Manufacturing
When the line stops, the clock is already running.
Managed IT and cybersecurity for Houston area manufacturers. Cover that runs across shifts rather than office hours, plant and office on one plan, and backups that were tested before anything depended on them.
What is different here
Three things a factory changes
These are the reasons a generic managed IT contract fits a plant badly, and they are worth checking against whoever you are speaking to.
Downtime has a number
In an office, an outage is an irritation measured in frustrated staff. On a production floor it is measured in units not made, and the finance director already knows the hourly figure. That changes which risks are worth paying to remove.
The day does not end at six
Shift work means a failure at 11pm is a live problem, not a Monday problem. Support runs 24 hours a day, every day and emergencies are answered inside 15 minutes, which is the part that actually matters when the second shift is running.
Some equipment will never be patched
Machines outlive the software that drives them. A control PC running an unsupported operating system because the vendor never shipped an update is normal rather than negligent. The answer is isolation and monitoring, not a patch that does not exist.
The honest boundary
What we do, and what we do not
We run the IT environment: the network, the servers, the endpoints, the identities, the backups and the security stack around all of it. That includes the office machines, the systems your production software runs on, and the connectivity between them.
We do not service the production equipment itself or the vendor software that drives it. Where a control PC runs something unsupported, and most plants have at least one, the answer is segmentation and monitoring: keep it isolated, watch what talks to it, and make sure a compromise in the office cannot reach the floor. Anyone who tells you they will simply patch it is either misunderstanding the problem or hoping you will not ask.
Being clear about that line at the start is more useful than discovering it during an incident, which is the only other time it comes up.
Questions from manufacturers
Straight answers
Why would a manufacturer need different IT from an office business?
Because the cost of failure is calculated differently and the working day is longer. An office can usually absorb two hours of downtime as lost productivity. A plant absorbs it as lost output, and often as a restart sequence that costs more than the outage did. That single difference changes the priorities: monitoring and tested recovery matter more than convenience features, and support has to cover the shifts rather than the office hours.
Can you support machines and control PCs that cannot be patched?
We can protect the environment around them, and we will be straight about the boundary. Equipment running unsupported software because the vendor never released an update gets network isolation, monitoring, and strict control over what can reach it, so a compromise elsewhere does not travel to the floor. What we do not do is service the machine itself or its vendor software. If someone tells you they will patch a fifteen year old control PC, ask them how.
What happens if an IT failure stops the line at 2am?
It is treated as an emergency, which means a human responds inside 15 minutes at any hour, not the next working morning. Monitoring runs continuously and overnight cover is staffed in the United States, so in most cases the alert reaches us before anyone on your site has picked up a phone, and the person who answers is in your time zone. Containment and restoration start from there, and a site visit is arranged from Katy if hands on hardware are needed.
We have a plant and a separate office. Does that fit one plan?
Yes. Fully Managed IT covers up to 3 servers and 2 office locations at $153 per user per month, which is the usual shape for a plant plus an administrative office. A 20 user company on that plan is $3,060 a month. More sites than that is a conversation rather than a refusal, and the limits are published on the pricing page rather than discovered at signature.
Our customers send security questionnaires. Can you help answer them?
Yes, and this is increasingly the reason manufacturers call us rather than a breach. Larger customers push their security requirements down the supply chain, and the questionnaire asks for evidence rather than intent: tested backups, patch windows, access reviews, training records. Those records only exist if something was collecting them beforehand, which is why the compliance work sits inside the plan rather than being sold as a project afterwards.
Who do we talk to when nobody on site is technical?
On Fully Managed IT you get a named Technology Advisor and a monthly service meeting, which exists precisely for this. The person who knows your plant is usually an operations manager rather than an engineer, and the useful conversation is about what breaks next and what it costs to prevent, not about configuration. Translation is part of the job.
Book a 30 minute IT review
We look at what you are running across the plant and the office, tell you the two things we would fix first, and you keep the notes whether or not you hire us.