Manufacturers turn observability into productivity gains
Splunk data shows 86% report higher employee productivity as factories adopt automation.
Manufacturing is shedding its reputation as a digital laggard as factories push observability from a “nice-to-have” monitoring function into an operational necessity, and a measurable productivity lever.
Splunk’s State of Observability 2025 findings point to a sector leaning hard into modern practices. “About 40% more of the manufacturing industry leads in the adoption of automated remediation, code profiling and observability,” said Christine Low, Head of Observability, APJC, Splunk. “These are all the core building blocks of a modern observability practice.”
Low said manufacturing teams are building cross-functional operating models to move faster during disruption. “They've also built a culture where IT ops engineering and security teams work together very effectively, and where 97% report that they share and reuse the data, and over 80% perform a joint troubleshooting,” she said.
That collaboration is translating into business outcomes. “86% report improved employee productivity. 78% see better product and services uptime,” Low said, arguing manufacturers are now using observability as “a business calculus” that influences decisions “from the manufacturing floor to the boardroom.”
Padraig Byrne, VP Analyst, Gartner, said the turnaround is being forced by the realities of modern production. “A lot of [transformation] has been driven by the adoption of new technologies in manufacturing, the implementation of AI, the addition of more and more automation within the whole production cycle.”
For manufacturers, observability addresses a key productivity drain: time lost to reactive work. “We found teams responding to a lot of false alerts. This is one of the biggest drains on morale. So in Singapore alone, 50% say they spend more time than they should responding to alerts,” Low said.
Byrne added that factories are extending observability beyond traditional IT. “We can use observability to look wider… in logistic chains,” he said, as well as through “the integration of IoT with this operational technology, traditional non IP equipment.”
