The vendor or the integrator
Configuration, modules, reports, version upgrades and training. They know the product.
Manufacturing
IT for manufacturers in Quebec, from the shop floor to the office
In a plant, IT does not stop at the office door. There are the shop workstations that two or three shifts share, the production management software, the machines plugged into the network, and a server everyone depends on without thinking about it.
A manufacturer needs the same IT foundation as an office, plus four things: a shop network kept apart from the administrative one, patches applied outside production hours, a planned answer for evening and night shifts, and a backup of the production management system that has already been restored once as a test.
What IT services does a manufacturer need?
A manufacturer needs IT services that cover two environments at once: the office, with accounting, sales and email, and the production floor, with its shop workstations, its networked machines and its production management software. OKTO Solutions, an IT provider based in Trois-Rivières, offers manufacturers in Quebec monitoring of workstations and servers, patching, managed protection on every device and a daily backup with an off-site copy. These services come in three plans, named Base, Standard and Complet, with a price worked out by workstation and by server. Employee support is added from the Standard plan up. The Complet plan includes a 24/7 emergency service, which matters for a plant that runs in the evening or overnight. Most of the follow-up is done remotely; a visit to the plant is scheduled when equipment has to be handled. The goal is a simple one: a line should not stop because of a computer.
The shop floor
Why does the production floor change the IT work?
In the office, a workstation belongs to one person. In the shop, the same screen serves the day shift, the evening shift and sometimes the night shift. People open the work order on it, clock an operation, print a label. When that workstation freezes, it is not one person waiting. It is a whole cell.
The other difference is the machines. A machining centre often arrives with its own computer, rarely updated since the day it was installed. Many still run Windows 10, whose support ended on October 14, 2025: Microsoft no longer publishes security patches for it. Nobody replaces a machine because its computer got old. You isolate it.
In its bulletin on operational technology, the Canadian Centre for Cyber Security notes that attackers take advantage of outdated or misconfigured remote access tools and of weak or default passwords. It recommends taking that equipment off the Internet, segmenting the production network from the office network, and requiring multi-factor authentication on every remote access.
That separation is configured in the firewall and the switches, and administering them is part of our managed IT services.
One console for the office firewall, the shop floor switch and the server behind the management software.
What stops production
Office, shop, shipping: five systems you cannot lose
When one of these goes down, the plant notices within the hour.
| System | When it goes down | What OKTO offers |
|---|---|---|
| Production management software | No work orders, no order tracking, and invoicing waits | Server monitoring, daily backup, restore tests |
| Shared shop workstations | A cell clocks on paper, or waits | Monitoring, scheduled patching, a replacement unit prepared at our office |
| Drawings and machine programs | Someone picks up an outdated version, or the part is not made | An immutable off-site copy and reviewed access rights |
| Email and Microsoft 365 | Customer orders and quote requests stop coming in | Multi-factor authentication, email filtering, account administration |
| Network and Internet link | All of the above, at the same time | Firewall, internal network and wireless administration |
See the pages on backup and disaster recovery and on Microsoft 365 management.
Patching
How do you keep workstations patched without stopping a line?
A restart at the wrong moment costs an hour of production. Many plants conclude it is safer to stop updating anything, and that is what automated attacks look for.
The way out is to treat workstations by group. Our patches go out by policy, inside a window set ahead of time: office machines have theirs, and shop machines can have another. Picking the moment is up to your production manager, whether between two shifts, during planned maintenance or over the holiday shutdown. The workstation waits for its restart instead of forcing one in the middle of a shift.
Patch management for Windows and for third-party applications is part of our managed services; it is tracked and reported. A machine computer that can no longer be updated goes back to the rule above: a network of its own, Internet access closed, replacement written into the plan.
- One policy per group: office, shop, servers
- A window set ahead of time, not a surprise at 2 p.m.
- A report of which machines are up to date and which are waiting
Patches go out by policy, inside a fixed window. The shop floor machine waits for its restart.
Shifts
Who answers when the evening shift has an outage?
The answer depends on the plan, and it is better to know it before the first 10 p.m. outage.
Monitoring runs day and night in all three plans. A server running out of space raises an alert on our side, whether the plant is open or not. Regular support, for its part, is a weekday service, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The 24/7 emergency service is part of the Complet plan. On the Base and Standard plans, a critical alert at night is recorded, then handled by a person at opening. A plant with two or three shifts should therefore look at the Complet plan first.
During support hours, an organisation at a standstill goes ahead of everything else, with a targeted pickup of 15 minutes. On the Complet plan, that target becomes a written commitment. The details are on our IT support page.
Settle this at signing. Your production hours, the name of each shift supervisor, and what counts as a blocking outage at your plant.
An on-call night: file sharing goes down, the cause is found, the service restarts and the note stays on the ticket.
Recovery
How do you keep a server failure from becoming a production stop?
A stopped plant pays employees who wait. These five steps are taken before the failure, in this order.
- Name what stops a lineThe server behind the production management software, the folder of machine programs, the label printer in shipping. The list is short.
- Set two numbers per systemHow many hours of data entry you accept to redo, and how long the floor can run without that system. Management answers, not the technician.
- Get a copy out of the plantBackups run daily in all three plans, with an immutable off-site copy: no account, even a stolen one, can erase it before its retention ends.
- Try the restore for realThe Standard and Complet plans include two restore tests a year. They show whether the data comes back, and how long it takes.
- Write down the fallbackWork orders printed ahead of time, time tracking on paper, the person allowed to stop a line.
Replacing an old server is planned in a three-year IT plan. The case of encrypted files is covered on the ransomware protection page.
Production management software
Business software: who looks after what?
Genius ERP, aimed at custom manufacturers, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central or SAP Business One: every manufacturer has its own. OKTO neither sells nor implements them. Its own management software, the only one it sells, is OKTO PSA, a Quebec-made ERP and CRM.
OKTO Solutions
The server or its hosting, the accounts, the backup, the workstations and the network that lead to it. If the server has to stay inside your walls, our cloud services allow for that case.
What is missing around it
A tracking screen for the shop, a link between two systems: our team builds custom applications that plug into the software you already have.
Personal information too. A plant holds the files of its employees, and Law 25 applies to it with no size threshold. The measures described here support your obligations; the legal assessment belongs to your advisor. See also our managed cybersecurity.
Questions and answers
Questions plant managers ask
Do you offer IT support for a plant in the evening and at night?
Yes, with the Complet plan, which includes a 24/7 emergency service for critical outages. Regular support is a weekday service, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. On the Base and Standard plans, night alerts are recorded, then handled during business hours.
Do we really need to separate the shop network from the office network?
Yes. The Canadian Centre for Cyber Security recommends segmenting production networks from office networks. Without that wall, a phishing email opened in sales can reach the computer that runs a machine.
What do we do with a machine computer still running Windows 10?
Microsoft ended support for Windows 10 on October 14, 2025: that computer no longer receives security patches. If an upgrade is impossible, it goes on a network of its own and its replacement is written into the plan.
Do you look after our production management software?
We look after what keeps it running: the server, the accounts, the backup and the workstations that connect to it. Configuration and functional support stay with the software vendor or your integrator.
Can a technician come to the plant?
Yes, to replace a switch, install a shop workstation or take stock of what is plugged in. We travel regularly from Mauricie to the South Shore, through Centre-du-Québec, Lanaudière, Laval, Montreal and the Quebec City area. Elsewhere, a visit is booked ahead.
We already have an IT person in house. Does this still work?
Yes. Under co-managed IT, your person keeps what they know best, often the business software and the requests from the floor, and we take monitoring, security, backups and their vacation weeks. Who does what is put in writing at the start.
How many hours can your production wait?
Tell us what you make, how many workstations run in the shop and across how many shifts. We tell you plainly where the gaps are.
Reviewed by Antonio Pazzi, president of OKTO Solutions · updated