Can you support shop-floor equipment, not just office PCs?

We manage the IT side of the shop floor — the Windows machines driving CNC and inspection equipment, label and barcode systems, shop-floor terminals, and the network that connects them — and we segment production equipment from the office network. Machine controllers themselves stay with your equipment vendors; we coordinate with them.

Our CNC machines run ancient Windows versions. What do we do?

This is normal — controllers often outlive their operating systems by a decade. The answer is usually isolation, not replacement: we put legacy machines on segmented networks with no internet access and tightly controlled file transfer, so an unpatchable Windows 7 box can't become the entry point that stops the whole plant.

What does IT downtime actually cost a manufacturer?

Count it: idle labor across the floor, missed ship dates, expedited freight to recover, and OEE you never get back. For a small plant, an hour of unplanned line stoppage routinely costs thousands of dollars. That math is why we lead with monitoring and prevention rather than fast repair.

Do we need CMMC or other compliance?

If you're in a defense supply chain — even as a tier-3 supplier of machined parts — CMMC requirements flow down through your primes, and DFARS clauses may already be in your POs. Customers in aerospace, medical, and automotive also send security questionnaires. We assess what actually applies and build to it.

Can you support multiple shifts?

Yes. Monitoring runs 24/7 regardless of shift, maintenance is scheduled around production rather than office hours, and emergency response doesn't check the clock. We plan support coverage around your actual production calendar.

IT for Sacramento Manufacturers

In a manufacturing plant, IT problems become production problems with a dollars-per-minute price tag. NorCal Tech Solutions provides managed IT for Sacramento-region manufacturers of 5–100 employees — machine shops, food and beverage producers, electronics and fabrication plants — with the OT/IT boundary, ERP uptime, and downtime economics treated as first-class concerns.

Downtime is the whole conversation

When the ERP server stalls or the shop-floor network drops, you don't lose "productivity" — you lose a running line: idle operators, missed ship dates, expedited freight, and a customer scorecard ding. That's why our managed IT services approach for manufacturers is prevention-weighted: 24/7 monitoring on the servers and network your production depends on, maintenance scheduled around shifts instead of office hours, spare-parts and redundancy planning for the components whose failure stops the floor, and emergency response that treats a down line like the fire it is.

The OT/shop-floor problem

Every plant has it: the office network full of normal PCs, and the shop floor full of Windows machines welded (sometimes literally) to production equipment — CNC controllers on Windows 7, an inspection station that "can't ever be updated," a labeling PC running software from 2009. These machines can't be patched like office computers, but leaving them on a flat network means one phishing click in the front office can reach the plant floor.

The fix is segmentation: production equipment on isolated network zones with no direct internet access, controlled file-transfer paths for programs and job data, and monitoring at the boundary. We design and manage that with our network and Wi-Fi service — including plant-grade wireless that actually works between steel racks and machinery.

Ransomware targets plants on purpose

Manufacturing has been the most-attacked sector for ransomware for several years running, precisely because downtime pressure makes manufacturers likely to pay. The defense is layered: EDR on every endpoint that can take it, MFA on all accounts, email filtering against the phishing and invoice-fraud attempts that target purchasing departments, segmented networks so an infection can't spread to production, and managed backups with tested restores covering the ERP, file shares, and machine programs. See our cybersecurity service for the full stack.

If you're in a defense, aerospace, or medical supply chain, add compliance: CMMC and DFARS flow-downs are reaching small suppliers through their primes, and customer security questionnaires are becoming a condition of keeping the work. Our IT compliance service handles assessment and remediation.

Tools we commonly manage in this vertical

ERP/MRP systems (Global Shop Solutions, JobBOSS/ECI, E2, Epicor, Fishbowl, NetSuite, SYSPRO), CAD/CAM (SolidWorks, Mastercam, Fusion 360, AutoCAD), DNC/file-transfer systems for machine programs, quality and inspection software, barcode/label systems (BarTender, Zebra), time-and-attendance, EDI for customer integration, Microsoft 365, and the servers, industrial switches, and wireless infrastructure underneath.

Local support that comes to the plant

Plants need on-site hands more than most businesses — you can't remote into a cable run. From our Sacramento office we support manufacturers across the region, including the industrial corridors of Rancho Cordova, West Sacramento, and Roseville. Remote fixes handle the daily stream; when it's physical, we're local.

For more, our Learn library covers backup vs. disaster recovery, cybersecurity checklists, and CMMC in plain English — see /learn/. Want a straight answer on your plant's exposure? Request a free IT assessment — we'll review your uptime risks, OT/IT segmentation, and security posture and give you a prioritized report in production terms, not jargon.