network segment as office workstations and guest Wi-Fi
- No IT staff after the sole technician’s retirement — critical knowledge walked out the door
The VP of Operations estimated that each hour of unplanned downtime cost the company approximately $22,000 in lost production, expediting costs, and labor inefficiency. At 4 hours per month, that was over $1 million annually in preventable losses.
The Solution
BrightWorks IT conducted a thorough network and security assessment, mapping the entire environment — including undocumented devices, shadow IT, and the production floor’s unique requirements. The remediation plan addressed infrastructure, security, and ongoing management in coordinated phases.
Complete Network Redesign
We designed and implemented a new network architecture from the ground up. This included enterprise-grade managed switches with redundant uplinks, proper network segmentation separating production systems, office workstations, and guest access into isolated VLANs, enterprise wireless with centralized management and seamless roaming across the 85,000-square-foot facility, and redundant internet connections with automatic failover.
Managed IT Services
We became the company’s outsourced IT department, providing 24/7 network monitoring with automated alerting, a dedicated help desk for both office and production floor issues, proactive maintenance windows scheduled around production shifts, and a virtual CIO (vCIO) who meets quarterly with the operations and finance teams to align technology investments with business objectives.
Cybersecurity Suite
We deployed a comprehensive cybersecurity program including managed endpoint detection and response (EDR) on all workstations and servers, next-generation firewall with intrusion prevention, email security with advanced threat protection, security awareness training for all employees, and network access control to prevent unauthorized devices from connecting to production systems.
Documentation and Knowledge Transfer
Every aspect of the network — topology diagrams, IP assignments, equipment inventory, vendor contacts, and procedures — was documented in a shared knowledge base accessible to both the BrightWorks IT team and the client’s operations leadership.
The Results
The impact was immediate and sustained:
Zero unplanned downtime in the first 8 months. The production floor ran continuously without a single network-related interruption. The combination of redundant infrastructure, proactive monitoring, and proper network design eliminated the outages that had been costing the company millions.
90% reduction in IT support tickets. Proactive management — patching, monitoring, and maintenance — resolved issues before users experienced them. The ticket volume dropped from an average of 45 per month to fewer than 5.
$180,000 in savings from prevented downtime. In the first 8 months alone, eliminating the 4-hours-per-month downtime pattern saved an estimated $180,000 in production losses. Over a full year, the projected savings exceeded $260,000 — more than 4x the cost of the managed IT engagement.
Complete network visibility. For the first time, the operations team has a clear picture of every device on their network, real-time performance dashboards, and documented procedures for common scenarios.
The VP of Operations summarized the change simply: “We used to plan around IT failures. Now we don’t think about IT at all — which means it’s working.”