Why Manufacturers Choose NBIT
There are hundreds of IT providers. Very few understand manufacturing. Even fewer build their entire delivery model around it. NBIT has spent 20+ years doing exactly that – for U.S. manufacturers, food and beverage producers, and logistics operators who can’t afford generic IT.
The NBIT Difference
We’re not the biggest MSP, and we’re not trying to be. What we are is the partner manufacturers call when their last IT provider didn’t understand the difference between a print server going down and a SCADA historian going down. Here’s what sets us apart.
We Know Your World
Our engineers know the plant floor environment well enough to design IT and security solutions that work around it. We understand what PLCs from Rockwell, Siemens, and Allen-Bradley do, how SCADA historians feed data upstream, and how MES platforms tie into your corporate network – that context shapes everything from your network architecture to your incident response plan. We also support the ERP systems manufacturers run:
We don’t have a learning curve at your expense.
Downtime Is Not Acceptable
Every hour of production downtime costs real money, often more than the IT support contract for the year. Our monitoring, response procedures, and change management are designed around keeping the line running. Not around following procedures while you bleed. Production-down tickets bypass the queue and route directly to senior engineers, 24/7, every day of the year.
OT Security Is Not Optional
Most IT providers stay away from operational technology. They quote you on email and endpoints, then hand you the blank stare when you ask about segmenting your PLC network. NBIT bridges the OT/IT gap safely by designing Purdue Model segmentation, securing legacy control systems that can’t be patched, and protecting the plant floor from threats that hit your corporate network. Read more about our IT/OT convergence approach.
We Augment Your Team. We Don’t Replace It.
Most of our manufacturing clients have an internal IT person or a small team. We’ve watched too many MSPs run over those people, take their relationships, and lose institutional knowledge in the process. We don’t operate that way. Our co-managed model gives your team the bench depth, 24/7 SOC, and specialty expertise they can’t justify hiring in-house, while leaving day-to-day decisions in your hands. The internal team handles what they’re best at. We handle the parts that wake them up at 3 a.m.
We Translate Compliance Into Action
CMMC, NIST 800-171, ITAR, ISO 27001, FDA 21 CFR Part 11: every manufacturer eventually gets a customer questionnaire that demands answers in one of these frameworks. We translate those requirements into practical IT programs you can actually execute, with the System Security Plans and evidence assessors expect to see. Not 200-page binders nobody reads. See our IT compliance services.
By the Numbers
20+
Years Serving Manufacturers
97%
Client Retention Rate
<4 hr
Average Response Time
100+
Manufacturing Clients Served
These aren’t marketing numbers. They’re the byproduct of doing one thing – manufacturing IT – for two decades. Generalist MSPs can’t show retention numbers like this in industrial verticals because they keep losing clients the first time a controls engineer asks a question their help desk can’t answer.
Industry-Recognized Excellence
NBIT has been named to the Channel Futures MSP 501 – the industry’s most rigorous ranking of managed service providers – for multiple years running. The MSP 501 evaluates revenue, growth, profitability, business operations, and innovation. Most MSPs never make the list. We’ve made it repeatedly. We’ve also earned partner certifications from Microsoft, Fortinet, and Cisco – the vendors whose tools we deploy daily. Recognition isn’t the goal; it’s a reasonable proxy for whether a vendor is investing in their own capability or just collecting monthly fees.
Why Manufacturers Switch to Us
Most of our new clients aren’t starting fresh – they’re moving from another IT provider. Here’s what we hear most often.
“Our last MSP didn’t understand manufacturing.”
The most common reason. The previous MSP did fine work for accounting firms and law offices, then assumed a manufacturer was just a bigger small business. Help desk tickets piled up because nobody on the other end could read a wiring diagram or knew which protocol PROFINET runs on.
“We had a security scare and our provider couldn’t help.”
Ransomware attempts, phishing incidents, vendor notifications about CVEs – and the existing MSP’s answer was “we have antivirus.” Modern manufacturing security needs OT-aware monitoring, identity protection, and a SOC. We bring all three.
“Compliance got real and they couldn’t keep up.”
CMMC enforcement, prime contractor flow-downs, customer security questionnaires, cyber-insurance underwriting that suddenly required documented MFA, network segmentation, and tested incident response plans. The previous provider couldn’t produce the artifacts. We do this every week.
“Their internal IT person quit and they needed a partner, not a replacement.”
A common pattern: a 150-employee manufacturer loses their one IT person, panics, and hires a national MSP that runs the same playbook for everyone. Six months later, nothing is documented and every change is a project. We come in, document the environment, build a co-managed structure that survives staff transitions, and train the next internal hire instead of replacing them.
What Our Clients Say
“NBIT is the first IT company we’ve worked with that actually understands our ERP and plant floor systems. They’ve saved us from multiple near-disasters.”
IT Director, Precision Parts Manufacturer
“We switched to NBIT after a ransomware scare. Their security assessment showed us exactly where we were vulnerable, and they fixed every gap within 60 days.”
VP Operations, Food Processing Company
How to Tell If NBIT Is the Right Fit
We are a strong fit if you are a U.S. manufacturer, food and beverage producer, or logistics operator with 20 to 500 employees, an existing IT environment that needs more depth than a generalist MSP can provide, and at least one of the following:
- A plant floor with PLCs, SCADA, MES, or industrial control systems that need to coexist safely with corporate IT
- Compliance pressure from a customer or regulator (CMMC, NIST 800-171, ITAR, FDA 21 CFR Part 11, FSMA 204)
- An internal IT team that is stretched thin and needs co-managed support – not replacement
- A history of outages, security incidents, or audit findings that your current provider can’t seem to close out
- Multi-site operations where your current MSP can only support one location well
We may not be the right fit if you are under 20 employees with a single office and basic IT needs – a generalist MSP will serve you fine. We are also intentionally not a Fortune 500 vendor; we are built for the 20 to 500-employee mid-market manufacturer.
See Why Manufacturers Trust NBIT
Schedule a 30-minute discovery call with a manufacturing IT specialist. We’ll walk through your environment, identify your highest-risk gaps, and give you a clear picture of what it would take to address them. No pressure, no canned proposal – just a conversation with someone who’s been in plants like yours.